I Got Sick of Porn, so I Started Paying for It
By: Emma Austin
Tags: Culture, Pornography, Sex, Streaming, Life

“Do I even like porn anymore?”

That’s the question I asked myself when I had made it to the 12th page of Pornhub’s recommendations. I hadn’t clicked on a single video.

I hovered my pointer over a few thumbnails to get a preview of the video, but I moved on each time.

It’s been happening almost every single time I try to find a decent video to watch.

It doesn’t matter what category I click, what search terms I use, or even if I click on “Recommended For You,” it takes forever to find something appealing, if I find anything at all.

When I take that long to find some porn to watch, I come dangerously close to losing my arousal and maybe ruining date night.

I was just about ready to give up on porn and start using my imagination like some kind of chump. Thankfully, I found a simple solution. I started paying for the kind of porn I wanted.

I’ve Been Mooching Porn My Whole Life

My first exposure to porn didn’t cost me a dime.

My parents had a satellite dish that allowed me to watch adult content, beamed directly into our living room.

My parents didn’t pay for it, either. My father had slipped the cable guy 50 dollars under the table to get him to unlock the premium channels.

When I moved out and started paying for shit with my own money, I still didn’t pony up for porn.

My future husband had a small collection of adult DVDs, but I grew tired of those pretty quickly. Instead of ordering my own, I downloaded porn off torrent sites — first on one called The Empornium and later on The Pirate Bay.

Except for a few adult magazines I bought with Mr. Austin at the local sex shop, I just amassed a stack of burnt DVD-Rs that didn’t cost me anything other than what I paid for the blank discs.

Years later, tube sites legitimized free porn and made it the default way of consuming it. Instead of downloading pirated content, I could just visit Pornhub and get my fix like everyone else.

I was paying for a few streaming services, a stock photo service, and a Medium membership, but it never even crossed my mind to pay for porn. That would be like paying for YouTube (sorry YouTube Premium, it’s not gonna happen).

Porn Started Losing Its Appeal

There are a few good reasons to pay for porn.

It’s a way to compensate the creators and the performers for their work. Porn has done a better job of helping me have an orgasm than any of my high school boyfriends, so it makes sense to show my gratitude by throwing a few bucks to the people who made it happen.

Tube sites are also full of pirated content, which means that even studios or performers who want to use the sites to make a living can be undercut by randos.

And when creators make more from their content, they can then create higher quality porn

All good reasons. But the main reason I started paying for porn is that I was getting really bored of it.

Aesthetics matter a lot to me. That’s why I always gravitated to mainstream porn. The high production values made a big difference to my enjoyment.

But there’s always something lacking. Production quality isn’t the same as creativity. And after a while, bland rooms in some mansion and poolsides that all look the same start losing their appeal.

Worse than that, though, is the unnecessary roughness that’s featured heavily in ostensibly vanilla porn.

The actresses often look like they’re in pain, or at the very least not enjoying anything they’re doing. And no wonder, since the sex they’re having is more pounding than fucking.

Then, there’s all the choking, pussy slapping, and gagging. And even when a performer manages to get through a facefuck without gagging, she spends the whole time sounding like a cat that’s about to throw up a hairball.

I have no idea who the typical porn consumer is, but I’m clearly not the one porn production companies are catering to.

So, I started watching amateur porn instead. The performers tend to have total control over the production and the scene, so they’re more likely to care about their comfort and pleasure.

It’s an improvement for sure. Gagging and deepthroating are still common, but they’re not part of every scene. The performers tend to have a bit more chemistry, since they’re often real-life partners. And most importantly, there’s lots more enthusiasm and women who seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves.

The only problem is a lot of this stuff is homemade, and it shows.

Dim and uneven lighting. Terrible sound quality. Weird editing choices. People fucking in messy bedrooms. It really takes me out of it.

Either porn is getting worse or I’m getting desensitized to the thrill of watching people fuck. Maybe I’m just getting older. But whatever the reason, these days I’m too fussy to enjoy most of the stuff I can dig up on tube sites.

Paying to Get the Kind of Porn I Want

Over the last few months, I kept coming back to a pornstar who goes by the name Cherry Crush.

Coming across her videos was like a breath of fresh air.

She sports pastel-colored hair and is fucking adorable.

She’s really playful, too, so her videos are lots of fun.

But the biggest draw is the overall aesthetic. All of her videos are slightly overexposed, which gives them a dreamy quality. And she has the sets to match, with lots of fuzzy stuff, soft colors, and great lighting.

The only downside is that most of her videos on Pornhub are criminally brief. They’re mainly teasers or short compilations. It’s barely enough time to finish jilling off and besides, I love me a full scene.

I kept looking for other creators who had a similar aesthetic, but I was coming up empty.

I even typed stuff like “pornstars like Cherry Crush” into Google. It didn’t give me anything useful.

It took me longer than it should have to hit on the most obvious solution: get a membership to her site.

I had spent so long getting porn for free that paying didn’t really feel like a viable option.

I broke out of that mindset and I’m glad I did. Now, instead of spending way too long on Pornhub looking for something cute and fun (and often settling for something that isn’t), I can just log into my Cherry Crush account and get exactly what I need.

It’s more expensive than the other streaming services I use, but so far it’s worth every dollar I spent on it.

I’m Still Grateful for Free Porn

I’ve been through some pretty lean times in the past. While my husband was in grad school and I was at home with our young children, we struggled to make ends meet. We kept trying to shave our food budget down and we learned to be frugal out of necessity.

Free entertainment was a blessing during those years. YouTube gave us access to new music and we routinely borrowed books and DVDs from the library.

But the one thing the library couldn’t do was supply us with porn. For that, we relied on Pornhub and YouPorn.

I’m glad those were available to me, but I’m also happy to be moving on from them, at least for the most part.

I consider myself a moderate porn user. I don’t watch it daily or multiple times a day, but I do stream it regularly. It’s a part of my life, so it makes sense for me to start taking it more seriously and pay for the best stuff I can find.

And it’s just practical. The less time I waste looking for good porn, the more time I can spend getting off to it.