The Cybersocket Web Awards are one of the biggest events in the porn industry’s calendar, and they have been for the last 11 years now. This year, 2011, was no exception and there are some illustrious names in the list of winners, which were announced recently. Every year surfers such as ourselves get to decide who we think are the people and companies that have contributed most and best to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered internet community. Voting is held on line and is open to everyone. At the same time, the industry votes for its own, so the results come out in two broad categories: Industry choice awards and Surfer’s choice awards. Here are a few thoughts on both categories.

Industry Choice Awards
There are 12 categories here and some of them may seem a bit odd, at first, to us surfers, or to anyone not actually in the business. For example, would you have thought of an award for the best affiliate programme or the best billing company? Well, those in the biz find these things important, and rightly so.
For example, the Best Affiliate Program this year went to My Gay Cash. Let me explain: an affiliate programme is where anyone (you or I for example) sets up a site and then joins an established company and, basically, promotes its content. You promote the company and they let you use samples of their work, and when people go from your site to theirs, sign up and join, you get a cut of the profits. My Gay Cash, like others, will have special deals and promotions, sets of good quality sample content and, most of all, good sites to promote. They won this award because they look after their affiliates as much as they do their members. Continue reading →

Looking around to see what might be the top five gay porn star dramas/scandals of the last few years, I was amazed to see so many. What is it about the porn industry that ruffles so many feathers as soon as something minor kicks off? Or were these minor things? It’s really hard to say what are the ‘top five’ or even ‘top ten’ incidents, there are some more widely known and talked about than I have put here. But here are some of my favorites. Favorite not being quite the right word, some of the more interesting rather than most talked about.
One (And it’s only top of the list as it’s to do with prime time TV.)
Did you see Gladiators, hosted by Hulk Hogan? Well, one of those big butch, bad, beefy boys worked as a porn star for Colt Studios, before his big break. That’s slightly reminiscent of ‘the Italian Stallion’ and Sylvester Stallone doing ‘porn’ before Rambo. The gladiator in question was/is Militia, otherwise known as Alex Castro from Cuba. When he was working for Colt he was known as Elian Cortez. No big deal? But then came along:
Two
Let’s go another round with the Gladiators and head down to Australia. The news channels there were buzzing (back in 2008) about contestant Sam Brodie, because the programme was ‘rocked’ after it was leaked that images of Sam had been found on a gay porn site. Which one? The horny old ‘Seduced Straight Guys’ of course, a site that gives us ‘Amateur Aussie straight guys jerking off.’ (seducedstraightguys.com) Back in 2008 old Sam was known on the site as ‘Ben’ a sheet metal worker and subtitled ‘a bit of a ladies man.’ Well, a bit of a man’s man at the time too, or at least seen by a lot of gay guys.
A spokesman for Gladiators at the time said Brodie was part of the show but lost his round, and would not be “going forward” with future episodes. Shame.
Three
Is a minor drama, a bit of a kafuffle about nothing much, a bit of a queeny fit that I thought was rather funny. Photographer Dylan Rosser posted some nude photos of Simon Dexter and Simon was not happy. So what? Well, Simon was a former Sean Cody porn model known as Harley, and Dylan posted the pics on his own site The Male Form. (themaleform.net/) I tried to track down the blog entry where, apparently, Simon called Dylan ‘names’ but the page has been removed. Sad that, I was hopping for some kind of porn-handbags at dawn.

Four
Staying with the world of known porn stars and their sites, and names you will recognize, here’s one involving Randy Blue. Well, not Randy specifically but one of his models Dawson Riley. He was a model who played top to Nicco Sky and then played bottom for Christian Sharp, thereby proving that he was pretty versatile as a gay porn actor. He even used to go out with and date Josh Griffin, so that kind of hints at some kind of gay sexuality. Well, in 2010 he decided that it was time to leave the gay porn industry. Why? It wasn’t so much a question of ‘quit while you’re ahead’ or even ‘quit while giving head’ but more a case of wanting to marry his high school sweetheart and raise their daughter. O-kay. That’s going to be interesting. ‘What did you do when you were younger daddy?’ ‘Here dear, I’ll show you the photos.’

Five
And finally I found this information from 2006. I know it’s a long time ago but the point is: it’s still going on! Back then a story broke about paratroopers from the elite 82nd Airborne, ‘America’s Honor Guard’. They were appearing in gay porn movies for ActiveDuty.com. I mention this as I was looking at some of those ‘reality’ military sites recently and thinking that they were models dressed up. Clearly not. This was a true scandal. Real American soldiers doing real gay porn, even the straight ones. ‘Your country needs you – for gay porn!’ Now there’s a dramatic poster I’d like to see.