Pornhub, clearly miffed by exposés about how the company helps promote sex trafficking of women and girls, wants you to think that its website is all about love. That’s why the vendor is hosting a pop-up shop in New York City for Valentine’s Day.
As they say online: Thanks, I hate it.
Alex Katz, the executive creative director at Officer & Gentleman, which is behind the pop-up, said the goal of this little shop of horrors is to make Pornhub’s brand not just about sex (and, I would add, sexual exploitation).
“We don’t have to have everything be about sex,” Katz told AdAge. “It can be about love. It helps to build the brand.”
The website complicit in endorsing and enabling sex trafficking and rape is trying to rebrand itself as a company that’s about romance and commitment and all those other sweet things — the exact opposite of watching other people have sex online.
“The idea here is to be really cute,” Katz insists. “It’s quite wholesome.”
Wholesome, on Valentine’s Day, is a word reminiscent of glittery, lace-edged cards and Lindt chocolates and bouquets of red roses. Pornhub’s definition of wholesome looks like this: The “cute” pop-up, though mild compared to the rape and incest-glorifying videos available on Pornhub’s website, still sells cards that read, “I cho, cho, choke you,” and boasts signs reading, “Porn is in the air.”
All purchases come with a gift card for one month of Pornhub Premium for free, so customers can leave the cutesy shop and binge hours of videos with titles such as “Young Girl Tricked,” “Innocent Brace Faced Tiny Teen F—ed,” “Tiny Petite Thai Teen,” and “Teen Little Girl First Time.”
How cute. And by cute, since we’re reworking the definitions of words, I mean horrific.
Pornhub’s feint toward respectability is particularly sinister considering it’s a cheap ploy to cover the site’s history of supporting the abuse and exploitation of human beings. And yes, it really is that bad. As Laila Mickelwait wrote for the Washington Examiner, “at this very moment, there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of videos of underage sex trafficking victims on Pornhub.”
Videos can easily be uploaded without the consent of those featured in them, creating a #MeToo scandal that most people don’t want to talk about.
Mickelwait, the director of abolition for Exodus Cry, actively campaigns against Pornhub’s abuses, and she has started a petition to get the website shut down. Yet Pornnhub tries to gloss over the fact that the website profits from the commodification of human beings. Instead, the New York City pop-up wants you to believe in “love at first site.”
“Looks like Pornhub is doing a NYC pop-up shop stunt tomorrow to push its premium memberships so people can watch real sex trafficking and rape crime scenes ad free,” Mickelwait tweeted.
There’s nothing “cute” or “wholesome” about Pornhub, and the company’s attempt to normalize itself is both disingenuous and depraved. Pornhub is all about monetizing sex, and the company doesn’t seem to care who gets abused and broken along the way.
