Models are Building a Community, but Webmasters are Self-Isolating

About five years ago adult models were a scattered group. Many stuck to just one monetization platform, and there was very little social interaction between performers outside of their own close groups of friends.

Isolated models were missing the obvious benefits that come from peer networking. Some of this self-isolation no doubt came from a desire to show loyalty to the platforms they were using to earn money – no fraternizing with the other teams? Some were fearful that any appearance of disloyalty would mean less promotion from their platforms. But also, the interactive sectors of the adult industry were still very much developing. Cam sites have existed for decades now, but cam sites as we know them today are still a relatively recent thing.  A widely connected model community just hadn’t developed yet.

My own career in adult also started in isolation. After college I found myself wanting to learn HTML, and during that process I built a few adult image galleries that earned quite a nice bit of money. This was in a time when sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so many other internet giants hadn’t been built yet. Webmasters were mostly trying things out on their own and keeping rather quiet about it too – nobody yet knew whether adult content on the internet was legally dangerous.

But I will always remember that strong pull I felt to seek out others “of my own kind,” which led me to fly across the country to attend a trade show called (then) IA2000; you may know it today as Internext Expo. I explicitly remember walking into the lobby of the host hotel in Orlando, Florida and immediately running into Colin Rowntree of Wasteland.com, as well as a group of other webmasters who were about to become my friends.

There was this immediate sense of positive energy (and relief even) when I realized I wasn’t in this alone. There were a lot of smiles in that lobby, as if each of us were looking at the other and saying, “Hey, you figured this out too? Nice, isn’t it!” There was a sense of comradery and community. We were in it together and we were making money.

So back to five years ago when I saw that models were largely isolated and scattered, I knew I wanted to put the resources of my company behind helping them build a community. And we have done our small part – first with the launch of ynotcam.com and model appreciation dinners at trade shows, then with the creation of the YNOT Cam Awards, and finally with the launch of YNOT #Cammunity. And we will continue to look for ways to help.  But with or without YNOT, our industry’s amazing models were always going to build up a community for themselves. It was just a matter of time.

We saw the enthusiasm of the model community this week at YNOT Summit. We received a lot of interest from models and performers in the Summit’s speaking opportunities, and model attendees filled the rooms for each ‘Model Track’ session. Chats were active, and the buzz on social media was wonderful.

Case in point: during the ‘Sexy Cosplay 101’ session, participants started to discuss further ways they could cooperate and socialize after the event, including the creation of a Discord room for gaming together. Within minutes I saw further discussion of the idea on Twitter. This is what it’s all about, and seeing that happening was a highlight of the show for me.

It’s also been awesome to see that models who met at our YNOT #Cammunity show in 2019 (no show in 2020 for pandemic-related reasons), then further bonded at the YNOT Cam Awards, are great friends today. We see them leaning on each other for support and working together to promote themselves online and make more money, and we love this so much at YNOT.

On the webmaster side of the industry though, the once-tight community has been drifting apart. Many of the people we’ve known for a long time are still working in adult, but they tend to keep more to themselves – with the exception of spending (wasting?) time on Facebook to argue about politics. This drift has been happening slowly now for many years.

Webmasters are less active at shows, especially in North America. We lost our best show – The Phoenix Forum – entirely due to declining support. (Europe has a rather large exception with The European Summit, which melds the adult and mainstream affiliate worlds.) Webmasters also don’t frequent industry-run forums in the numbers they used to anymore – even the once-unstoppable GFY.com is more subdued. That forum is still valuable, and I recommend everyone add it to their routine, but nobody would argue that we’re not in a different place with webmaster forums than we were in, say, 2010 or earlier.

Part of the issue with webmasters is their reliance on mainstream communication platforms like Facebook – a curious choice, since that platform is openly hostile to our industry. These platforms are a massive distraction, and the (evil) companies behind these services are constantly trying to divert your attention in ways that benefit them, but not your business. They often waste your time, as anyone who has caught themselves zombie-scrolling on Facebook can tell you.

But it’s also a change in mood with webmasters.  Somehow the spirit of cooperation has faded by a measurable amount; again, especially in North America. A good industry friend of mine recently said he needs to drop a lot of groups and “news feeds” from his communication platforms because the “nastiness” happening these days is just too much for him.

So here we are in 2020 with two groups of people very important to the adult industry going in different directions.

For models I’m increasingly excited about the future, and that community is just going to keep growing. YNOT is excited to play its part in supporting this industry revolution. With the rise of model voices, we’re seeing all kinds of rapid positive changes in the industry.

Inclusion and diversity are regular topics of discussion now, and POC are less often finding themselves fetishized and pushed into niche corners of the adult industry. Models are finding their own power and learning how to leverage interactive platforms like live cam sites, clips marketplaces and fan sites – to be their own boss, make their own content and set their own rules.

There are all-new ways that the industry is understanding gender expression, and trans performers are starting to feel more comfortable with voicing their experiences in adult and asking for change where it’s needed. Women are setting boundaries and demanding that consent be absolutely understood and respected. And the adult industry now knows that performers of all body types can find their audiences on interactive platforms.

For webmasters though, we all have some work to do – but I’m honestly kind of excited to tackle that work. We can start by showing our support for the industry’s biggest webmaster-centric events, including Internext Expo and The European Summit.  We should try to pry ourselves away from Facebook and pick more industry-friendly methods of communication. YNOT also will continue YNOT Summit in 2021, which has a ‘Webmaster Track’ full of virtual sessions and seminars just for Webmasters. If we prioritize it just a little bit in 2021, we can re-gain some of that community and cooperative spirit we had before, which is good for our companies but also for our motivation as businesspeople.

Let’s keep building.