Today’s top post on Reddit’s live question and answer section is all about porn. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the site.
“[I am a] Former Lead Developer of Pornhub,” reads the post. “[Ask me almost anything].”
The poster is Michel Bartz, who confirmed his identity on his Twitter account. His former employer, PornHub, a video streaming site, is one of the top 50 Web sites in the US, according to Web-ranking company Compete.com. That’s more than the combined traffic of sites like Etsy and Foursquare.
Of course, PornHub rarely gets the kind of media attention those companies receive.
But Reddit is different. The social news site’s pseudonymous nature makes it a popular place for honest discussions about the porn industry. And the site’s live question and answer section, r/IAmA, is often the place where those discussions are played out — in front of an audience of about a half million subscribers.
Redditors have previously picked the brains of porn editors, porn entrepreneurs, organizers of porn conventions, family members of porn stars, and, well, you get the idea.
The conversations are frank and honest. And they often reveal one very simple truth about the careers in the industry: The work gets boring, it sure can can suck, and watching porn becomes about as exciting as staring at a spreadsheet.
“After working porn for so long, do you ever become desensitised to it?” asked redditor absolutepunt in the thread.
“Yes,” Bartz replied.
“Saddest AMA ever,” absolutepunt wrote.
Meanwhile, it looks like even porn’s top brass have noticed Reddit’s curiosity about the industry. PornHub’s CTO and Bartz’s former boss, Perry Stathopoulos, jumped into the thread with a job offer:
“If anyone is interesting in working here at Manwin Canada, let me know I’m the CTO and always looking for good developers.”
Photo by mattk1979
