SoleMates

Hi. You're about to read something that makes me grumpy. Enjoy.

One of the things I, as a producer, hate to hear is when people dog-pile on the men who appear in videos, calling them fat, ugly, creepy, or any number of a hundred other things that would never fly were the genders to be reversed, but I digress.

The most common question that seems to come out of such discussions, assuming the people starting them want to be productive, is usually something along the lines of;

"Why don't producers hire good-looking guys to do the tickling?"

The answer to this is three-fold. Or maybe even four-fold. I'll probably go back and edit this once I actually type out the list and see how many points I actually make.

Reason #1: Budget

Look, like it or not, unless your studio name rhymes with "Pickle Obtuse" or can be spelled with the letters F, T, K, and L, the odds that you're making a lot of money off of your tickling videos is usually slim to none, and Slim left town.

The fact is, most producers are one-man operations out of necessity. Hiring a second model will double your shoot expenses at the bare minimum. And, honestly? If you're making enough money on your videos that you can hire a second model, you'd probably hire a second woman and capture the F/F market.

...and speaking of the F/F market, that brings me to:

Reason #2: M/F Hate

Fact of the matter is, there's a lot of dudes out there who hate M/F. Most of them only seem to be able to tolerate it if the dude in the video is never shown from above the wrist and never speaks. So, as a producer of M/F content, you can reasonably expect that at least a portion of your fanbase consists of these people, and you don't want to annoy them any more than you already are. And if you think people don't watch videos that they hate, then let me refer you to Pickle Obtuse, who is consistently in the top ten on C4S and subsequently the most pirated studio in the industry, and yet is one of the most-maligned studios here on the TMF.

Reason #3: Screening

Dudes is dudes. Sure, the guy you hire may be better-looking than you, but chemistry between people on-set in a tickling video is important. What if the model you hire is a creep? What if he can't tickle? What if he's a horror to work with? Yes, many producers themselves are these things, but they're not shelling out a few hundred dollars for a dude with these qualities in such a case. And there's no way to tell any of these things beforehand; you don't find out until the guy you hired is on-set and the female model you hired won't come near him.

Reason #4: Scale

Going back to reason #1, the simple fact is there aren't enough people who would buy a video featuring a male model to offset the cost of hiring said model. Women don't buy tickling videos, for the most part, and gay guys aren't going to buy a M/F video. So who's left? The two or three people bitching about creeps. Oh boy, that's an extra what, ten dollars? Yes, it's worth paying $200 to get $10. Cute the doge; very economy, much practical.

Reason #5: He's an Outsider

Isn't this community super-autistic about authenticity? Whenever a model comes out and admits that she might have been less than authentic in her reactions on camera, THERE IS HELL TO PAY. BURN THE UNBELIEVER! PHONY! BIG FAT PHONY! AAAAAARGH!!!!

...and yet, you want some dude who isn't a part of this community, who probably doesn't get it, doing the tickling? You think that vibe is gonna be there?

"Oh, then just hire a good-looking guy from the community!", I hear you say. Let's be honest, what're the odds you're going to find a male model local to you who's a member of the community? If male models were plentiful here, you think we wouldn't see more of them making their own content?

"Well, at least he'd work for free", right? So that'd solve my budget issue? Hey, the women in this community charge for their time, what makes you think the dudes wouldn't? Especially if they were somehow in demand? If he truly were a male model, odds are he'd already have a partner and not be interested in "outing" himself when he could just do his own thing on the DL.

Besides, is he actually good-looking? You might think so, but...

Reason #6: Women are not Men.

One thing you learn pretty quickly is that women in general have very, very varied tastes in what they find attractive, and the odds are, you as a guy aren't going to be able to hire a male model who's appealing to that small fraction of women who want better-looking dudes in your videos. You'll have an easier time getting your friends to agree on pizza toppings. You might think it'd be as simple as hiring some ripped Chad with a twelve-pack and a jaw that could cut glass, but you would be wrong.

So yeah, you're basically asking producers to bring an unknown third party on set who's potentially going to torpedo your shoot and piss off a chunk of your customer base hoping to get an extra ten bucks. That's very much not worth it.

As with anything else in this industry, it's a business first and foremost. Nobody's telling you to buy videos with people in them you don't want to look at, but the least you can do is not get online and insult the people trying to make content for not being up to your standards. And if it matters that much to you, put your damn money where your mouth is and commission a custom.