Playboy has always made naked women so unsexy. Fake breasts. Weird looking airbrushed or photoshopped skin. Every single hair in the exact perfect location.
Plenty of good erotic photography out there that is real looking.
Thatâs funny. I havenât seen it in a long time, but I always thought they were pretty good at softcore.
What I donât get is how this could make them more profitable. Are prudish men going to sign up in hordes? The other day I explained to my son that back in my day we had websites; they were called magazines, and came once a month. Has anybody found a profitable replacement for print media yet?
Having seen quite a bit of the Playboy logo in Asia, I really donât think it has that much to do with the magazineâs image here. You see kids wearing Playboy clothes and going to school with Playboy pencil cases (probably not licensed), and adults who definitely wouldnât want to be associated with softcore porn wear their clothes. Itâs an interesting change of approach, but it seems to be both deliberate and successful.
I only read Playboy for the articles - finally true : D
Good point, and Iâve seen kids wearing the bunny in America too.
I do find it amusing that they are dropping nudity from the magazine, but i donât find the idea all that crazy. Not having ever bought a playboy mag, or ever having any intention to, this news at least makes me real curious about this new direction and given the opportunity iâd probably at least flip through one to see what the new format would be like. Still donât think iâd buy one, only magazines i buy are design or art zines and even that is a rare purchase for me.
Thatâs what you always hear about the Playboy of decades ago and never about recent issues. Do they still have any content of interest?
I thought the only market left was ironic bathroom reading material in student households.
â12-year-old me is very disappointed in current me. But itâs the right thing to do.â
WTF!
Well, they are going to move from the top rack to the front rack. Where I am most drug stores and news stand-type stores stopped carrying porn a long time ago, they can put playboy back on the shelves now. Youâll be able to buy an issue of playboy from the airport bookstore to read on the plane. Lots of opportunities that they are shut out of right now.
To me, itâs a bit silly. I havenât seen an issue of playboy in a long time (though in recent years Iâve read a few articles on the playboy website from links, realizing only halfway through âoh, this is playboyâ), nor of maxim, but I honestly donât think there was anything more racy or obscene about the nudes in playboy compared to the non-nudes in maxim (or in ads in cosmo, for that matter).
Print magazines are surely a niche business these days, if they are a business at all. I think playboy would probably have done better to drop the âtitillationâ factor altogether and just continue with the fiction, interviews, etc. If the articles I have read from them are any indication, Iâd much rather sit reading playboy in the doctorâs waiting room than reading a fashion magazine.
You cannot out-hardcore the Internet.
I work in a library that subscribed to Playboy from its inception and continues to get it in microfilm. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that either one is still available.
Beat me to it.
Which Rule # was that? Oh yeahâŚ1
This is probably corporate intel or something, but I worked for the company that developed the software that runs the content for this website. It has been several years in the making.
The reason they are doing this is web filters are killing their business. With this safe for work site, people can log in from work, which is big traffic.
The company that worked on this has a large group of coders from India. When they worked on this site, they put all those developers in a room and they covered the floor to ceiling glass windows that separated the space - this was on open concept office. I found it really strange to work there at the time they started the project - itâs a modest culture and it was weird for these guys to be put in this position - they joked about it, but I think it was awkward for a lot of them.
Not my thing, but it should be a well-built website - this company is also responsible for the NY Times website and many other highly trafficked sites.
Without nudity, will it will be available to the under 18 crowd? Maybe thatâs the thinking.
I wonder if it will even matter that itâs now âwork safeâ? Many work filters block plenty of non-sexual sites. And if they still have the glamour, non-nude images, chances are many workplaces will still block it. My work blocks Maxim.com, for example. Though my work blocks a lot of random sites for no apparent reason at all, either (for example - Iâve run into issues trying to look up techy stuff, and end up hitting blocked sites).
That was my first thought too⌠But then I thought âWait, does the under 18 crowd even buy magazines any more?â
I wonder how many of the people in charge will insist on blacklisting it anyway. Of all the NSFW websites in the world, thatâs the one you can always admit to knowing and so it is the epitome of something that should be blocked. I am not sure âThey have rebranded. Itâs Maxim for drunks now and you canât really see anything anymore.â is really going to cut it.
Yeah; my wife has a friend who isâŚoh, I donât know, I guess weâd say a C-list actress. Youâve seen her on TV before, even if you donât know her name. Any more than that, and youâd be able to guess who she is, so the only other thing Iâll say is that sheâs the kind of woman that, when everyone found out that she was going to be in Playboy, the reaction wasnât so much a shocked, âReally? Why?â as it was a shocked, âReally? Her?!â And tbh, it was very tastefully done. Seems silly to me that doing certain poses, covering nipples and genitals, changes an image from âAdultâ to âPG-13â.
But thereâs a couple dozen companies doing highly produced, slick softcore photosets. The best I could think of would be Domai before they sold to a porn company, which despite jokingly being named âDirty Old Menâs Association Internationalâ, featured better photographic content than Playboy imho (no airbrushing, more body type diversity than Playboy at least, wider age range, etc.) If you must objectify your pretty, naked women, at least pick something good.
And thatâs just it. Their readership, like almost all print, skews old. At 55, their age group is shockingly younger than a lot of print publications.
I think youâre dead on; to add to that, if they drop it down to, say, Maxim levels of titilation, companies like Walmart will be willing to stock them on the shelves. I donât know about now, but decades ago, like Cory said, they published some really great fiction, So it was weird to have to have to get the more tasteful stuff and the good sci-fi in the Skeevy Creepy Guy section.
I figured the likes of Maxim had already cornered this 18-30 no-nudity market.
[quote]The company now makes most of its money from licensing its ubiquitous brand and logo across the world â 40 percent of that business is in China even though the magazine is not available there â for bath products, fragrances, clothing, liquor and jewelry among other merchandise. Nudity in the magazine risks complaints from shoppers, and diminished distribution.[/quote]It was also my understanding that for quite some time now they had been held aloft by the casino business more than anything else.
[quote=âdoctorow, post:1, topic:67437â]though it fared better than Penthouse, which tried to out-hardcore the Internet and failed.[/quote]Oh, is Penthouse kaput? What about Hustler?
