The twink next door, who also does porn: networked intimacy in gay porn performers’ self-presentation on social media

ABSTRACT

The performer–viewer relationship premised on mediated intimacy is a pivotal element of porn. As social media afford more interactivity and flexibility for pornographic relationship-building, gay porn performers start to have an active presence on platforms like Twitter to not only promote their works, but also showcase what is ‘behind the scene’. This study provides a qualitative analysis of the Twitter feeds of performers affiliated with Helix Studios, a gay porn producer specializing in the twink genre. It is found that a networked intimacy is constructed through performers’ Twitter self-presentation. The networked intimacy pivots on the fantasy of the twink body, the romantic and sexual bonds among performers, and the fandom-facilitated interactions. Relational labour is dedicated to the authentication of performers’ professional persona through their private life. Under this aesthetics of authenticity, intimacy is commodified to sell sex, and sexuality is essentialized into a staged congruity between sexual acts and desires. Networked intimacy, as a common condition for gay porn production and consumption in a hybrid media system, develops into a multilayer shape on social media platforms. This case study of Helix Studios performers’ tweets reveals both precarities and potentials of networked intimacy in gay porn.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual intimacy
• relational labour
• gay porn
• digital self-presentation
• hybrid media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 During the course of the study, platform policies on pornographic content changed, which affected the distribution of porn producers and audiences across different platforms. Most noticeably, Tumblr banned all content depicting sexual acts or human genitals in 2018. The main focus of this study, Helix Studios, once had a social media presence on all of the listed platforms.

2 I favour ‘porn’ over ‘pornography’ in this article as the terminology reflects common usage by porn performers and viewers. See Williams (2014) for an in-depth discussion on the terminological choice in porn studies scholarship.

3 Screenshots of tweets were originally planned for this publication for a better presentation of the visual elements of networked intimacy. They were not included in the final version due to reasons of copyright, privacy, and accessibility. Please contact the author for more information.