While I've written in the past about what online community organizers can learn from pornography-oriented Web sites, a recent Suicide Girls essay by Glenn Reynolds titled "Guerrilla Media and the Cutting Edge" looks at the future of journalism through the lens of porn.
Reynolds cites the economies of scale now available to grassroots media creators and parallels the specificity of fetishes in the porn world to the increasing emergence and maturity of online "niche" journalism. While there is promise in this potential future -- while some of the connections Reynolds mentions are clear -- I think it's important to remember that porn is porn and sells because, well, sex sells.
The need for information -- even if as fetishistic as that exhibited by otaku -- may never be as strong as the biological need for nudity. Similarly, tastes of this type -- fetishes -- are relatively persistent and consistent while, I would argue, the need for information and input continuously evolves as it is informed and influenced by previous information. Life-long learning is a moving target. A foot fetish isn't.
Thanks to the Dead Parrot Society.
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