Future Sex: The Best Offbeatr Porn Projects for Geeks

Yesterday we all learned about Offbeatr, the new, Kickstarter-inspired site dedicated to crowd funding of pornography. At its core, the site represents an exciting new use for technology in depictions of our sexuality. Although the saying “If it exists there is porn of it” often holds true – there are niche genres dedicated to just about every fringe sexual predilection you can think of — there’s always room for new voices.

Offbeatr works by users vetting ideas through voting. Each project needs to amass a predetermined number of votes from the community, and then the project will be available for donors to contribute. Here are my top three picks for your votes:

Ryan Zyro has a vision for a pornographic film that depicts sex as a real act, rife with the awkwardness and emotional elements that it often actually contains in real-life situations. He quotes Charlie Glickman, a sex educator who works with Good Vibrations:

In many ways, a lot of porn is comparable to junk food. It's a highly distilled and concentrated formulation that is engineered to tap into some of our most basic urges. As a culture, we're really good at taking something that's good for us or fun and distilling it to the point of toxicity."

He hopes to create “A 22 minute dramedy about a polyamourous relationship, from the beginning. The first episode, of what I hope will be many is their initial meeting and first date. Spoilers They have sex.” He needs $10,000 to do it. Now this isn't an entirely new idea – that mainstream pornography doesn't depict "real sex" – in fact, it's often this fact that men and women who enjoy especially violent or degrading pornography use to explain or defend their enjoyment. They aren't watching "real" representations of sex or "real" representations of acts they want to experience. It's all fantasy.

Of course this is true. Pornography is created by actors engaging in fantastical sex acts. But it's important to represent the other side of sexuality as well, the "non-fantasy" side, for those who wish to view pornography that feels more authentic to them. The conversation is much like the current photoshop battle taking place between consumers and fashion magazine. Sure, we understand that models aren't representative of how most people look. Further, we understand that those aren't their real clothes, that they've been through hair and makeup, and that the final images have been Photoshopped. But this rational knowledge doesn't mean people don't subconsciously integrate these standards of beauty into their perception of the world. And a rational knowledge that the prevalent theme of strangers engaging in choking, gagging, slapping blowjobs isn't a true representation of most sex doesn't stop us from integrating this standard of sexuality into our perception of the world. It's good to have some variety.

The Mayhems are “are sluts and scholars here to change how porn is made.” The narration on their promo video reads:

There is a twenty fifth dimension beyond that which is known to physics. It is a dimension as vast as desire and as timeless as the moment of climax. It is the middle ground between art and satire, between fiction and pornography, and it lies between the excitement of our fears and the trepidation of our deepest fantasies. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Mayhem Zone.

It's unclear exactly what the group hopes to accomplish using their $5000, but it will be “geeksexual” and, seemingly, will incorporate elements from The Twilight Zone, relying on “taut psychological screenwriting.” Parody porns are awesome. Parody sci-fi porns are extra awesome. Vote!

I'm not sure why Alyson Ash needs $20,000 dollars to make pornographic audio recordings, but I'm sure they will be top-notch if she gets the money. The project hopes to create erotic audio downloads featuring a variety of "players," real people who allow microphones into their sexual space.

The idea of real people creating the content organically through their sexual experiences is interesting, as is producing erotica designed specifically for auditory stimulation. It's also a good resource for the blind, previously dependent upon Porn for the Blind, a not-for-profit organization in which narrators describe porn sites and scenes for the visually impaired.

Follow Kelly Bourdet on Twitter: @kellybourdet.