Unverified Amateur
James Cabaret got paid to go on Pornhub this week. No, really - in this feature he explores the pros and cons of making a sex tape in the digital age.
Picture this; you’re 14. You stumble, or walk directly into the world’s most popular porn site, Pornhub. Your world has instantly changed and you start feeling things you have never felt before. A tingle shoots up your spine (and elsewhere) and you think to yourself within your 14-year-old mind, “What the fuck? The rumours I heard at school were true - you CAN watch people fucking online.”
Okay, keep imagining your 14-year-old self hovering over the multiple categories, thinking to your pubescent self, what am I into? You may think to yourself, “I am an amateur”, therefore you smack the amateur category and BANG! You’re immersed in another new world of the most real-life porn you could possibly imagine.
Welcome to the world of amateur porn, one of the most popular categories on Pornhub and other popular porn websites, with over 134,000 verified ‘Amateurs’ on the website and another 300,000 amateur videos literally dominating the site. The only other category to surpass amateur porn is of course ‘HD Porn’, because who doesn’t want to see someone getting double penetrated in 4K?
While looking at these figures it only led me to one question; how many of us are experimenting with making our own amateur porn videos? I can imagine quite a few and I can openly say I have myself in the past, but only with a long-term partner who felt comfortable doing so (also whilst very drunk).
My memory of the time is blurred, but I was around 18. Myself and my girlfriend got home after a night out and she chucked on my white Yeezy tour t-shirt. What could turn on an 18-year-old boy more than a Yeezy T-shirt? We started doing the deed whilst I balanced my iPhone 7 in my hand and the rest is history. We both woke up in the morning and laughed about the situation, then proceeded to watch the videos. After a couple more laughs we agreed on deleting the videos, as you never know what is going to happen on the world wide web.
So, if I’ve done it I can only imagine that the rest of the population has as well. I started asking my close friends if they had and many said yes. Others said no, why the fuck are you asking me that?
Luckily for me, I have a few friends who were happy enough to speak about the somewhat taboo topic.
Xavier* started experimenting with amauter sex tapes two months into a relationship, after his partner suggested the idea of filming them on her laptop. He decided why not, despite the obvious low production quality. They dimmed the lights and, ‘tried extra hard to look like a nubile video.’ His words not mine.
They then used the video for future ‘training purposes’ or to get them in the mood before having sex.
I asked Xavier the question. Do you think making an amateur sex tape affected your relationship in a positive way?
“I don’t really think it had much effect on us. It was a bit of a non-event in comparison to the rest of our relationship, physically and emotionally, so it was neither negative or positive,” he said.
When asked about the prospect of making an amateur sex tape to be published online, he said, “I’d never put anything online, both because I would never want anything like that of myself online and neither would she.
The whole revenge porn thing is also atrocious so you have to be careful where the video ends up. We were both working professionals and I would hate for it to come up down the track.”
The world of amateur porn also has many sub-categories within the main categories of either verified amateur or amateur. These categories include anal, threesome, ebony, transgender, gay, lesbian and so much more.
Whilst researching amateur sex tapes (purely for journalistic purposes, obviously) I knew that people of all sexual orientations were partaking in the making of homemade films, so I messaged an old work colleague who was a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
I asked Nico* similar questions to what I asked my straight friend and got a similar response.
What was your first experience making an amateur tape?
“My first experience was with a fuck buddy I had a couple years ago. It was a guy in his thirties that I had been sleeping with for a couple of months and at that point it wasn’t something we planned on doing, but more of a spur of the moment thing we decided to do,” he said.
“I had taken videos and photos during sex before, but I had never actually set up a camera for it.”
When asked about publishing them online, they said they had not, and they also had a secure password for their Dropbox.
At the start of 2019, Pornhub faced an online petition that garnered 350,000 signatures after allegations that it was profiting off revenge porn due to insufficient safeguarding checks on the amateur videos posted on the site. This came after multiple videos of younger women being raped were uploaded to the site.
Which leads to me to the end of this piece on everything amateur sex; be careful on the internet, especially when it comes to sharing photos and videos of yourself and more importantly others online. If you make an amateur sex tape, before uploading it anywhere make sure your partner is 100% comfortable with you doing so, or you run the risk of being charged for revenge porn (which if you are uploading without consent, you probably deserve).