To weather the pandemic, tips from a porn playbook

America’s adult entertainment industry got back on its feet fairly swiftly, even as other sectors floundered amid Covid-19. How did they do it? They revived protocols put in place the last time they were in such a position, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1990s.

As India steps into the red zone again — with an average of nearly 100,000 new Covid-19 cases a day — the second wave has struck Bollywood hard. Aamir Khan, Alia Bhatt, Akshay Kumar, Ranbir Kapoor, Manoj Bajpayee are among those that have tested positive. Strict rules are being enforced at film shoots. It feels like early 2020 all over again.

(Shutterstock)

Last year’s lockdown shook businesses around the world. Most suffered severe losses, some shut down operations. But not the US porn industry. That sector surpassed Hollywood, Bollywood, and other entertainment industries in preparedness during the pandemic.

The way America’s porn industry functioned could be a lesson for other sectors — including Indian cinema, dating apps, hospitality and other services sectors. And the reason that industry was able to handle things differently was past experience with an infectious disease, and the learnings from it.

In the mid-1990s, hit hard by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the US porn industry developed a testing system. Decades later, it was able to adapt that system for the coronavirus.

In the US, Colin Rowntree, founder and CEO of Wasteland.com, is among those who have been around long enough to remember the HIV/AIDS era. Wasteland.com, launched in 1994, is one of the world’s oldest alternative sexuality and BDSM sites.

During the lockdown, Rowntree says, large production houses in the American porn industry followed the guidelines of the County Department of Public Health in Los Angeles , the epicentre of American film production, including porn , and The Free Speech Coalition, the US trade body for the adult entertainment industry.

“We drew up safe shooting guidelines: how much pre-shoot testing, how to quarantine during the shoot, how to minimise cast and crew and their interactions,” Rowntree says.

They also had testing and tracing in place: a system called Performer Availability Screening Service or PASS, developed during the HIV epidemic. PASS tests every performer every 14 days for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

The coronavirus is very different from STIs. It is, for instance, far more infective. But the basic system was in place. Crucially, because the porn industry had this previous experience with an infectious disease, it was able to pick up production again sooner, and could therefore respond to what it knew was coming — a boom in viewership, as demand for good screen content of all kinds skyrocketed in the lockdown and then amid the restrictions of the pandemic.

The dating apps, on the other hand, struggled to adapt. Even though they knew that the lonely were getting lonelier and the unhappily single, more eager to mingle. Tinder made its Passport feature free for all users, allowing them to change their location and thereby view matches anywhere in the world. But this was just a bid to leverage an existing frill, and it wasn’t a frill particularly suited to the altered market conditions. In fact, particularly in the midst of a pandemic, it left those who tried it feeling unsatisfied and wondering how they would ever meet the person they’d matched with.

Perhaps, Rowntree says, it might have made sense to leverage video chat features better instead. “You’re in a lockdown. You won’t be hooking up at the bar or going out to the beach like you used to,” he says. “Dating apps need to innovate, add sex cams to their apps, go beyond swipe-and-match.”

In his own industry, he adds, he realised that curation was becoming more crucial. People didn’t want to be browsing through porn they’d already watched. And, it turned out, they were more willing than before to pay for better content. Spending on porn went up in the lockdown, Rowntree says.

Websites responded with more current content, including videos about seeking intimacy in a lockdown or having sex with a stranger in a lockdown.

As a second wave hits India, sending cities back into partial lockdowns, entertainment industries here could perhaps learn from how the US porn industry learnt from its past. And prepare not just for lockdowns ahead, but for a possible next pandemic.

(Shakun Sethi is founder and CEO of Tickle.Life, a community-based sexual discovery platform)