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Here are my rough, non-verbatim notes from Cunningminx’s excellent ice-breaking presentation “Internet Famous / Conference Shy.” The notes are necessarily incomplete during audience-participation sections. Finally, because I arrived a few moments late I missed part of the introduction.

Language note: Minx uses the ominous-sounding term “stalking” in the OKCupid sense of being interested in or curious enough about to want to know more about or to meet someone you know only online. (In real stalking there’s obviously no such thing as “stalking politely.”)

First, here’s the session description from the 2009 Sessions page.

Are you great on a keyboard, but overwhelmed by the time you get to the registration desk? Are you charming on Twitter but glued to the wall at the opening night party? Sometimes internet abundance doesn’t translate well to having a great time at that conference. From wildly famous sexperts to curious wallflowers, from keynoters to first-time guests, conference experiences might not easily translate from the keyboard. Find out how, with just a little preparation, you can have the best possible experience at your next con.

Session leader: Cunning Minx

How do you stalk politely?

• Check blogs and their other sites
• Leave comments
• Follow twitter

• Google for other social-media connections

Be organized

• make a list of who you want to see
• and what you want to talk about with them
  • name/alias
  • organization
  • blog/twitter topics

• recent events attended

What can I do to be stalkable/open?

• Write best work before the event (most interesting to/about you)
• Be yourself, be interesting
• Reach out via blog, podcast, Twitter
• Use the event #hashtag for Everything
• Blog/Twitter about folks you do know
• Find out/ask who’s going

• What you’re excited about

Join the conversation

• Mailing list
• Listen first — take a week to listen to what others are talking about, so you know what is and isn’t… topical.
• Answer questions (if you really know)
• Ask questions
• Post a pic to Facebook group
• Post to Facebook wall
• Continue interesting conversations with individuals off list

• Be a real person

Mailing list don’t

• Don’t use as a dating service

As you pack

• Make sure you’ve got all your equipment with you
• Including chargers and cables
• And extra batteries
• On the other hand, asking to borrow a power cord is a great ice-breaker
• Bring fresh business cards w/ name/pseudonym, TwitterID, blog, cell-phone or texting
• Backup your laptop

• Give current partner some loving

During the conference

• turn twitter notices on mobile device
• be stalkable
• be your “party self”
• Post about all the fun you’re having
• If you show faces do a pod/vidcast
  • seesmic.com

• audioboom.com [Couldn’t find working link. —fl]

Starting a conversation

• Statement
  • I just went to…
• This is my first…
• Disclosure about yourself (“I” statement)
• I think…
• Invitation (opportunity for them to say)

• What do you think about…?

Conversation Starters

• Which session are you going to?
• Oh, I missed that, how was it
• Going anywhere for dinner (be specific
• What do you do at XXX
• How did you find out about YYY

• Did you see the season finale of ZZZ? (Battlestar Galactica, good example — kind of random, good break-out-of-conference-mode question.)

Say what you want

• I’d like to present/scene with you tonight (Can’t get what you don’t ask for — they’re not telepathic)
• I’d like to get to know you better
• I’d love to hear you scream

• Point being — get it out there out loud so they can respond

Practice believing in yourself

• If you get emo get yourself out of it by… asking/outreach to pull yourself back into “party” space
• Say fears out loud

• “Egging on” exercise — you vent, they agree instead of saying “oh no.” Point is you can end up laughing about it instead of resisting their resistance.

Take care of yourself

• Adopt a policy of
  • Trying new things
  • meeting new people
  • having new experiences
• no regrets (you won’t enjoy everything you try, e.g. the 9-star tofu faux chicken-liver appetizer everyone else at dinner said they liked.)

• Decide you will kick ass

At Sex 2.0 blogger Maria Diaz presented a session on “Revenge Porn.” Here are my rough, non-verbatim notes taken live during the session. Update Calico has posted video transcripts.

Initially inspired by hassles faced by Gretchen Rossi of a TV show called “Real Housewives of Orange County”

• Ex boyfriend started to post photos to thedirty.com after the show aired

• She doesn’t talk about it but she’s attempted legal action against the website

So! What is revenge porn?

• Photos or images distributed by someone in an attempt to humiliate the subject; sometimes includes contact info
• First used on urbandictionary in 2007

• (Comment: For sex-industry people may not be photos but might be contact info)

Reason for the talk

• People are sharing more pictures and other personal information than ever.
• Not just for world but peer group

• Solution has to be more realistic than “never take naked photos or otherwise do anything else that could ever get online ever.”

Different flavors of revenge porn

• Celebrity sex tape
• Scorned ex who distributes tapes to world or to friends
• Faux revenge professional porn

• The Revenge Porn threat (blackmail) “Do what I want or I’ll release the photos

4 Cases

• Lena Chen (formerly of Sex and the Ivy blog)
• Outed in photos by disgruntled ex
• Kim Kardashian (Public celebrity)
• Carrie Prejean (Miss California)
• Carrie Prejean was outed as revenge for homophobia… but still was outed and it was still revenge
• Jason Fortuny (with a twist)
• Posted respondents to his “violent craigslist” prank

• Imagined he was in the clear but wound up losing court battle

Maria Diaz asked: Why do outed celebrities’ seem to suffer less career-wise (but not suffer less personally)

• Guess: Probably papparazi influence

Question: Why the market for humiliated/revenge-upon-ed wives, husbands?

• Opportunity to look down on someone
• “At least I don’t have naked photos of me…”
• Eroticizing shaming/prudery
• Justifying/viewing “object lesson” participation
• How people think about women (has to do with why it’s almost always women.)

• Not much stigma for men because (no-sex class moment here) it’s expected that men will “debase” themselves. It might happen that they’re outed but it’s not “news.”

Question: With everyone growing up with phonecams, etc do you think it’ll ever reach a point where someone won’t have to resign or won’t be hired if outed?

• Probably so. There’s often little lasting damage now

• There is a control issue. Sex bloggers (e.g. Lena Chen) who post their own photos still felt hurt and betrayed when an partner does it against their wishes

Maria: Problem with Jason Fortuny and other revenge/stalking cases is there were, or are, no real laws.

Point: Revenge porn ought to be treated as internet stalking
Downside: law enforcement may not be prepared/motivated to enforce stalking in the first place

Point: saturation of millions of “yeah I did that too” takes power away from straight-up revenge. Saturation doesn’t protect in Fortuny-type “craigslist respondent” outings

Point Saying “If you have to do it… lock it down, get “collateral,” is implicitly agreeing it’s wrong. Saying “it’s the worst thing” is only an issue if it’s really the worst thing!

Possible “fight fire with fire” Strategy:

• Cuts both ways
• Out people who post revenge porn.
• Saturation may protect victims (I mean, at some point it’s going to become “so what”) but it’s unlikely to protect perpetrators.
• At some point in the future we’ll be blazé about being naked on the internet…

• But! At no point are we ever likely to be unconcerned about assholes who out people.

One of the evening activities after Sex 2.0 (Twitter tag #sex20con) this evening was a screening of award-winning porn, including Matinee, directed by Jennifer Lyon Bell, from the Cinekink 2009 event. Here’s a synopsis of Matinee from Cinekink

Actors Mariah and Daniel play lovers every night, but their onstage romance lacks spark. One slow afternoon, they discover that today’s matinée performance will make or break both of their careers. Daniel wants to make big changes, and Mariah starts to wonder: are Daniel’s suggestions reasonable? Or has he lost track of the boundary between actor and character? Rushed to the stage, in front of a live audience, they must figure it out together.

They said it here.

I came in late and, because the room was very crowded, I didn’t stay long. And so I don’t know much about the premise or plot. But the one sex scene I saw was in my opinion a real eye-opener.

The female lead leads! Every step of the way she’s the active party. The point of view focuses on both of them but she’s the one doing the foreplay, stroking him hard, eating him, unwrapping the condom, pulling him toward her, guiding him into her. Even when he’s on top she’s actively moving up against him as much as he’s moving into her.

They separate before either of them come. She climbs on top of him. He holds himself this time, but more to hold himself steady as engulfs him. Once they’re joined he leans back and she moves. As she gets more excited she reaches down and rolls her own clitoris.

Again they stop before either of them come. She rolls back. Their hands join over her vulva. He strokes her to a well-acted but persuasive rather than porn/theatrical orgasm. Rather than jump to the next scene there’s a really nice enactment of the pause for “aftershock” care.

There were a lot of highly non-vanilla people present and I didn’t think the film was well received (they may have just been really rowdy, or else perhaps the into scenes, which I didn’t see, were unbearably hokey.) But I thought from a gender-role perspective its hetero/vanilla veneer made it all the more transgressive. She put the condom on him even before she began to eat him. The pace and tempo was in regular-intercourse tempo rather than the conventional hyper-porn bippity-bippity-bip pace that, I think, is pitched more for the tempo of male masturbation. There was no money shot. No calling anyone a bitch or grimacing out “give me your fat rutabaga you big stud.” At least while I was there she came and he didn’t. In fact except that there was nudity, PIV penetration, and couple of porn-style moans and groans it missed most of the tropes I remember driving me to give up on video porn.

That last bit is kind of interesting: any bumpkin in porn can cough out a money shot, and many do. The standard routine is, roughly, that the director gets all the shots he or she needs, all the positions, acts, and angles, and then they stop everything re-arrange the shoot, and the actor stands or kneels and quickly wanks out an ejaculation. Usually on somebody else’s body or face. Whee! Just how I always want to finish when I have sex (but, to be fair, it probably helps the target-male customer identify since at that point he’s probably masturbating too.) What’s different about Matinee is that she has the “money shot” using only his hands — considerably more difficult even for porn actresses to produce in male actors (given how rarely they do it instead of him.)

An important point that I probably wouldn’t have picked up on if I hadn’t been watching with other, perhaps more porn-savvy viewers: I get the impression is more of a masturbation aid than representative sex. And so, I think, maybe the stylized, 7-minute naked-step-aerobics of “real” porn is more effective for people who use it to get off than the stuff regular people do. (Sort of like you might enjoy seeing a whole top-chef episode worth of effort to prepare your meal even though you probably wouldn’t want to cook under that kind of pressure yourself every evening.

But by and large? Although personally I like a little more turn-taking when I have sex it was all in all the kind of slow comfortable, cuddly, orgasmic screw I’d thoroughly enjoy spending a matinee-long afternoon doing with a partner.

Anyway, cool scene in what looked like a cool movie. (The Cinekink jury evidently agreed. They gave Matinee the award for best narrative short.