# What percentage of the population has been in a porn movie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 3, 2017, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792 "2017-05-03T17:40:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/21 "2017-05-03T23:57:40Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I did see that. But I’m wondering what the OP means by “doing porn.” Private use? Yes, I think most adults know someone who has, at least in the US. Public? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s porn if it’s private. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/22 "2017-05-04T01:20:19Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > This website has had disclaimers stating that they are not responsible for trauma incurred by seeing pictures of your ancestors Doing It. > … Just like the pre-internet joke has it: Q: What two groups of people never have sex? A: Your parents and your children. Yeah, riiiiight. Suuure they don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/23 "2017-05-04T01:34:55Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I think it’s possible that young people who have grown with this widespread exposure to porn may be influenced by it in their own sex lives. I think it can normalize, in the eyes of those young people, extreme sex acts. Kids growing up with Pornhub, etc. may get a distorted idea of what normal sex is like. Possible? Already here. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/24 "2017-05-04T02:05:34Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > 8.7% I’d WAG more 0.69% … ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/25 "2017-05-04T02:37:14Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I don’t think it’s porn if it’s private. I think definitions will vary among people, hence my clarification. Unless I’m misunderstanding you, I personally don’t see a public vs private distinction. Homemade porn made for one’s own consumption is still porn. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/26 "2017-05-04T03:37:19Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I think definitions will vary among people, hence my clarification. Unless I’m misunderstanding you, I personally don’t see a public vs private distinction. Homemade porn made for one’s own consumption is still porn. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is. Fair enough. ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/27 "2017-05-04T03:59:10Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > What’s new as of 2005ish (or pick your own date) is widespread \*distribution \*of homemade porn. Which pretty well required the existence of vid-sharing websites and commercial porn websites to take off. > > I’d wager that sometime on the second day after Daguerre finished his invention the first dirty picture got taken. Which was only 40,000 years after the first caveman drew some porn in a cave. > > The urge isn’t new. The distribution tech is. 1. Mail Order and book stores didn’t have the reach of the internet, but they certainly distributed porn tapes - often in the tens of thousands or more per title. This includes amateur and home made. While much of what’s considered amateur isn’t exactly home made, you had people like Mike South (who has answered porn questions here) making movies in the early 90s and others long before him. Homegrown Video was established in 1982. They certainly released and distributed legit home made porn on a fairly large scale way back then. There were other amateurs and home made companies and individuals selling in stores and catalogs. Even for the internet… I remember back around 1994 or so there was a big controversy where I lived because a husband and wife made an “amateur wives” subscription website and they used the police car of a guy who was also a mayor in another town in one of their shoots. They got national publicity, had an online webring of sites along with other “wives,” a thriving membership site, forums, and advertised in the local paper for models. There weren’t tube sites yet, but there were amateurs naked online… everywhere. 1. Then these home made tape from the 1980s and before end up… on the internet. Just like music released before 2005 ended up on Youtube (or Napster, etc). You see home made videos from a long time ago online, including not only commercially released amateur home made porn but personal home movies. I have seen many an online porn video with the camcorder date stamped on it. As far as the OP, I believe the actual % is very small and I remember reading and replying to this exact question here before. The number of pro porn performers is very low, the number of home made tapes that were distributed online is a little bit higher, and the number of people who have made some sort of sex tape that is locked up in a safe or on a digital device but never distributed is fairly significant. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/28 "2017-05-04T05:20:22Z")
Back in even the 1990s, those video cameras were expensive. Not everyone had them. My folks didn’t own a camcorder, and lots of other folks didn’t. Plus the tapes were expensive. So filming a porno - which would require you to set up a tripod and plan it in advance and everything - I don’t think is something most couples would do. Now, well, I had a girl on top of me a few years ago. She just casually picked up her phone and pressed the record button while we were doing it. I felt uncomfortable - I wasn’t feeling camera ready - but I didn’t ask her to stop, so I’m sure there’s a shitty amateur video out there somewhere now. There’s so many that the odds of anyone recognizing me are zilch, especially since the video wasn’t exactly hot. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/29 "2017-05-04T06:55:25Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > People had been filming sex since home movie cameras. And before cameras one had to hire a little man on a stepladder doing rapid sketches. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/30 "2017-05-04T13:15:24Z")
Now that’s a Fermi problem I doubt you’ll get asked at a job interview. But when it does, and if he’s an applicant, **LSLGuy** is hired. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/31 "2017-05-04T15:41:46Z")
Perhaps not. The esteemed **Chronos** asserts I got the conclusion exactly backwards. Good math all the way to the goal line. My own goal line. Oops. No glory (or jam) for me today. ---
**Author:** ![yo\_han\_go](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yo_han_go/32/130_2.png) [@yo\_han\_go](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yo_han_go)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/32 "2017-05-04T22:06:54Z")
You guys going math on that GQ? Really? 😃 We’ll I (or my friend, I do not remember) did once stumble on some local face. If it adds numbers. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/33 "2017-05-04T22:59:20Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I don’t think it’s porn if it’s private. While we’re chasing definitions, I’ve also heard that a significant (maybe even a majority) of “amateur” porn was intended to be private, but then released either by “digital accident/crime” or by one of the parties without the consent of the others. Not sure if that should count or not. Or at the very least there’s two questions: What percentage has been in sexually explicit publicly-available video material, and what percentage of those _intended_ for it to be public at the time of shooting? I’m not sure if I buy the argument that the second number is relatively low or not, but I’ve definitely heard it claimed. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/34 "2017-05-04T23:01:02Z")
> [@TimeWinder](#): > > While we’re chasing definitions, I’ve also heard that a significant (maybe even a majority) of “amateur” porn was intended to be private, but then released either by “digital accident/crime” or by one of the parties without the consent of the others. Not sure if that should count or not. IMHO, sex videos don’t become porn until available to the masses. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2017, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/35 "2017-05-04T23:47:16Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I think it’s possible that young people who have grown with this widespread exposure to porn may be influenced by it in their own sex lives. I think it can normalize, in the eyes of those young people, extreme sex acts. Kids growing up with Pornhub, etc. may get a distorted idea of what normal sex is like. Or we’ll be the old fuddy-duddies with an outdated and distorted idea of what normal sex is like. Kind of like how our parents’ music sucks. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/36 "2017-05-05T00:08:26Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > Or we’ll be the old fuddy-duddies with an outdated and distorted idea of what normal sex is like. I’m referring more to the dynamic between the man and the woman found in most hetero porn. In most porn (or at least the most popular stuff) women are depicted as existing solely to please men. I don’t think that normalizing such notions would be healthy or progressive in any way. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/37 "2017-05-05T02:06:32Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Perhaps not. > > The esteemed **Chronos** asserts I got the conclusion exactly backwards. Good math all the way to the goal line. My own goal line. Oops. > > No glory (or jam) for me today. Porn yesterday and porn tomorrow. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/38 "2017-05-05T04:31:47Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I think it’s possible that young people who have grown with this widespread exposure to porn may be influenced by it in their own sex lives. I think it can normalize, in the eyes of those young people, extreme sex acts. Kids growing up with Pornhub, etc. may get a distorted idea of what normal sex is like. I’ve heard stories from sources of assorted levels of reliability that there is some truth in this. For example, people who didn’t know that pubic hair is normal in adults, and people who are wondering why they aren’t able to have children, and it turns out that the sex acts they engage in aren’t conducive to the process. 😕 This includes young women being forcibly anally raped and not knowing that there was anything wrong with what had happened to them. They thought this was how it was SUPPOSED to be done, and men who also think this is normal. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/39 "2017-05-05T05:27:06Z")
Supposedly a few of the short-time places in Bangkok secretly filmed room occupants. If true, there are quite a few guys who never knew. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2017, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792/40 "2017-05-05T12:30:17Z")
> [@Pilgrim\_Shadow](#): > > In the future, everybody will be in a porno for 15 minutes. > 😃 Or in my case, forty seconds, tops. Regards, Shodan [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-the-population-has-been-in-a-porn-movie/785792.md?page=3)