The Rule of First Adopters: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

They will, of course, attempt to maximize their profits by flooding their customers with product. This, in turn, will drive up demand, pushing the new medium into the mass market, where economies of scale come into play and make it affordable for increasing numbers of consumers. As more consumers can afford the medium, more non-adult content becomes available, until finally the adult material becomes a niche rather than the primary content available. (But not before the media and [[Moral Guardians]] get ahold of it and [[New Media Are Evil|create a moral panic]] about all that "[[Filth|smut]]".)

* Eventually, the medium reaches its developmental limit, forming its "climax community." This is the point at which the new medium and its associated community will no longer develop due to the fact that said medium's boundaries have been pushed as far as possible. As such, it can no longer support any more organisms than it already is (radio is at this stage).

 

 

** And don't forget ''[[wikipedia:The Dream of the Fishermanchr(27)s Wife|The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife]],'' (link is [[The Other Wiki]]) which is [[Naughty Tentacles|tentacle]] hentai [[Older Than They Think|dating back to]] ''[[Older Than They Think|1820]]''...

** More importantly, the anime/manga ecosphere gets quite a bit of talent from the doujinshisphere, which is very often populated with hentai doujinshi's of popular anime/manga.

** More than one old art master dabbled in depicting the favorite bedtime activity of all. Along with ''The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife'' mentioned above, there's an etching of Rembrandt van Rijn depicting a couple mid-coitus, and Leonardo Da Vinci made a sketch of the act in cross-section as part of his anatomical drawings.

* Similarly to ''[[Caprica]]'', the [[Shirow Masamune]] series ''[[Real Drive]]''. The potentially world changing Meta-real was popularized as and continues to be used for sexy purposes.

 

* It's older than that too. Note nudes in art and people have got to have been the bodies for all those naked Greek statues.

** Those pristine white marble statues were originally painted. With extreme accuracy.

== Comic Books ==

* The first comic books were repacked newspaper funny pages. The first comic books with original content were actually the (illegal) Tijuana Bibles, [http://www.tijuanabibles.org/ as this (NSFW) website illustrates]; most of the earliest ones from [[The Roaring Twenties|The Twenties]] were basically the [[Rule 34]] of the day, featuring newspaper comic characters (or in some cases, real people.) It wasn't until [[The Thirties]] that original comics were published in the mainstream. The Tijuana Bible held on until [[The Sixties]].

 

 

== Film ==

* Motion pictures seemed ready to follow the pattern until [[Moral Guardians]] of the period complained, leading to the establishment of the [[Hays Code]]. Up to that point, though, early cinema was far more daring that most people might believe. For example, few remember that the glamorous star of the 1930s and 1940s, Hedy Lamarr, initially became famous for doing topless and nude scenes in the 1933 Czech film ''Ecstasy''.

** Eugène Pirou made a short film in which a woman performs a striptease in 1896.

** Pioneering filmmaker Georges Mèliès created a [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222735/ short film] about a woman taking a bath in 1897.

** And that's all just "mainstream" film. So-called stag films had been around since the turn of the century and some of them are pretty hardcore ''even by today's standards''.

* The rise of home videotape machines has often been attributed to the availability of porn. Those wanting to watch it previously had to go to skeevy porno theaters, where everyone around them was doing exactly what you'd think people would be doing in a porno theater and the floors were [[Squick|very sticky]], plus they ran the risk of being seen going into or coming out of the theater. Watching in private has got all sorts of obvious advantages that everyone jumped at. The porno theater industry keeled over and died.

** History almost repeated itself in the high-definition DVD war between Sony's Blu-Ray and Toshiba's [[HD DVD]]. When reports indicated Sony was going to ban porn on Blu-Ray too, the industry reaction was to predict Sony's loss. Sony eventually agreed to license Blu-Ray for porn, even if it wouldn't advertise that fact much. It ended up winning the format war this time.

*** Unlike with Betamax, Sony isn't the sole owner of Blu-Ray and instead is one of many partners in the Blu-Ray Disc Association. Sony could not actually ban Blu-Ray pornography, but in the early, critical days, they held a de facto monopoly on Blu-Ray manufacturing (Being the first to have large-scale production facilities), and did not peddle their services to the adult media industry

*** Few people remember it these days, but the same dynamic played out in the LaserDisc vs. CED VideoDisc battle in the early 1980s as well. RCA maintained a tight grip on CED manufacturing (there were only 2 plants in the world capable of making CED discs), and a handful of softcore, ''barely''-above-"R"-rated ''Playboy Video Centerfold'' discs were as far as they were willing to go into that territory. Laserdiscs, on the other hand... (Guess which format survived. Go on, guess.) Although only a niche market in the the US, Europe, and Australia; laserdiscs [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|were the dominant video medium]] in Japan, Hong Kong, and affluent areas of southeast Asia such as Singapore, until the new millenium.

*** Though the RCA CED system's failure is probably more due to the fact that by the time it came out, video cassette recorders were already established.

** [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168192/ It's been done before].

*** [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141186/ Hardcore, even].

== Literature ==

* This trope is older than photography. When the printing press made book publishing commercially viable, guess what the two most popular types of books were? Religious tracts, and pornographic stories.

** The bare texts of all major religions actually ''celebrate'' sex in certain passages but they also mandate ''specific contexts'' for it (married consenting couples being the most prevalent). Most other restrictions were added by interpreters and philosophers trying to hammer out exactly what was and wasn't permissible.

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Sadly, this was not the case with TV in [[The Fifties]]. Damn you [[Moral Guardians]]!

** In fact, it's pretty much eliminated a once-standard shot, the cowboy. Imitating the point of view of a man who is having sex with the woman on top with better video cameras mean those breast implant scars are really visible from that angle.

* Parodied in ''[[Coupling]]'' in which, after making a brave attempt at rationalizing his possession of a movie called "Lesbian Spank Inferno" [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|with in-depth critical and symbolic analysis]] to the other members of a dinner party after his female friends bring it up to embarrass him, Steve cracks and engages in a lengthy and not-unconvincing rant in which he makes the case that the entire history of human artistic and technological development has been motivated solely so that men could get a better look at women's bottoms.

* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' seemed to be the only ''[[Star Trek]]'' series to realise that the ''only'' thing most people would use a holodeck for would be having sex. Quark's was essentially a holo-brothel, although the Federation characters were just a bit too squeaky clean to ever use it for that (that we saw). You might wonder how anyone would ever get anything done in the 24th Century with the ability to create fully functional, three-dimensional interactive characters that have no free will whatsoever.

** As Scott Adams (creator of ''[[Dilbert]])'' once wrote, "The holodeck will be [[The End of the World as We Know It|mankind's last invention.]]"

* Referenced in ''[[30 Rock]]'', where Tracy Jordan decids to combine two things he loves; porn and videogames. One of the guys in the writing staff tells him it's impossible because of the [[Uncanny Valley]], and cites that all the best have tried, including the Japanese.

** Against all the odds Tracy actually ''succeeds'' in creating his porn video game.

'''Tracy:''' Yes! I'm gonna be a millionaire! }}

* In one of the ''[[Babylon 5]]'' movies (probably ''The River of Souls''), a sketchy businessman runs a holo-brothel in Down Below, using holograms and special suits to simulate touch. It is never stated how often the suits are cleaned, but they are glitchy enough to occasionally electrocute the wearer.

 

== New Media, technology ==

* One of the early load tests of the original Bittorrent client was a large "sample video" file.

* [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] by the IPv6 Experiment. Now over, it was an attempt to get people to switch from version four of the internet protocol to version six, by enticing them with free porn only available to those with IPv6.

* When digital image compression algorithms were being researched in the early 70s, they would most probably be tested on "[[wikipedia:Lenna|Lenna]]", the informally default test image that happened to be scanned from the November 1972 [[Playboy]] centerfold.

** This particular image is cropped to a head-and-shoulder shot, with an arguably [[Longing Look|suggestive expression]] but no display of naughty bits.

* In ''[[Cracked.com]]''

** An article regarding this phenomenon and [[Tropes Are Not Bad|its positive implications]], [http://www.cracked.com/article_18888_5-ways-porn-created-modern-world.html 5 Ways Porn Created the Modern World].

 

== Photography ==

* Almost as soon as photography stopped being a curiosity, nude photos began to circulate. And (allegedly) within a week of its patenting, a camera was used to take a picture of a woman performing an act that is still illegal in most states. And some authorities believe that the ability for the average person to take nude photos without having to send them to a processing lab was not an inconsequential factor in the initial success of the Polaroid Land Camera.

* It's believed a similar dynamic is at work with the quick adoption of camera phones.

 

== Toys ==

** [[This Is Wrong on So Many Levels|That is wrong for SO MANY REASONS.]]

** There's a reason why those anatomically correct dolls are called "Dutch wives".

 

== Video Games ==

* It's not too uncommon of an occurrence for people to take pictures of their genitals as their first photo on the Game Boy Camera, or on it's [[Spiritual Successor]] in the [[D Si]]. With the 3DS on the market now (with its novel and unique 3D camera), people will ensure that it fits this trope.

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' and its gigantic penis monuments in Creative mode.

 

 

* Porn might be older than humanity itself. It has been shown that monkeys will [http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=1551 give up their juice in exchange for a brief glimpse at a female monkey's hindquarters.] It wouldn't be too unreasonable to think that our close ancestors would trade a look at someone's body in exchange for something else.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Porn Tropes]]

[[Category:The Rule of First Adopters]]