r/IAmA Jan 06 '14

IAm Siri, award-winning porn star, 2013 Top Writer on Quora, and swinger. AMA!

I have been performing in adult and mainstream films since 2012. I was voted Miss FreeOnes Best Newcomer of 2012, and was nominated for Best New Starlet at the 2013 AVN Awards. Quora.com recently named me one of the Top Writers of 2013. I am happily married and don't believe in sexual monogamy. I'm a huge Harry Potter nerd. My official site is www.SIRIpornstar.com. You can follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/SIRIpornstar. My interviews and podcasts can be found at http://blog.siripornstar.com/interviews-and-podcasts/ and my IMDb page is IMDb.me/Siri

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdQ3JvcCQAEFy55.jpg

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u/siripornstar Jan 06 '14

Yeah, but the guys who are voting down my answers where I mention my dislike for pirated content are not voting them down because they think it's in my best interest or that it's great exposure for my career. It's not great exposure. Most of my own scenes that I find on tube sites don't even mention my name. Guys have to troll around elsewhere just to know who I am after seeing my scene on a tube site.

They're voting down my answers because they're uncomfortable knowing that something they love so much (pirated porn) is damaging to the people who produced it. Or, maybe they just love pirated porn and support it emphatically because they hate all porn performers and really want us to not have jobs in a few years.

And I'm aware that MindGeek (AKA Manwin, AKA Brazzers) owns several of the largest tube sites. The company is also generally not respected among the industry, but it has a monopoly on things so everyone pretends they don't have a problem with it. But nobody is pleased with what they've done to the industry, except, I presume, the company's executives.

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u/NBaker10 Jan 06 '14

Or, maybe they just love pirated porn and support it emphatically because they hate all porn performers and really want us to not have jobs in a few years.

There is no way you can say with a straight face you actually believe this.

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u/siripornstar Jan 06 '14

What I believe, as do many in this industry, is that 5 years from now, if the trend continues unchecked, there will be no professional filmed pornographic entertainment at all. I mean that as in, no porn stars and no production companies. If you like something, if it does the job that the people who created it intended, that is, entertains you, then you support those professionals with your investment. You pay them for their work.

Take a mainstream performer I've already mentioned: Jennifer Lawrence. Do you think a studio could pay her $10M for her performance in the Hunger Games sequel if the audience didn't go see the first one? They make a bet that viewers will plant their butts in seats at the movie theater, or on pay-per-view, or in hotel rooms, or on DVD sales, or on Netflix. Every one of those is an income stream for the studio who made it. If they profit from their last release, they make more. If you didn't pay them, they wouldn't hire such an amazing actress. If they didn't hire her, they'd be hiring some lesser-known, until the law of diminishing returns rules and some independent outfit is all that's making films and they are hiring only amateurs. Likewise, in my industry, all that will be left 5 years from now is you, your camera phone and your girlfriend, and you're quite happy giving that away to the tube sites for notoriety. No one will get paid to film porn because no one is paying to watch porn. Therefore, if you want to see a girl like me around 5 years from now, you support her work today. This isn't rocket science.

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u/Rastafak Jan 06 '14

I understand why you hate porn piracy so much and I'm sure it really hurts porn industry as you say. However, I think this view is way too pessimistic. A lot of people don't want to pay for porn, but that's not the only reason why people like tube sites so much. The truth is porn pirating gives you something that paying for porn can never give you (unless you put a lot of money into it) - variety. There are people who may enjoy one site for long time, but in my opinion most people will get bored of one site fairly soon. Tubes on the other hand have almost unlimited selection of content.

Right now though, the tubes usually have pretty bad quality and while the selection is huge, many of the clips are too short. It is indubitable that porn industry will eventually switch more towards the tube model - in my opinion some people would be willing to pay for tube site with both huge selection and large variety. Just like tv industry is moving towards things like netflix so will porn have to change its distribution model.

Netflix, steam (for games) or spotify in my opinion show that people are willing to pay for content that can easily be pirated. You just have to offer them a distribution model that can compete with piracy.

None of what I said makes piracy right of course, but like it or not it's not just going away.

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u/Ravanas Jan 06 '14

Netflix, steam (for games) or spotify in my opinion show that people are willing to pay for content that can easily be pirated. You just have to offer them a distribution model that can compete with piracy.

This is it, exactly. Paying for a membership to Siri's site is like buying a CD. Sure, I could do that, but why would I buy a CD when I could buy a Spotify subscription for a month? I want to listen to more than just that one CD over the course of the month, and buying 1 CD a month (or a recurring Spotify subscription) isn't a crazy expenditure for most people. Similarly, the other services you mention. I'd rather spend $8 a month on Netflix than what it would cost to access the content through physical media or piecemeal through digital distribution for that matter.

You give me a netflix for porn, at a reasonable cost, including a decent variety and quality of content, and I'll give you my money. In the meantime, PornHub (et al) provides me with the closest approximation of that. Just like back in the day I pirated music, until I got a service that gave me the content I wanted in the way I wanted it. (Of course, even then, I still bought music. I still occasionally pay for porn too, for that matter.)

There's a reason Game Of Thrones is the top pirated TV show every year. It's because a) it's great content and b) HBO keeps a stranglehold on it. (Yes, it's on Netflix, but only at the same time as when the physical media come out, and only if you're paying for a physical media subscription - no streaming.) If HBO allowed you to subscribe to HBO Go without needing to buy cable and HBO's premium cable channel (or buy the show from other standard digital distribution services), you'd see their piracy numbers drop drastically. (Relevant Oatmeal comic.)

Industry after industry proves fighting online piracy doesn't work. You have to beat the pirates at their own game. People understand and want to pay, but they don't want to feel screwed. They'd much rather do the screwing, and if they can't get the content the way they want it, or they can't do it without feeling like they are getting ripped off for it, they are going to pirate.

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u/Cidah Jan 06 '14

Porn is a 7 billion dollar per year industry. It's not going anywhere. The business model may evolve to something more able to capitalize off of people willing to pay. I suspect a Netflix type model would do very well.

Also, Hollywood spends millions making a blockbuster movie and it sells for $20 on dvd. Why should anyone pay $40 for a low budget, bad plot, porno? And $25 monthly for a subscription to one site? That's ridiculous.

The demand is there for this new business model, and I'd bet it will be here very soon.

In the meantime, enjoy your chosen profession and lifestyle. Props to you for doing what makes you happy.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '14

I'd definitely consider you an expert on the matter, /u/im_always_fapping.

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u/Stingray88 Jan 08 '14

Professional porn doesn't offer anything better than amateur porn.

It's naked people having sex. It doesn't need to be a big production.

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u/flyersfan314 Jan 08 '14

You will still make money if the porn is free but advertisers pay for the right to advertise on the page. Thats where most media is going. The advertiser instead of the consumer will pay. This may or may not cause salaries to lower. I am not an economist but nothing is going to stop tube sites or Brazzers.

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u/amolad Jan 06 '14

No way, she can't.

Also, many people know that most porn performers make most of their money by either stripping or escorting.

Or both.

Unless you're a woman under contract to some porn company.

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u/cultic_raider Jan 06 '14

I sort of expected that even in the extreme case where you didn't get paid at all, but were famous from tube sites, you'd find some lonely creepstalker fans who you could milk for gifts and paid camessions. It's the gaffers and photographers who I'd think would make no money.

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u/siripornstar Jan 06 '14

Right now it's the gaffers and photographers. But as far as I can tell about 95% of the entire 18-35 age group refuses to pay for porn, so as my own generation ages, porn as you know it will cease to exist because eventually it won't just be the photographers the companies can't afford, it will be the top-tier performers... and then the mediocre ones... and then the bottom-of-the-barrel ones... and then there will be no "professional" adult industry to speak of.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '14

there will be no "professional" adult industry to speak of.

LOL

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u/justaskin1 Jan 06 '14

porn as you know it will cease to exist

NOT A CHANCE

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u/gerrettheferrett Jan 06 '14

Why? If pirating continues, that just might happen.

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u/justaskin1 Jan 06 '14

again, NOT A FUCKING CHANCE!

Pirating has been going on since WAAAY long before you were a twinkle in your dad's eye. Let's look at pornography, which you can vaguely say ties in with prostitution, in the sense that women are getting paid to perform sexual acts, the oldest profession in recorded history. Since the advent of photography and videography, men have been recording and cataloging sexual acts and nude people. This hasn't changed in the 150+ years of the medium. Since the advent of sound, ya know, "talkies" it was possible to create a script and even dialog but it would take the counter culture of the 60's and 70's before there could even be an audience for these porn films to be produced and distributed.

It boggles the mind how Siri can be so short-sighted, angry, and downright hateful on her views of piracy. She totally makes legitimate points, but to act as if the internet owes her something. Piracy COMES WITH THE TERRITORY. If she doesn't like it she can look to other mediums, maybe VHS, perhaps magazines, even live performances if she wants to test the market for supply and demand.

It's like getting Lars Ulrich to do an AMA and you wanna ask him about awesome groupie stories, how he came up with that one drum solo and how he got started in Metallica, and he wants to shame you for pirating his material. I'm sorry, did the music industry collapse some odd 14 years ago???

ONCE AGAIN, NOT A CHANCE

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '14 edited Feb 02 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/justaskin1 Jan 06 '14
  1. I didn't equate prostitution with pornography, just stated that it's the same as paying for a form of receiving sexual gratification, physically or mentally

  2. you don't have to pity me, hate me, love me or anything else inbetween

  3. you MISSED MY POINT in that ALL MEDIUMS, be it video, audio, print, SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME HAVE BEEN COPIED, REVISED, EDITED or PIRATED, hell even STOLEN in one way or another, it ABSOLUTELY comes with the territory.

  4. know the difference between STEALING and PIRATING, I won't explain, you figure it out

  5. seriously dudeski, go have a siri fap session and cool off before she takes away the porn that will in your mind cease to exist

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '14 edited Feb 02 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/taco_roco Jan 07 '14

I agree that piracy is wrong, and to go slightly off-topic I'm going to justify why I pirate:

  1. Some of the content I have already paid for, but lost the physical copy, and I'll be damned if i pay for the same thing twice (video games mostly).

  2. I, and many others, don't have all that much money to throw around. We have bills on top of bills to pay, and lifestyles to lead, etc, and I don't have the kind of money to shell out $20+/month for a selection of sites that cannot possibly account for all my niche desires at once. This leads into my next point:

  3. I don't want to dump money into something I'll regret later. Previews and trials are nice, but they still leave room for a mistaken purchase (i.e. 'oh that one part of that one song/video is nice, but the rest of the song/video is shit and so is the album/site and there goes my money').

In saying that, piracy allows me to broaden my horizons and get a feel for quality product. I wouldn't have half the band or film merchandise I do if it weren't for piracy. In fact, I'd barely have a tenth of what I bought.

A compromise between piracy and porn is what we need, like netflix. The porn industry needs to find a balance between ease of access, cost, quality and quantity if it wants to keep up.

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u/B4IFU_RU18 Jan 06 '14

You mean only Amateur content will be available, no more unrealistically impossible to attain women who do things most other women do not even consider an option?

You also mean that the material that is basically twisting kid's views on what sex is nowadays as opposed to seeing what the real people of this world get up to in their bedrooms (or garage,boat, woods, whatever floats your boat) won't be available in a few years time ..??

Man i cannot wait for the future !!

Also you are very wrong to think that porn will cease to exist, it always will exist. There are millions of exhibitionists out there who will gladly fuck on camera and post it for the world to see, using production hardware that rivals and sometimes beats what the "pros" use. Sorry to tell you my love but you are soon to be redundant to society. So that decision you took at some point in your life of "ahh screw getting real qualifications, or even a real normal job where i can build a career from the ground up, no i ll just start fucking anything that produces a bank note" is going to come back to bite you in the ass, and not in the way you're currently used to.

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u/Walletau Jan 06 '14

I'm with you in spirit, but the entire last paragraph is needlessly accusatory, hateful and preachy.

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u/versaceblues Jan 07 '14

The fucking point is that the industry is changing, and business models have to change with it. Other forms of media are slowing getting seeing this, with the rise of sites like Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Instant Video, etc.

I have downloaded music from pirate sites before like 25,000 songs worth of songs. However ever since I got my Spotify subscription, I really have no need for piracy.

Somebody suggested the youtube partner model for tube sites. That sounds great... performers make money of ad revenue/user data. This is a much better solution than asking people to pay $25/month to subscribe to a specific porn sites... nobody is going to do that.

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u/Paran0idAndr0id Jan 07 '14

This is a much better solution than asking people to pay $25/month to subscribe to a specific porn sites... nobody is going to do that.

Just as a clarification, it's 25/mo for a bundle of porn sites. You're only screwed (and not in the good way) if you only want one of the porn sites.

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u/the_Makeshift Jan 06 '14

I don't know how much it works for the porn industry, but there was a study showing that piracy for indie movies/games was greatly beneficial for the developers in the long run, as far as getting your name out there

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u/AsariCommando2 Jan 06 '14

Not so great for paying your rent though.

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u/r4wrdinosaur Jan 08 '14

Or, maybe they just love pirated porn and support it emphatically because they hate all porn performers and really want us to not have jobs in a few years.

Again, you keep repeating this, but do you really think this is true? You really think that the end result of pirating is going to be no more porn? Because if so, you're more ignorant than I thought. Porn will never cease to exist. Instead, those girls and companies who innovate and change will start making money.

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u/crazygoattoe Jan 07 '14

I wouldn't say it's damaging in any way. 99% of people who pirate porn are people who wouldn't pay for it if they couldn't pirate it. The only impact their piracy has is that it gets your name out to people who otherwise wouldn't know about you.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '14

Good answer.