Money Shot: The Pornhub Story - Lilith Likes to Watch Documentary December
Title: Money Shot: The Pornhub Story
Year: 2023
Starring: Noelle Perdue, Wolf Hudson, Cherie Deville, Asa Akira
Director: Suzanne Hillinger
Synopsis: Featuring interviews with performers, activists and past employees, this documentary offers a deep dive into the successes and scandals of Pornhub. - Via Letterboxd.com
Lilith's Notes: I was there when the OpEd dropped man. I was there.
Buy: Netflix
"It's just because some executive at Mastercard has a fear of things in his butt?"
I like to think that I practice care when selecting films for Documentary December. I don’t want to amplify voices that I vehemently disagree with, or that I find actively harmful. It’s why I’ll likely never review Hot Girls Wanted, which infantilizes the women, spreads narratives of coercion and takes away the autonomy of the cam girls.
I was a little concerned that Money Shot would be nothing more than a puff piece for Pornhub when it began, but it does manage to delve into the great pornocalypse of 2020. As if 2020 wasn't difficult enough on all of us without the pearl-clutchers trying to take away our porn.
Money Shot plays it both ways, exploring the rise of Pornhub, and the cataclysm that was kicked off by Nicholas Kristof’s NYT Op-Ed article that resulted in the credit card companies clawing away the livelihoods of honest, hard working performers and models.
The talking heads interviewed for this documentary are adult entertainment performers, journalists, anti-porn activists, porn writers, porn directors and even the men behind the Pornhub Empire as it stands today. Accusations of bias probably hold no water here.
On occasion I do look up other reviews for the movies I watch, or even Reddit comments, just to gauge the temperature on what people thought of the film, or to see if I overlooked something. I especially do this with documentaries. This time, I saw people bemoaning the fact that the documentary “brought religion into it”, when, yes, ExodusCry is a Christian fundamental organization and arm of Morality in Media, with the stated mission to bring an end to all porn, and is anti-LGBTQ+, anti-trans, as well as being a driving force behind FOSTA/SISTA, and deal in some shady tactics to get people on their side.
Most notably changing its name from Morality in Media to NCOSE, The National Centre of Sexual Exploitation, which sounds suspiciously like NCMIC, or, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
It’s giving fake Family Planning Crisis Centre.
Remember, if it’s NCOSE, It Ain’t Cozy!
I find it bitterly ironic that people didn’t give credence to the religion-creep of the documentary, because now the USA is staring down the barrel of Project 2025. I’m not going to gloat because my country could follow soon after by the way we’re trending.
But, I’m getting off track.
For a documentary about the biggest porn site on the internet, it’s rather dry, which I suppose is a good thing. The dryness does lend itself to how seriously it's taking the topic, since it would be so easy to just smirk and giggle and eye-roll. Personally I found all the smugness and smirks came from Dani Pintos, the senior legal counsel for NCOSE.
This all gives rise to a lawsuit, which accuses Pornhub of behaving “Like the Sopranos”, as well as alleging that performers who spoke out publicly in defense of Pornhub received kick-back such as more prominence on the site. Like Asa Akira needed a boost in views. She’s fucking Asa Akira.
Accusations are flung back and forth on both sides, and I don’t have the time or the patience to follow up on all of them. Frankly, that's the job of the documentarians, to fact-check what they're being told. Of course everyone is going to be steadfast on their side of the line. But the facts remain that Pornhub did everything it could to appease the bad-faith antagonists, and the ripples are still being felt even nearly five years later.
All the NCOSE crowd managed to do was make the scumsuckers of illegal, vile, evil content slink into the dark and become unregulated and harder to find. The Morality Police are the ones dragging everyone down, just so they can point and exclaim, “See? See? We were right all along!”
Because it’s not the verified accounts that are uploading the bad shit, and we all fucking know you know it, pearl-clutchers.
Best Moment: It is informative and made sure to call out the anti-porn group for what they were.
Worst Moment: It didn't bother to push for numbers/other details that the original article also didn't bother to get, thus perpetuating the misinformation. It barely explored how this entire situation affected the rest of big sites, like XHamster.
LILITH'S SCORE: 3/5 - It is an educational documentary, but a bit lackluster. A good companion might be the podcast The Pornhub Empire, which I enjoyed.
Until next time, my voracious voyeurs. I’m Lilith, and I’m always watching.
I find it bitterly ironic that people didn’t give credence to the religion-creep of the documentary, because now the USA is staring down the barrel of Project 2025. I’m not going to gloat because my country could follow soon after by the way we’re trending.
But, I’m getting off track.
For a documentary about the biggest porn site on the internet, it’s rather dry, which I suppose is a good thing. The dryness does lend itself to how seriously it's taking the topic, since it would be so easy to just smirk and giggle and eye-roll. Personally I found all the smugness and smirks came from Dani Pintos, the senior legal counsel for NCOSE.
This all gives rise to a lawsuit, which accuses Pornhub of behaving “Like the Sopranos”, as well as alleging that performers who spoke out publicly in defense of Pornhub received kick-back such as more prominence on the site. Like Asa Akira needed a boost in views. She’s fucking Asa Akira.
Accusations are flung back and forth on both sides, and I don’t have the time or the patience to follow up on all of them. Frankly, that's the job of the documentarians, to fact-check what they're being told. Of course everyone is going to be steadfast on their side of the line. But the facts remain that Pornhub did everything it could to appease the bad-faith antagonists, and the ripples are still being felt even nearly five years later.
All the NCOSE crowd managed to do was make the scumsuckers of illegal, vile, evil content slink into the dark and become unregulated and harder to find. The Morality Police are the ones dragging everyone down, just so they can point and exclaim, “See? See? We were right all along!”
Because it’s not the verified accounts that are uploading the bad shit, and we all fucking know you know it, pearl-clutchers.
Best Moment: It is informative and made sure to call out the anti-porn group for what they were.
Worst Moment: It didn't bother to push for numbers/other details that the original article also didn't bother to get, thus perpetuating the misinformation. It barely explored how this entire situation affected the rest of big sites, like XHamster.
LILITH'S SCORE: 3/5 - It is an educational documentary, but a bit lackluster. A good companion might be the podcast The Pornhub Empire, which I enjoyed.
Until next time, my voracious voyeurs. I’m Lilith, and I’m always watching.
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