"Okay, this is too much" (the Reclusive Leftist re: Alas & the porn host)

[bloom]

I haven't been reading Alas these days, either ( I got turned off when he was trying to insist that there was no vote stealing/manipulation) - but I have linked to his blog in the past - so I figured I would give you the update. I used to think it was a good feminist blog. Forget that.

From Violet Socks:

I stopped reading Alas months ago because the anti-feminist quotient there was just too high. So I’m just now discovering what some of you may already know: Barry sold his domain to a pornographer, so now his blog is hosted alongside hard-core porn reviews. The deal is that the huge traffic to Alas — feminist traffic, generated by people who have built up that readership over years — drives up the search engine rankings for the pornographer. (Heart has a fuller explanation of the deal.)

Barry didn’t bother to tell any of his readers about this until someone discovered the links and asked him what the fuck was going on. Even now I’m not sure most of his readers are aware of it, since Barry’s explanatory post didn’t allow comments and so rapidly sank to the bottom of the list.

I think this is absolutely vile.

Some people are drawing a connection between this and Playboy’s recent endorsement of Pandagon, which is understandable given the timing. It’s like the porn Borg ship has arrived and is assimilating the feminist blogworld. But Pandagon didn’t solicit the Playboy endorsement — that’s kind of an important point. And Amanda’s flippant response, while not exactly the anti-Playboy manifesto I might wish, is nevertheless in keeping with her stated opinions and longstanding persona.

This thing with Alas, though…this is sneaky. Back-door selling out to pornographers. All those feminist women posting to Alas, all engaging in heartfelt discussion…while unbeknownst to them, every bit of their traffic is driving up the business for exactly the kind of hard-core pornography that many of them have spent their lives opposing....

http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=411