I touched on this very briefly in my last post, but one of the main reasons I’m leaning on “travel” and “fitness” themes linked to a blog is…the almighty algorithm!
As you may or may not know, every social media site (even Twitter that technically allows adult content) has pretty much gone out of their way to throttle the reach of the content of sex workers and those adjacent to us (yes, including pole and burlesque performers who go to great lengths to distance their supposedly elevated art forms from their original roots). This includes shadowbanning accounts directing people to links in bios, directly linking to content pages/escorting sites or even link tree pages in bios, and pulling both posts and entire accounts for either nudity (which also includes missclassified pasties/close ups of clothed body parts/hand bras/implied nudity) OR any trapping of the adult industry including but not limited to sex toys/fetish gear and stripper shoes/poles. I’m not even going to get into the list of flagged words and emojis that now includes any words that have been creatively coded enough the algorithm deems them illegible and still goes on to reduce their feed visibility.
The rules are arbitrary, change quickly, and have been proven to be disproportionately used against queer/Trans bodies, fat bodies, the bodies of POC, and advocates/organizers. (Love getting into data itself? Check out Hacking and Hustling for the numbers I don’t have patience to get into on a blog mostly intended as an inoffensive landing page to my robot overlords that I can shill smut from).
We often hear people who have successful brands or businesses started from social media driven sales or crowdfunding campaigns act like the rules of the internet treat everyone the same but we know this isn’t true. Many of us don’t have linear social media presences due to flagging and surveillance and are banned from monetizing our contact even for posts that don’t actually break most sites TOS (in some cases even just for the accounts we interact with and re-post).
At the same time, we watch similarly moving and garbed pilates/yoga influencers consistently show up in our ads and easily reach hundreds of thousands of followers. Fashion and travel blogs with almost identical imagery and branding to high end escorts just without the direct sales pitch similarly skyrocket in visibility (and if course, high end escorts and very famous porn performers also usually benefit from some combination of cis/thin/whiteness, tools like verified accounts, and a vagueness about specific services vs “experiences” that also allow them to grow beyond the reach of less exalted types of bodies/workers).
As the rules of social media tighten up, so does our entire industry’s reliance on it as a free advertising tool as ad prices/house fees rise and everyone’s living expenses shoot up leaving more of us fighting for more scarce resources while potential clients shop around for the cheapest deals and the most action they can get for free. The questions many of us who have been around for awhile are asking is what and how much is it worth to give away for free while being constantly monitored and is the potential payoff actually that worth it?
