CARNAL NATION

The following essay was originally published on Lavender Lounge's blog. All links should be considered NSFW --CarnalNation

As part of the group blogging effort with a gaggle of journalists, gossip columnists, movie reviewers, bloggers, and gadabouts in gay porn, we're each taking a look back at the years since 2000. Most of my colleagues will be writing about their favorite gay porn movies or their favorite gossip items of the past 10 years. I was never big on Top 10 Lists, and with the onset of early Alzheimer's, I barely remember yesterday. Nurse! Where's my pudding?!

Instead, the topic of my term paper will be "The History of Video On Demand Gay Porn Websites From 2000 to 2009." Why that topic? That was the period that Video On Demand (VOD) began to blossom.

By 2000, membership-based websites creating their own original content were already making millions. Initially, the big name production companies shooting content for strictly for home video (remember VHS?) hated the web. Hated it. At best, they put up minimal web pages in the late 90s merely as placeholders for some undecided later use. By 2000, they resentfully created online stores to sell their videos, only to be disappointed that fans weren't flocking to buy from the online version of their mail-order catalog.

In the early days of Video On Demand, studios were resistant to get onboard. Their objections to submitting their movies to VOD sites was either a fear of losing VHS/DVD sales, or they had ambitious plans to stream movies themselves. (That is, until they found out how expensive and difficult it is to set up on their own!)

So, looking back, what were the top news stories in 2000?

2257 was just a warning label on video boxes that got as much attention as warning labels on cigarettes.

VHS was still a viable video format. IPods didn't come out till the end of 2001 and cost $400.

On March 3, 2000 the Dow Jones was at 10,367.20.

Also in March 2000, Napster (started by a 19 year old kid) was so popular with college students that downloading of free music was bringing down university Internet connections. Fast-forward to today, and the amount of traffic generated each month by YouTube is now equivalent to the amount of traffic generated across the entire Internet in all of 2000. In fact, the Times of London reports that by next year, Internet traffic will begin to experience "brown-outs," causing networks to freeze for minutes at a time. By 2012, "...PCs and laptops are likely to operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the Internet an 'unreliable toy.'" With that said, maybe watching porn on stand-alone DVD players may not be a bad idea...

In 2000, everyone was talking about little Elian Gonzalez captured at gunpoint and shipped back to Cuba. Today, Larry Flynt and Michael Lucas are probably both making offers to bring him back to Miami to do porn.

Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from Yugoslavia in 2000, which gave freedom to a lot of Eastern Europeans—to do porn! Suddenly, a whole new world of (white) Aryan 18-year-old bodybuilders and athletes could get hard currency for having sex on camera.

In 2000, Microsoft was being dragged through court to defend itself against anti-trust. Back then, if companies were "too big," they needed to be split up. Today, if a company is "too big to fail," the government will rescue them.

But at the top of the list of news stories in 2000 was that little election between Good and Evil, I mean, Gore and Bush. Prior to that, I barely followed politics or hard news. In the spring of that year, we were all pretty certain that Gore was a shoo-in and went about our lives with confidence that our leaders had things under control. And why not? Instead of budget deficits, everyone was lining up for their share of the surplus brought by closing military bases and taxes from nouveau riche Internet millionaires.

In February 2000, just before Super Tuesday, John McCain told backers in Bakersfield, Calif., that Bush was guilty of deploying negative tactics. "My opponent wants to be president in the worst way. I want to be president in the best way.''

David Letterman asked George Bush: "How do you look so youthful and rested?" 
Bush replied, "Fake it." 
Letterman: "And that's pretty much how you're going to run the country?"

So prophetic, I'm going to leave it at that. My "History of Video on Demand" will continue with interviews from MaleFlixxx.tv, AEBN, Gay Hot Movies, beginning with an exclusive interview with Naked Sword's first employee—ME!