Who is Watching 3 Hour Porn Flicks?

In an age of instant gratification and 30 second videos, why are porn movies getting so long … I think I’ve figured it out.

It’s become trite to say it, but our attention spans are sh&t these days. Between Twitter, YouTube, and all the other social media platforms, we’ve become incapable of paying attention to anything that goes on for more than half a minute. At work the other day, while working with an online communications consultant, I was proud of the video I had made that distilled a highly complex economic concept down to three minutes online — his only comment — ‘wayyy too long; cut it by at least half.

So why, in the face of this diminishing desire for length and detail, are the movies I’m pulling up on my online porn streaming service all clocking in at three hours plus these days?

The answer lies in the economics, I suspect. These sites — at least the ones I partake in — operate on a pay-per-minute basis. After the PornHub scandal last year, I decided to take a more enlightened approach to my porn consumption. I signed up for a couple of porn streaming services that marketed themselves as more empowering to actors, more ethical in their production, and promised to ensure revenues returned to those who made the movies.

But ethical porn doesn’t come cheap, so my days of free porn were gone. The sites I would go to would ask you to pre-buy a number of minutes and charge your account for every minute you watch.

What I had yet to consider was the incentive structure this pay-per-minute model would encourage. Feature-length (non-PornHub) movies have become unbelievably long — like, three and four hours long. And the typical scene runs a solid thirty minutes.

While I enjoy a little dialogue and plot-oriented setup in the porn scene, I do not need to watch a 20-minute blow-job. Even my wife, who gets frustrated with my jumping around from scene to scene and movie to movie, was getting fed up with the length of these scenes.

I guess that back in the day, when buying VHS or DVDs with 80–90 minute pornos, you were actually getting the best 80 minutes, selected from hours and hours of shooting. Like any decent movie, most of what it shot ends up on the editing room floor. But in the age of pay-per-minute, it’s in the production companies’ interest to leave every second of filmed content in the movie.

The result — the 40-minute blow job. We’ve watched a few of these films now — attractive talent, decent scripts, and even — dare I say — acceptable acting. But the sex scenes go on forever. Like most pervy viewers, I like to hang around for the ‘money shot’ at the end of a scene. But 30–40 minutes is more time than I am willing to invest.

I hate to sound like a grumpy old man, but I miss the porn of yesteryear. Movies like The Masseuse, Debbie Does Dallas, or Flashpoint — well shot, gorgeous… and they got it done in 80 minutes. You bought the whole movie… and 80 minutes was plenty.