KittyhawkMontrose 2025-05-25 21:37:31

@BrandyBuizel Brother, I get it. But you need to realize this place is Playboy: a lot of ass with a little class. Nothing wrong with that. As aka1 has pointed out, a lot of the 20th Century’s greatest writers had their work in there, some of the best photographers and artists as well. But they all accepted that their masterpieces were next to Miss January’s trimmed snatch whereas you are like the guy at the party saying it’s more about the articles.

I think it’s fine Newgrounds is a place for people to enjoy the finer things in life, which are varied like cartoon porn, jazz, dubstep, student films, games about social topics, furry tea parties, someone’s thoughts on animation, etc. Why does it need to give up that edge that sets it apart from YouTube and X? I mean, I came here because I wanted to publish comics and games that had a bit of a sexy angle and not deal with the censorship that’s dealt out elsewhere. Remember when Magibauble got his video taken down by YouTube, and even age restricted and demonetized with changes made? That didn't happen at Newgrounds.

Having porn and shitposts keeps the riff raff out, keeps them from being all moralizing and removing content left and right. Embrace it. Be more like 4chan. This place isn’t your CV. It’s your Beatnik Coffee Shop where the cool people hang out and have fun. Well, most of the time. We know what happened in the Art Forum. :)

That all said, thanks for being an NG advocate. You are bringing some good talent here. I’m doing my best too. 💪

YendorTOO 2025-05-25 21:48:02

@BrandyBuizel I like to think there is a nice balance between porn and not porn, statistics not withstanding.

BrandyBuizel 2025-05-25 21:48:27

@KittyhawkMontrose I don't think you guys are actually reading the words I'm writing or at least not understanding my view as well as you think you do.

I'm not saying lose the edge, but despite the massive amount of traffic toward A rated content the actual number and diversity of submissions in all age groups and artistic mediums makes calling NG "a porn site" massively discrediting to all that other content thriving on the platform and further reinforces an unfair stigma against NG that's been circulated for decades :/

If we want NG to thrive then it's on us as a community to show outsiders the full breadth of movies, art, games, audio, writing and more the site has to offer. Right now I think that means resisting the narrative that Newgrounds is JUST a porn website. I want to attract new creators to NG then the site can speak for itself once they're here

KittyhawkMontrose 2025-05-25 22:05:54

@BrandyBuizel I get it. It's like you're in the literary section of the magazine. It's your job to get the best talent and sell that to book stores. I also love the literary section, but I'm in the Little Annie Fanny dept. cooking up the next sexy adventure for the readers. We can do both, but you need to remember what's selling the magazine, or site in this case.

You accept that the numbers are skewed towards porn. So call it what it is, a porn site, and then you can start winning people over. Say "Yeah, it's a porn site, but that also lets you have more freedom." People are CRAVING that rn. YT is overzealous on the removals. Comic sites are really touchy about Mature comics. Social media aside from X will ban you in a hot minute rn for having a gun or cigarette in the frame. Let's embrace that we have this beautiful porn site that also lets us shitpost and be ourselves.

KingCrowned 2025-05-25 23:15:23

On luigi being a gooble site: To the layluigi (ie your gooble), a gooble site is a luigi that has gooble. To a luigi, a gooble site is a luigi they go to for gooble. To the luigi, a gooble site is a luigi that willingly goobles luigi. To the luigivestor a gooble site is a luigi that derives the majority of its gooble from luigi. You are luigititled to your own goobletsy luigifinition while you gooble out to luigiramore or whatever, but at some luigit you're just making gooblemunication luigificult. If you really want to goobluigi, I suggest luigibracing gooble like luigiboy NG is "luigi than" or "luigi just goobleother" gooble site. Anyluigi else underluigis the anti-gooble luigisage by being so luigily out of gooble you seem retarded. luigi is literally goobleX the traffic. Not gooble, not luigi times, not goobluigi, Mario. Luigi is not a gooble luigistaurant just because two gooble a luigi order goobluigi.

ADR3-N 2025-05-26 02:21:23

These are shocking numbers. I mean, not in the sense that the internet as a whole is majority porn and porn traffic. But that porn does better than the frontpage is REAL.

Damn, I should get into porn haha. I'm not against it. I do music for me, voice acting for fun, and sound engineering because I can. Doing that for tasteful adult rated stuff would not bother me. Unsure if it would bother my fans is the only issue. Though I probably could make a separate account.

I don't have a pro or anti stance against adult creators. If it pays the bills here on NG, I'm very happy to hear that. And for consumers, as long as you're not gooning and cooming the whole day long, I think you're fine. I've fought against porn addiction myself most of my life. Got exposed to it before I even found NG in the first place, and that was... over 20 years ago now.

But back to these stats. And how the FP works -- yes, you're correct. We go out of our way not to feature porn on the FP because porn has no problem getting traffic. That may be part of why the forum is moderated more stringently against NSFW as well. There is absolutely a double standard. A 18+ locked adult forum would solve the latter issue.

The former, I don't know if it needs solving. We try to feature stuff that's quality but would otherwise get ignored, so in that sense the feature is serving its purpose. But I begin to wonder if dividing features by rating or type would work better. Think. We have 3D anims, 2D anims, RPGs, platformers, adult stuff.

I mention this because people tend to come to NG repeatedly for the same GENRE of content. Whether that's porn, or the other categories I mentioned, they try to find more of the same. Perhaps if the features were sorted in that way on the FP, they might perform better than they currently do, and we could feel more confident featuring very high quality adult stuff as well.

ADR3-N 2025-05-26 02:23:03

@CrimsonKero YT is a bit of a slop fest to be honest -- but that depends on the individual user's algorithm. NG doesn't really have that minus your faves.

So, NG is defined more so by what users are actually searching for and viewing than these algorithmic personalized recommendation sites.

ADR3-N 2025-05-26 02:47:04

@BrandyBuizel Solid take. I'm neither pro nor anti porn production/consumption. I think everything has its place.

After these statistics, I'm leaning more toward the idea that NG is a proper adult site -- based on what its users are consuming -- but not so much that it's first and foremost an adult site. Tom's decision to quietly raise the signup age lends further to that idea.

But that's not why the majority of users I know come to NG. Most of my fans for example are obviously people who love indie music. And that's awesome. But we've also all probably peeked at the pron once, or twice, or ten times, haha.

Everyone is just afraid to leave reviews, lest it be thrown in your face what you were supposedly gooning to. As if there is no other reason to look at an adult piece, artistically speaking.

Sometimes, I'll look out of curiosity -- how well will this person animate the scene? What role does music play in the piece? How good is the voice acting or SFX if any? What are the views and the score? Essentially, getting at what sort of bias do we have as a community for or against porn, in terms of scoring. These stats lay it bare.

Your comment made me think. What's the cost-benefit ratio of NG being recognized as an adult content site?

The one good thing would be less stigma for adult creators, who bring in a lot of traffic -- and less stigma for users consuming it, increasing community interaction. The con, it may be blocked by some service providers, in some countries (where it's probably blocked already for pronz), and in schools.

But that never stopped me tbh.

As for barrier to entry, I'm less concerned about prude browsers (unless you mean the people themselves). Any negative publicity would actually lend itself to new users discovering the site.

Back in the day, controversial content like Torture Game 2, Club a Seal, Assassin, and so on drove heavy traffic to NG. Embracing all the freaks out there in the portals might be a boon.

If anyone cancels us, the Streisand effect exists.

ADR3-N 2025-05-26 03:46:15

@KittyhawkMontrose The only thing that (in the face of these overwhelming statistics) stops me from calling NG a porn site outright, is that the vast majority of submissions and activity I see are E to M rated.

Maybe the art portal has more A rated than below A, I don't know. Out of all the portals, I visit Art the least.

But this is why I would advocate that we have a porngrounds subdomain. We would then have a porn site AND a SFW site. In the meantime, a proper adult forum would be nice.

As long as adult content is spread all over the other creative boards, the regular joes see it as different and other. As such, it gets skirted around, shamed, swept under the rug, and wagged the finger at.

That's unfortunate, because it's not like there is NO artistic value in adult content, or that SFW is immune to the slop factor. I see a lot more low quality content outside of A rated than within it, actually, by virtue of sheer numbers.

As for what NG is, to the gooner, it's a porn site. To the creative, it's an indie content site. To GD players, it's a level jukebox. To kids, it's probably FNF and... a reason why the log-in feature for adult stuff is necessary. Basically, NG is what you make of it -- and a hefty slice of hentai.

But there's a reason people come here rather than YT, PornHub, and Rule34. It's because NG is the last bastion of creator-audience personal communications and community-driven content ranking.

Look at our userpages, Takeover Tuesday, the Frontpage, and the Under Judgement system. This is the only site on the web that heavily facilitates personal communication, filters its content entirely based on author's tags, comments, and score -- AND it also allows porn. That's pretty darn unique.

But I agree, we could do a lot more to embrace our wild side. Clearly, it's what keeps people coming back.

Yatsufusa 2025-05-26 04:49:01

I would slogan-ize it like this:
"Newgrounds! – Not 'just' an adult site..."

@alsoknownas1
Thank you so much for sharing! ♥ Even on the most surface level and without taking full advantage of the treasure chest of data provided, this has been highly educational and enjoyable for me.

KittyhawkMontrose 2025-05-26 05:10:19

@ADR3-N I think if you separate Newgrounds, while the forums would be fine because hardly any NSFW people go in there, a subdomain for Porngrounds would instantly eclipse the SFW section, and the SFW section would start to die as a result of it. I know I'd be hanging out more in Porngrounds and producing more for it as a result. I'd be directing everyone over there too, along with every other NSFW artist. Explaining there's a SFW section would be confusing as I'd get comments like "Where's the porn?" if they accidentally go over there, so I'd just direct them to my X account for SFW since I would still be allowed to mix NSFW in there.

I think maybe a compromise in the forums would be OK, but keep Newgrounds Newgrounds, not Porngrounds and SFWgrounds.

ADR3-N 2025-05-26 06:05:52

@KittyhawkMontrose You're probably right about separating domains negatively affecting SFW traffic. I do wonder though, how many pron-surfers on NG are sticking around to find anything else?

Does that number look anything like those of porn sites? For instance, how many of PH's users stumble on non-porn gaming video on the platform and then begin to seek it?

It does happen that SFW content is occasionally submitted to NSFW websites, but I doubt most folks habitually look for it there. Often it's the other way around, mostly SFW browsers get curious and check out saucy content.

Moderately related to intentional browsing and separate site sections, we used to have something called collections. I don't know if we still do.

From what I recall, we had a hentai section, the dating sims, roleplaying games, dressups, and so on. It was possible to find these games/movies manually, but they were hand-selected for these sections, which displayed prominently in the lefthand panel under authors and content attributions. It drove heavy traffic to them, without affecting the rest of the site to my knowledge.

It would be possible to make porngrounds a thing without a separate subdomain. Like a section in the header or footer. If we did that and moved the adult stuff over there, we wouldn't even really need the adult filter -- except for the freakiest non-porn content out on the site, which is... also there.

But regardless of how this problem is solved, it would be nice to see NSFW given some pride of place and dignity. Despite the fact that few want to talk about it openly, it does in fact pay the bills. And besides, almost all the NSFW artists and animators I have seen on this site are far better than I could ever dream of being. And much better than I have seen elsewhere on the web, to boot.

BrandyBuizel 2025-05-26 08:15:02

@ADR3-N yea referring to prude browsers i mean users: peers i got to join the site based on its other merits and then later some actually branched out to trying NSFW content in some form because it was slowly destigmatized for them through osmosis. Just being around the site long enough the culture on NG can speak for itself, but we gotta get them here first

Everybody has a story on why and how they first joined NG and I always see myself as an opportunity to be that story for someone new

BrandyBuizel 2025-05-26 08:26:10

@ADR3-N I don't see a need for a separation of web domains but i like the rest of what you said!