Mainstream: “The ideas, attitudes, or activities that are shared by most people and regarded as normal or conventional.”
Mainstream is a mean word, mainly because it is very likely that something like a ‘mainstream thing’ doesn’t even exist. The word is used often ironically as a devaluation of something which cannot be criticized otherwise. To say it clearly: mainstream is most of the time used for creations of highest quality! Of reliably highest quality!
In Nude Art we know a bit more than just a handful of paysites who provide content of extremely high quality standards! The photography is excellent, the models unearthly and photo sets and movies are a delight to watch. Consequently those are the sites which are the most successful, with highest numbers of paying members and they are the ones, which attract new people interested in Erotic Art first. Those sites provide that Erotic Art in the Internet actually exists! We should never forget THAT!
Shooting for those sites requires the creatives being informed about the standards. Photographers and models know what to do, when they work for the biggest network in Nude Art Internet business. And also what to do NOT! And the things they are NOT allowed to do will be the things which will evoke the use of the mean M word! A lack of explicitness, black&white, tattoos (Yup, wrote about that one already! Check my other texts!). Those are the most common taboos. There will be others, less obvious ones, resulting from the experiences site runners have with reactions from users or caused by the aesthetical guidelines, the concept of Art, a site has. Taboos stand in direct conflict to the freedom of art! But the mentioned taboos, when featured nonetheless, will also regularly get the lowest rating from the fans! To get fans attracted permanently, it is not too devious to neglect the use of black&white photography, even when this is seen as a most classic, most artful and most masterful form of photography by creatives themselves.
It needs the artful inspiration of creatives, photographers and models alike, to make their work attractive under the statutes of the particular sites they work for. Performance skills of the models are important words here as well as location scouting. And also: are there classic shooting topics which will always and forever work for the fans? I talk about bed scenes, wardrobe and vanity scenes, living room scenes and chair or sofa scenes here. Is there a moment in time thinkable, when everything which can be told about nude women on beds has been told in abundance? Me personally I confess that I will never get tired of bed scenes. Studio scenes with chairs instead I think I’ve seen already too often. But that will only count unless there is a new studio scene with a chair in a way I’ve never seen one before.
There is a friction existing between the very high quality and glamour of a 'mainstream' site and the danger of repetitiveness, maybe because artists feel too restricted in a corsage of quality standards. This friction can be solved, when artists can outlive their free-spirited creativity on other playgrounds. Other, maybe smaller sites with more freedom for the creatives, but lesser quality and business standards? A huge variety of sites with a likewise big diversity of content may result in competition, but in the end consumers profit from the diversity of content, it satisfies them. And - we all know that - satisfaction makes good customers. Investing and staying, or at least returning. So maybe the topic in question is not really 'the pros and cons of mainstream content', but how it can be achieved, that all creatives, models, photographers and site runners can 1. outlive their free creativity, 2. defend their art concepts 3. support each other for the richness and diversity of one of the newest and most beautiful artforms?
What can the BIG sites do for the survival of 'smaller sites', even when competitors? How much creative time do models and photographers agree to spend working for the BIG mainstream sites for the benefit of their individual creativity on other playgrounds (yes, OF too!) being promoted by them? How to make consumers satisfied (aka paying members) and keep the full diversity of Erotic Art affordable for them? Important questions to be solved in the coming years. With 'collaboration' being a new keyword, the future of Nude Art is just beginning.