The Golden Age Of Gay Porn

We are living in the Golden Age of Gay Porn!

Now, it actually may also be the golden age of ALL porn, gay, straight, bi, trans, whatever, but since I only "follow" gay porn (purely for internet history fact finding mind you...ehem.) I can only attest to that side of it all.

Here's the history of gay porn, IMHO. My credentials? Well, let's just say I have decades of experience.

1970s

Now, TBH, this was a decade in which I was way too young to experience the scene myself of course, but movies and "literature" existed throughout and though much of it is lost to time, many people are ardent collectors of this era. Of course, gay porn existed before the 70s but much of it was either super hush-hush underground (since many regions labeled it as perverted material and it was thus illegal) or soft-core by today's standards (body builder magazines and such). Magazines like these continued on but after Stonewall, gay porn became a bit more "tolerated" as long as it was restricted heavily. And taxed heavily as well I'm sure accounting somewhat for the very high prices ($10 magazines in the 70s...that's about $50 in today's money!)

Also, the rumor was that the Mafia became more involved with porn business so this may have boosted the industry as well.

42nd Street in New York was especially known for its many X-rated cinemas and bookstores. The Combat Zone in Boston was also notorious as a rough and tumble porn hub.

1980s

Producers were spending more on their wares due to huge surges in gay porn profits. Movies, previously shot on 8" or Super 8" film could now be taped to video cassette, providing for wider distribution since now viewers could enjoy their smut in the privacy of their own homes.

I personally became a connoisseur, if you will, of the fine products coming out of studios like HIS, Catalina, and of course, Falcon. Top rated films by these studios usually cost around $60, the equivalent of $136 today. But even at these exorbitant prices I bought my fair share of VCR films.

Of course, AIDS had its impact on the industry. While the epidemic shot sales through the roof since more gay men were choosing masturbation over sex, it also ripped through the gay porn model community so much so that the entire industry, without any government mandate or law, self-imposed a strict "safe sex" policy. Soon, no top shelf studios were producing hard core gay porn without condoms.

1990s

Gay porn became much more diverse, adopting niche categories (bears, twinks, black, asian, leather, BDSM) and studios or magazine publishers that focused on them. By the end of the decade, more and more media became available on the internet and condom-less videos (now labelled "bareback") were on the rise.

Also, the internet came on the scene, and with it, gay porn. Whether it was proto-internet BBS forums that offered rudimentary images and the beginning of online hookups or the newsgroups binaries where, if you were patient and had lots and lots of floppy disks, you could do like my buddy John C. and spend hours downloading binary images with your 56K dial-up modems, decode them, and store them compressed in zip files on them.

2000s

As internet speed and volume rapidly increased, so did the availability of gay porn on it. I feel it went through these stages in the aughts:

Portals: At first, websites like Badpuppy were designed to be portals that featured self-produced pictures, the beginning of the amateur genre. They had some free stuff that were available but for the majority of their content, they required you to subscribe with a monthly or yearly membership...at a fee, of course. Other sites served as signposts, sometimes offering thumbnails which would either show the full sized picture when clicked or would be directing the user to other sites for which they usually would earn a commission.

Amateur Studios: Many of these early sites developed into full blown studios, creating their own pictures and videos hiring their own cast and crew. These sites now could make money through at least three revenue streams: Ads, subscriptions or online sales of video which would be mailed to the user first mainly as VCR tapes but rapidly being replaced by DVDs. These sites usually abandoned the affiliate links (unless they were sister studios) since they wanted the user to spend their money with them.

VOD: As broadband became the standard, studios could now offer Video On Demand clips or even full films. At first these were downloaded then played on the user's computer using video playing software but then adapted a streaming format as speeds grew ever more speedy.

2010s

File Share Video sites and Tumblr:

Thumbnail sites began getting replaced by sites now offering thousands and thousands of digital video files, some legally licensed while others unlicensed using file sharing technology. The vast majority of these are offered free of charge to the user since ads create the bulk of revenue for them.

Image and video blogging via primarily Tumblr also offers a plethora of media to the user, also free, but usually devoid of ads. Material is usually shared among Tumblr users by "reblogging."

With lightening fast internet speeds, smooth streaming players hosted on the sites themselves, HD and now 4K (even VR if you're set up for it) quality, models getting better pay and opportunities and the loosening of the social taboos of "doing porn" has made for younger, better looking and enthusiastic performers. It's truly a wondrous age!