Expos and Conventions where porn stars meet fans are liminal spaces where awkward interactions are the norm. It gets worse when Youtube content creators show up to "interview" the talent. Our guest is Spencer of the Those Good Old-Fashioned Values Podcast.
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Those Good Old-Fashioned Values Podcast: https://linktr.ee/tgofv
Liv Agar: https://linktr.ee/livagar
Theme by Nick Sena, additional music by ITEM. Editing by Corey Clotz.
And this is the Perverts Podcast, where we venture into horny online subcultures and take you along for the ride.
It was late at night and I was driving back from Althedena through intermittent rain when I received Liv's message.
What's wrong with you these days?
You always look like you're about to cry.
It's exhausting.
This series is supposed to be funny and loose.
I'm going skiing Wednesday with my girlfriend.
We'll record the porn convention episode Tuesday with my friend Spencer.
Pull yourself together before then.
I was about to scroll down to read the rest of the message when a Tesla emerged unexpectedly through my lane in a last-minute attempt to catch an exit.
I hit the brakes and barely missed its fender.
The license plate read, LIVIN' FOR YOU.
My hands were shaking as I pulled off into a Sinclair station.
The green plastic brontosaurus had been decapitated and smeared in feces by unknown malevolent forces.
I'll do the research.
A greyed bottle popped under the right front tire as I parked.
My vision blurry, I asked the attendant for a pack of Marlboro 27s, and he handed me some
matches, sensing he was dealing with an unstable individual.
It took three attempts before the card went through.
Leaning against the side of the building, I lit a cigarette and pulled the smoke in.
Vivaldi's Four Seasons was blaring out of a weatherproof PA speaker.
The faint smell of piss and bleach.
I finished reading the message.
"I'll do the research.
Just write one of your pretentious introductions and show up on time.
Oh, and happy birthday, pussy.
It had been a difficult year in many ways.
Life had shifted under my feet.
I was sober, yes, but it felt like various of my internal organs were defrosting in slow motion.
The dating apps hadn't helped.
Neither had the late nights, long walks, and daily baths.
I looked down and noticed ash stains on my jogging pants.
Liv was right.
I needed to pull myself together.
A black sprinter van pulled into the parking lot.
The back doors swung open and two young women in bondage gear jumped out.
One of them finished a tall can of Monster Energy and flung it at an overflowing trash can.
The other sized me up.
You look like you'd pay me 50 bucks to spit in your mouth and kick you in the balls.
I stared at my shoes and said nothing.
They strolled into the gas station and began pacing the drink fridges.
The rain started up again.
Beneath the parking lot lights, a small rainbow was forming.
The Vivaldi ended, giving way to an orchestral cover of Jingle Bells.
I stepped out from the awning and felt the raindrops on my upturned face.
Blue clouds shifted slowly around a dissolving crescent moon.
Back in the car, I pulled out my phone and responded to Liv.
Skiing?
That sounds fun.
You're doing great work.
This is gonna be a really special episode.
Pulling back out onto the highway, I felt a nebulous joy make its way from my stomach to my chest.
I could hear the faint squeaking of the windshield wiper as I gunned the motor.
2023 was almost over.
I had turned 40 and survived.
There was little to fear.
I was very much alive, and surrounded by love.
Porn conventions are exactly what you'd expect them to be.
A place for very corny individuals to pay to meet the porn stars they drink off to.
And on this episode, we're going to do a deep dive into the subculture that these surprisingly large events produce.
And let me tell you folks, it's not good.
Joining us this week at the Perverts Expo booth is Spencer from the Get Cynical podcast.
Welcome.
Hello, thank you for having me on.
This is my area of expertise.
You are a porn convention guy, of course, that's why.
Yeah, no.
Yeah, I've been to every single one.
In fact, uh, yeah, Liv, like, just kind of plucked me out of one.
It was like, hey, do you want to talk about how much of a freak you are?
I was like, yeah, sure, why not?
It's cool that before she put you on to the porn convention research for this episode, your podcast was called Be Happy, and now it's called Get Cynical.
Ugh, yeah.
But welcome, Spencer.
Glad to have you here, and we are now making our way through the double doors.
Yesterday was the Women's Convention, the day before was the 420 Expo, and today is the Combo AVN Exotica.
Welcome to the Expo.
I will start with a read-off from a Vice article in 2019 about their trip to the Avian Adult Entertainment Expo.
This is by Jamie Lee Tate.
This is, like, I think the biggest American porn convention, but there's, like, quite a few of them, and there's, like, a lot of them outside of America as well.
A couple really big East Asian ones.
I'm sure.
Why?
Oh, I don't know.
The parties are better.
What about Asia?
What about that?
Just, you know, China's economy, it's growing.
There's a lot of commerce.
Incredible things are happening there.
Honestly, it's mainly Hong Kong, Taiwan, because I don't think... I think President Xi rightfully, like, is stamping down on the foreign conventions.
Send in the tanks!
Send in the tanks!
Hong Kong, where you can go to be blinded by a UV light at the Apes Fest or whatever, and also attend a porn convention.
The biggest event in the porn mega-fan calendar is the Avian Adult Entertainment Expo, a giant adult industry trade show that takes place every year in Las Vegas.
According to the event's organizers, it attracts over 30,000 people, around half of whom are fans.
What about the other half?
What are the other half doing there?
Are they haters?
They're just scoping it out.
They're seeing how they feel.
Much like Comic-Con, fans can pay to get an autograph or photo from their favorite performers at booths on the show floor.
Unlike Comic-Con, some will also allow you to motorboat them for an additional charge.
Is motorboating still a thing?
I feel like that was never really a thing.
Like, is it a thing that, like, 12-year-olds think is epic?
I guess so.
Yeah.
It's, it's like the, it's to titty fucking what dry humping is to regular sex.
I do feel like a lot of these guys are that 12-year-old if they just were in, like, a state of arrested development.
Yeah.
I think if there's anyone in the world who is super into motorboating, it is porn convention guys.
So, you know, probably smart marketing there.
It's real for them.
By my unscientific count, around 80% of the people in attendance were middle-aged men who looked like a computer model based on the average of every single one of my friend's dads.
I'm also now imagining a guy who's really into, like, consent, and he's like, um, may I motorboat you?
Yeah, okay, I won't do it because that yes was not enthusiastic enough, so, you know, I'll just get my autograph and bid you farewell.
10% were younger guys, all of whom had an extreme John Ralphio energy.
The remaining 10% fell on the spectrum somewhere between those two.
I also saw three women that I think might have been there as fans.
Some of the greatest creatures you will ever see on the internet.
Like, I don't want to derail this whole episode, but my favorite subculture on the internet, bar none, is the subreddit ChickFlicks.
And it's a subreddit for women to share, like, porn for women, basically.
And they have this one power user named JuliaIsWet, and she compiles dick-sucking compilations.
I think she made, like, 50 of them or something.
They are some of, like, the scariest and most fascinating creatures the internet has ever birthed.
I love them all to death.
We neither want them to die, nor do we think they are creatures.
All of the people I spoke to... Wait, I have to sneeze.
Never mind.
Definitely keeping that in.
It's one of those situations.
Yeah.
You're allergic to, um, creepy guys.
Exactly.
I'm allergic to women.
We were discussing women having a libido and you're like, oh god, I'm gonna sneeze.
All of the people I spoke to at AVN made references to specific camgirls and porn production companies as if these were the most natural and widely known topics of conversation in the world.
It's fairly cheap.
A lot of the models are nice.
You get to know them.
Said Nick Kunst.
Come on, come on man.
Dean's younger brother.
It's like the grandson of Marlon Brando's character in Apocalypse Now.
Who told me he was mostly known as KingNut345.
When KingNut is taken.
His username on MyFreeCams.com.
It's more of a community than it is a random website.
Yeah.
Community.
That is one of the most unpleasant uses of that word.
And I've compiled a couple images that Jamie took from that article, and I think they're really, really cool.
We've got a droopy-eyed rosacea guy with the kind of rectangular glasses.
He's got his hair kind of done up.
in a little spike and we've got just the biggest print you can possibly have.
Like you can't print wider or larger on a t-shirt and it's in kind of destroyed font, all caps.
Three things I love. Cum sluts, blowjobs, big boobs.
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