Adapt and Adjust: The Adult Industry’s Response to the Pandemic

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,

even as they prioritized their own health, as well as that of their employees, coworkers, business partners and customers.

As countries around the world and states around the U.S. began to slowly ‘reopen’ their economies and broader societies, it became clear a return even to relative normalcy was going to take time. In the meantime, what have these people and companies done to sustain themselves in the immediate term, while planning for a brighter future? It’s also true not everyone has been in the same position when it has come to their financial ability to ride out work stoppages. Even if a subscription adult site with a large existing content archive is continuing to make sales and turn a profit, that doesn’t mean the people who normally provide new content and updates to that site are sitting pretty. How does it feel to be a director who is eager to get back to work, but faces shaming and vitriol for even voicing that desire, for example? The adult industry’s challenge in navigating the pandemic is far from over. Our collective success in sustaining our businesses will rely in part on what we learn from the adjustments that have already been made. Naturally, along the way there are disagreements

about how the industry should and could respond. There are those who work to resume shooting, and others who think it’s unsafe to do so. Both in the U.S. and outside it, there are those who passionately want to see President Donald Trump re-elected and others who just as fervently want to see him out of the White House. Come this November, there will be the election which decides which of those things happens.

Here’s hoping that even as we in the industry may disagree on and bicker about the particulars, public policies, corporate best practices and general howto of dealing with the pandemic, we continue to do what we can to help each other emerge on the other side not just with our health intact, but poised for our businesses to thrive, as well.

In any case, hearing how industry leaders have responded so far might help light the path in terms

of where we go from here.

Gene Zorkin has been covering legal and political issues for various adult publications (and under a variety of different pen names) since 2002.