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Adapt and Adjust: The Adult Industry’s Response to the Pandemic By Gene Zorkin When businesses of all sorts shuttered all around the globe in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies, individual entrepreneurs and performers in the adult entertainment industry worked quickly to adapt to the enormous challenges presented by the worldwide outbreak. Despite an early industry-wide voluntary production hold on “traditional” content production, cam shows continued to occur on schedule and many performers continued self-producing content in a safe and responsible way. Unsurprisingly, traffic increased to many sites and networks as a function of the widespread “stay at home” orders under which much of the world’s population found itself in the first few months of the pandemic. This is not to say the adult industry was untouched by the pandemic, or that all was smooth sailing for adult businesses, particularly among brick
and mortar businesses that shut down. Many companies that have continued to do brisk business through the pandemic have been forced to make major adjustments, including having some or all of their employees work from home, cancelling and postponing business trips, and delaying trade events or product launches. YNOT reached out to a variety of companies and individuals to find out what they’ve done in response to the pandemic, their plans for the immediate future and their thoughts on the pandemic’s impact on the adult entertainment industry. From directors and performers to advertising networks and payment service providers, no sector of the industry has remained untouched by the ongoing public health crisis and it’s both instructive and reassuring to hear the nimble, proactive steps people took to protect and maintain their businesses,
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