# Has Playboy gotten any better? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 5, 2017, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057 "2017-02-05T12:46:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/21 "2017-02-14T17:25:09Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > “A Sound of Thunder” was published in Colliers. Maybe Hef got sloppy seconds. My mistake. It did appear in the June 1956 edition of Playboy, but that was four years after it had appeared in Colliers. I was unaware of its earlier appearance. It was also in Planet Stories for January 1954. [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?61488](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?61488) ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/22 "2017-02-14T19:44:21Z")
I haven’t read Playboy in a long time, but when I did, the interviews were really good, the Adviser was interesting (if sometimes wrong), there was always pretty decent fiction, and there was even some pretty smart social/political journalism. They may have marketed the brand as glamour & nude women, but there was a really good, smart magazine under there once. By comparison, Maxim was too many bullet points and kind of lowbrow. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/23 "2017-02-14T20:48:49Z")
Interesting thing – if you look it up on the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base, Playboy has a listing for every single year from its founding in 1953 until 2002. It has had at least one issue every year – and generally many more than one – in which a piece of speculative fiction has appeared. Most of these are original, although they’ve reprinted, as with _a Sound of Thunder_ above. They also published _Fahrenheit 451_ in three parts, but it was after the book publication. [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?10978](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?10978) There are entries for several later years, too: 2006 2008 - 2011 It’s sad that the SF entries peter out and then stop. I assume it’s because Hefner stopped editing, and his influence wore off. There’s only one entry for 2011 – it’s by Margaret Atwood (!), but it’s an essay on the covers of **weird Tales** , not fiction. In any event, at least it had a good run. Playboy Press published six anthologies of SF stories in 1971, and a couple of earlier ones in the 1960s. I’ve got some of these. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/24 "2017-02-16T06:56:35Z")
Playboy’s marketing was perfect. It had just enough top-quality material that you didn’t feel embarrassed buying it or have guest see it in your magazine rack, but it had enough nudity to attract men for that reason. It was the ‘acceptable’ porn of its era. But Playboy eventually got serious competition from the likes of Maxim, which was ‘acceptable’ by providing enough frat-boy and gearhead content that you could plausibly buy it for that. That ate into the portion of Playboy’s audience that prefered Ferraris to Norman Mailer. But the real killer has been the availabilty of embarassment-free porn and titillation of all varieties on the Internet. So I can kind of understand the desire to change the direction of the mag. I guess that wasn’t working for them. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/25 "2017-02-16T16:50:09Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > …uninterrupted by tits… Band name! ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/26 "2017-02-16T22:59:40Z")
Fascinating fact: The ‘uninterrupted by tits’ era is ending next month, see the link below. I remember there was a lot of odd science fiction and some other fiction that got published in old playboy, there really were reasons to read it for the articles. > **[Don’t Believe Playboy’s Latest Attempt to Pretend Its Nudity Is Progressive...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/02/dont-believe-playboys-latest-attempt-to-pretend-its-nudity-is-progressive-and-cool.html)** > > After a year of covered-up nipples, naked bodies are back in the magazine. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/27 "2017-02-16T23:37:21Z")
Well FWIW it looks like Slate is not getting any better either. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/28 "2017-02-17T00:14:24Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Band name! Their first album could be called “Brassiere, My Dear” or “La-Di-Bra”. And Playboy should be what it was founded to be: A lifestyle magazine for straight men aspiring to be intellectual, cultured, and well-rounded, which stakes out a specific kind of pornography curated to maintain a certain tone. There’s a difference between curated and sorted, after all: A perfectly sorted collection can vary wildly in quality and style, whereas curation implies a strong editorial voice. That’s rarer, and is precisely the value a magazine should add. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/29 "2017-02-17T00:57:52Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Their first album could be called “Brassiere, My Dear” or “La-Di-Bra”… Maybe “Elastic Ladyland” or “Boobs Next.” ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/30 "2017-02-17T01:54:19Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Maybe “Elastic Ladyland” or “Boobs Next.” “In Her Cups” or “UnderWiFi” or “Hooked On Her” ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/31 "2017-02-17T16:44:27Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Gahan is still around! May be retired, though…haven’t seen any of his work for the past year or two. I heard a couple days ago his health had taken a turn for the worse. He’s 86. I can’t imagine being that funny for that long. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/32 "2017-02-17T17:00:38Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > I heard a couple days ago his health had taken a turn for the worse. He’s 86. Nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/33 "2017-02-17T17:23:09Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Well FWIW it looks like Slate is not getting any better either. Oddly, I read them because they’re bad enough that I get annoyed by their writing and go read the real story they link to to ‘prove’ them wrong, it actually gets me to read real news that I’d otherwise find boring. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2017, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/34 "2017-02-25T22:03:47Z")
> [@](#): > > _The Wall Street Journal_ announced Friday that the daily newspaper will resume featuring nude photographs after a failed yearlong experiment with nudity-free issues. “While we remain committed to updating the paper for a contemporary audience, we’ve come to realize that tasteful nudity has always been part of what makes _The Wall Street Journal_ so beloved by our readers,” said editor-in-chief Gerard Baker, adding that beginning with the following week’s Monday edition, the Journal’s signature pictorials of topless and fully naked women will return alongside its award-winning reporting, business-focused news coverage, and weekly columns from Peggy Noonan and Holman W. Jenkins Jr. -‘Wall Street Journal’ Reintroduces Nudes After Failed Yearlong Experimentlink spoilered because WSJ nudes possibly NSFW: > **[‘Wall Street Journal’ Reintroduces Nudes After Failed Yearlong Experiment](https://www.theonion.com/wall-street-journal-reintroduces-nudes-after-failed-y-1819579662?utm_medium=RSS)** > > NEW YORK—Reversing the highly publicized and controversial change to its pages, The Wall Street Journal announced Friday that the daily newspaper will resume featuring nude photographs after a failed yearlong experiment with nudity-free issues.... ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2017, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057/35 "2017-02-25T23:39:48Z")
That’s not that clever, but I still laughed. I was going to say that of course it doesn’t seem realistic because WSJ doesn’t publish photos. But–huh. I remember when WSJ didn’t print photographs at all. I guess the internet changed things. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-playboy-gotten-any-better/779057.md?page=1)