Porn Industry Uses College Campus Promotions

From the folks at Spero Forum

College students across the U.S. have been watching porn. More specifically, they have been watching hard-core porn in campus lecture halls, assembly rooms and theaters…with universities’ approval.

Free on-campus screenings of the pornographic film Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge, the most expensive hard-core porn film ever made, have been taking place at various colleges and universities across the nation. The distributor of the film, Digital Playground, recently began offering screenings to student unions, and universities have been showing the movie for “entertainment and educational purposes.”

At first I didn't believe this story and didn't think it made sense--even from a business standpoint. In an age where the porn industry more than any other industry has been able to use the internet to market their product anonymously and make tons of money doing it--why would they do this more traditional marketing approach?

But then Michael Leahy cleared things up in the same Spero News Article:

Michael’s new book also focuses on the minds of college students although in a different way. Porn University revolves around the results of an online sex survey taken by more than 26,000 college and university students over the past three years. Leahy analyzes the findings and offers eye-opening insights into the sexual behaviors, beliefs and attitudes of today’s college student.

"The findings discussed in my book show pretty clearly why the porn industry loves catering to a younger college audience, especially since most university administrations don't have the backbone to resist popular pro-porn sentiment that exists on most university campuses in the U.S.,” Leahy says. “This is yet another reason why we need to start thinking seriously about putting a new kind of 'warning label' on the industry and their products. The negative impact viewing porn can have on how we view ourselves and act toward others in relationships is undeniable."

Leahy's book is #23 on the Amazon rankings. Looks interesting. Still, since porn is so widely available on the net--and since it widens the arousal template so much because of that medium, I wonder if their goal here is to make porn more um, palatable to a mainstream audience. Is the attempt here to start to gain a more widespread acceptance of pornography as a genre in mainstream culture?

Stranger things have happened.