This week one of the top 10 porn sites in the world launched a reality TV show called “The Sex Factor.” The series will run over 10 episodes, throughout which eight male and eight female ‘upcoming’ porn stars will battle it out for a $1M prize. But it doesn’t stop there. As well as the huge cash bonus, the winner will also get a 3 year contract in porn. Yippee!! Not!!!

Like most other reality TV shows out there, the contestants will try to not get eliminated before the final round. Week by week, the competitors will perform increasingly explicit acts, to stay in the game. As each episode progresses, their every move will be closely watched by experienced mentors, four well known porn stars who’ve racked up years of performances in front of the camera.

According to the show’s executive producer, the Sex Factor isn’t your typical porn piece. “The show is premium reality entertainment watched together by couples, college kids, and good friends in a familiar social setting” he says. “We’re already accepting applications for Season Two and many of our contestants are already thriving in the industry.” Now we haven’t watched the show, but we can pretty much guarantee what it’s like. Lots of sex and not much story. As for the “familiar social setting” that it’s meant to be watched in, is that while alone in a bedroom, where most porn viewing occurs? Hardly premium entertainment.

If you look around it’s not just us pointing this out, one reporter, who must’ve watched the first episode, said that the contestants are going to town on each other after they’ve barley been introduced. It’s all on for young and and old very quickly. On the show’s website, which we strongly suggest you don’t visit, a huge selling piece of the format is that “None of the contestants have ever been filmed before.” But of course that isn’t so true. One of the upcoming “stars” has her own website, another has been in a porn video, one posts regularly on a community forum and another appears on another popular porn site, that we won’t name. Hmmm. It doesn’t take long for the novelty factor to start looking a little bit flakey “truth” wise.

To us at Guilty Pleasure, this show is all about glorifying the porn industry and seems like just another way to try and embed it as normal, fun and harmless to watch. As we state on our information pages for men and women, porn is far from that. Increasingly it’s leaving people addicted and lonely, destroying their relationships, changing their brains and leaving them empty and depressed.  After the damage has been done, the cleanup is often left to counselors and psychologists or online communities like NoFap that we talked about in our blog ‘NoFap a new grip on life.’ Thankfully, at least, lots of people doing recovery are seeing huge differences in their lives, having quit porn.

All of this carnage, of course is on top of the huge damage that porn often does to the performers through violence, drugs, abuse and STDs. No one talks about how degrading and horrible it can be as a performer or the extreme loneliness and depression that some of the stars experience. Signing up for 3 years of that, sounds more like a prison sentence, rather than a highly rewarding prize. But for those on the show it’s all roses and just a bit of fun. As one of the shows judges, an experienced male porn star, says “I joined the Sex Factor because I wanted to give something back to the industry and find the next star.”

Don’t do it we say. Don’t watch it. Don’t participate. Given what the science is telling us about the harmful effects of porn, it just isn’t worth it.

 

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