I’m gonna start by talking about the porn girl I lived with, then segue into the actors’ strike and end on politics.

Yep, ol’ Dave will deftly manipulate three balls at once.

So, speaking of porn…

For me, two years of living with a porn star were more than enough. Actually, one was more than enough. And for the record, she lived with me so she could quit porn (we were even doing a documentary film about it). It almost worked; she became Amber Heard’s body double in Aquaman, and offers of legit work started coming in…then she ran off to Florida with a tranny and got face tats.

Porn stars are a bird you cannot cage. Eventually, you have to open the door and let them fly…and then watch as they brain themselves on a window because they don’t understand the concept of glass.

That said, I’ll admit that I learned a lot in those two years.

Like the “porn trajectory.”

The typical porn star starts with stripping, moves to on-camera penetration, then to escorting (hooking). But let’s not look at it from the performer’s perspective; let’s examine at it from the fan’s perspective, because that’s where our story lies.

The porn fan starts by watching strippers. Fun, right? But then he needs something more extreme: watching actual intercourse. But what after that? Having intercourse with the woman yourself! You’ve seen her tease, you’ve seen her do the act, now you need to be in the act.

That’s where my porn girl scored the real money, from guys who could afford her for the night. Or the week. These superrich dudes would whisk her away all over the globe. There was a very prominent Belgian who’d fly her to Europe for sex. There was a Hungarian. And an Aussie.

It’s a logical progression. The fan goes from watching passively (in a strip club where touching yourself is against the rules), to actively (watching at home where self-touching is allowed), to interactively (the girl touches you back).

Hollywood is in disarray (yes, I’ve moved from one ball to the next, like my porn girl), sore at both ends (again, like my porn girl). Talent and management are both suffering.

The networks and studios are dying. “Broadcast TV” is dead, and the only theatrical films that pack houses are Marvel epics that cost about $300 mil to make, which means they can’t afford to fail, because if they do, it can sink an entire studio.

And the streaming model is going the way of Blockbuster Video. It worked for a time, but it’s petering out.

So what are “the kids” spending money on? Not tickets to Batman vs. Flash: Revenge of Emperor Fuckwad. Not Netflix subscriptions. They’re spending on videogames. Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is so insanely profitable, the upcoming installment (GTA 6) reportedly cost 2 billion dollars to make.

Because it’s a multibillion-dollar franchise. GTA makes so much money, spending $2 billion to create the next iteration is justified, as the game will rake in ten times that much in profit.

Why? Because GTA, with its immersive environment, puts players in the movie. Why watch a car chase in some Hollywood flick when you can be in the chase, the star of it?

It’s the porn trajectory. Going from watching to doing. These videogames are so well crafted in terms of real-world 3D environments and intelligent in-game AI, you can’t go back to passively observing once you’ve actively participated.

Which leads to a major problem for actors. When I started in casting in 1986, the dawn of “direct-to-video” (kinda like streaming, but you had to drive to a video store), cute lil’ blondies were raking in the bucks because “naughty” video releases with titles like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (yes, a real film I worked on) were all the rage. There was no internet porn (there was no internet), visiting a porn theater might lead to a “Pee-wee Hermaning,” and even renting VHS porn invasively involved filling out paperwork before the prying eyes of video store clerks. So a night watching bikini chick-flicks was oftentimes the best choice for incels on a Saturday night, and those bikini flicks were hugely profitable because they were tame enough to be sold to USA Network.

And because those films were “safe”—no full-frontal, no penetration—the chicks had to be super hot facially. The babes had to be spellbinding while clothed.

That was the golden age of blonde actress bimbos. They held all the cards.

Not anymore. Today, not only is there ample online porn, but billion-dollar sites like OnlyFans allow horny incels to have direct one-on-one contact with nekkid chicks. Who’s gonna pay for a film about bikini babes fighting zombies when they can pay for full-frontal interactivity?

Internet porn and OnlyFans hit Hollywood in two ways. For management, it meant that the old standby of low-budget/high-profit B movies with bikini actresses was dead as the dodo (again, this is why theatrical profitability is reliant on high-risk A-list IMAX epics; the entire B genre was killed because porn and OnlyFans made “suggestive” sexuality wholly unsatisfying).

For actresses, this means B movies are no longer a source of sustainable income.

In 1988, Becky Bimbo could make a living doing T&A made-for-video films. Today? That market’s gone. But there’s profit in OnlyFans, so her choice is, go there and earn major cash in close contact with the losers who, in the ’80s, would’ve masturbated to her from afar, or answer a “deferred pay” add on Backstage.com and fight zombies in a bikini for a free lunch (this is called “copy and meals provided,” and it’s the best deal Becky Bimbos get these days).

As much as I want to blame “wokeness” for the rise of streaming shows starring grotesque Leslie Jones escapees from Dr. Moreau’s island, the truth is, the pretty girls are at OnlyFans. That’s where the money is. So leave Netflix to Umbunga Wonga; nobody’s going there to jack off anyway.

The dynamic’s more complex than just “wokeness.” Yes, leftists have engineered a new reality in which every streaming show and movie must star Yaphet Kotto-lookin’ ugly mamas. But, that shift was facilitated by the fact that a large portion of the white audience has moved on to videogames, Twitch, and OnlyFans.

For actors in general (not just cute white chicks but all actors), the new business model doesn’t need them. GTA is all AI characters, AI voices. This industry has no need for flesh-and-blood performers.

So joining these threads, we see a common theme: Once a new extreme is made available, a sizable portion of the audience inevitably drifts to it. The new thrills make the old thrills seem dull.

“Ooh, strippers!” becomes “WOW, porn!” becomes “Holy shit, I can have sex with the woman myself!”

“Ooh, Steve McQueen in a car chase!” becomes “Hot damn, now I can be the driver in the chase!”

“Ooh, kung fu bikini girls fighting monsters!” becomes “Hey, now I can interact with hot naked girls doing personal vids for me on OnlyFans!”

Strippers find they make more money as porn stars, then they find they make more money as escorts. Producers, who made money from car-chase films, find they make more money via videogames. Stunning white girls, who used to make money in B films, find they make more money at OnlyFans.

So how does this apply to politics? (Yeah, I’m moving on to that third ball before the piece goes flaccid.) It’s a theme I’ve covered many times—the right’s drift toward the extreme, how the popularity among Zoomers of toxins like Nick Fuentes represents a desire to go as hardcore as possible. Rush Limbaugh is Bikini Babe Island: fully satisfying in 1990, but Gen-Z needs something more dangerous and visceral.

Fuck the Jews! Fuck the Holocaust!

Like porn, hardcore politics is now available 24/7 online. Like incels, the failure to score with a real woman (i.e., the right’s failure to score victories, from Trump 2020 to Georgia 2021/2022 to the midterm red wave that never came) increases the desire to self-pleasure to the “hard stuff” online. And what was J6 if not a bunch of LARPers wanting to be “in the game” like GTA (except it wasn’t a game, as hundreds of surprised, imprisoned morons now realize).

But politics ain’t movies. Or porn. The “eventually the most extreme option becomes the most embraced and profitable” dynamic is deadly in politics, because, whereas you whacking off or playing videogames is your business alone, and even if your choices influence an industry, it’s still just entertainment, American politics comes down to winning votes, and embracing the hardcore option can be as deadly as embracing the milquetoast option (i.e., “staple green cards to diplomas” is toxic. “Whites rule and Jews drool and if you believe in the Holocaust yer a fool” is also toxic).

Porn, Hollywood, bikini babes, videogames; this is all ephemeral. Let it take its natural course, the progression to the biggest rush. But in politics, there has to be an adult in the room saying, “This is going too far, it’ll alienate voters,” while also saying, “But this is too milquetoast, it won’t engage voters.”

Few such rightist “adults in the room” exist. So we’re boned.

In the bad way.

With my porn girl, I knew there’d be no happy ending for her. Daddy issues, drug use, etc. I also know there’ll be no happy ending for the actors who are on strike. AI, Twitch, OnlyFans have changed the game; actors (other than the chosen few who can carry a Marvel film) aren’t as needed anymore. And there’ll be no happy ending for the streaming networks. Yes, they lose money by running a successive string of “noble black attorney Ungamabunga fights racists” shows, but frankly, they’d also lose money running “blonde bikini babes vs. dinosaurs” films, because that market’s dead.

I’m hoping for a happy ending for my country, that rightists can find a middle ground between the hardcore porn (“Moloch ate a baby and Jews drank its blood”) and the 1988 USA Network “safe” content (“lower corporate taxes! Here’s a flag pin”).

Hope is great. But most of us know someone who died hoping.

“I’m gonna beat this cancer!”

Flatline.

The drift to hardcore is difficult to fight. Social media is like Pornhub, but for politics. So be aware if you feel yourself being pulled to the ideological extreme. And resist.

I lived with a porn star 27 years my junior, and I always kept it platonic.

Discipline! I’m a Zen master.

Okay, you got me. I’m just an old drunk who long ago stopped caring. But if you still care, resist the hardcore drift, the lure of the Fuentes loons and the QAnons and the Trumpian fantasists.

Don’t get so lost in interactivity in virtual worlds that you lose sight of the real world. America’s future isn’t a videogame; “winning” a Twitter war against Moloch is like winning at GTA: meaningless.

Masturbatory.

Like all good porn.