Valleywag: Nsfw

Meet Silicon Valley's very own fight club (NSFW)

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:00:00 PDT

Why do men in Silicon Valley join Apple engineer Gints Klimanis's fight club? In this clip, Limanis tells ESPN:

Silicon Valley is just a facade, constructed to just allow us to work together. But underneath, as an individual you have the caveman nature.

Jeremy Schaap's full report — perhaps unwise to view in your sanitized cubicles — is embedded below. It exposes a group which is not quite the "apocalyptic death cult" some of our readers have been hoping for lately, but it's close enough to satiate your blood lust for now.

Facebook NSFW! Julia Allison and other pics from Randi Zuckerberg's Vegas bachelorette

Owen Thomas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:20:00 PDT

Can you imagine a photo op that Julia Allison wouldn't attend? What happens in Vegas goes instantly to Valleywag, Allison knows, and so she flew to Las Vegas to attend Randi Zuckerberg's bachelorette party. Zuckerberg, whose wig-and-sunglasses disguise did not deter the Web's paparazzi, is a budding Web video star, Facebook's marketing director, and, unlike younger brother Mark, an actual Harvard graduate. In what's surely a first, Allison, the tech-obsessed TV personality, managed not to hog the camera; she's in only one of the shots. Facebook's Meagan Marks also appears sporting what looks like a freshly acquired head wound. A slip and fall on the dance floor? Our informants are investigating. In the meantime, enjoy the evidence of Zuckerberg's bacchanal. A warning: If plastic sex toys offend your coworkers, one photo may be unsuitable for office computers.

Update: Julia Allison has posted another photo of herself with Zuckerberg. Has no one ever told her that only the bride wears white?

Screenshots of Facebook's five most ridiculous ads (NSFW)

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:40:00 PDT

New Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg did not get the job because she has any grand vision for the company. The self-described "tough-love leader" is at Facebook to clean things up. She can start with Facebook's messy ads. Sometimes they're laughably mistargeted; at other times, they're abundantly unsafe for the office; and on occasion, they actually cause Facebook to lose clients. The five most inappropriate Facebook ads our tipsters have told us about, below.

In August 2007, Facebook lost U.K. advertisers including First Direct Bank, Vodafone, Virgin Media, the U.K.'s Automobile Association, Halifax Bank, and Prudential after displaying their company logos on pages like this one, the group home for Aryan Satan Worshipers. Notice the ad for ~~Vodafone's~~ France Telecom's Orange on the bottom left. Facebook eventually decided to U.K. advertisers to opt out of promoting their products next to neo-Nazi content.

Why does anyone sign on to Facebook? For hot "cam to cam" action, of course. This ad came out just as Facebook started to take real heat over its Beacon project. Mm. Something about the photo reminds me of my early childhood. And also makes me hungry.

This ad is missing a company logo. At first we thought it might be American Apparel ad but the models aren't strung out enough. Our second guess based on the first photo: Preparation-H.

This ad came out just before Christmas. Facebook didn't bother to "Santa-tize" it, so we did the honors.

Either Facebook ad-targeting technology isn't quite up to snuff yet, or the guys in Facebook's ad-targeting department totally missed the last season of Will & Grace.

Yahoo Video classifies porn as "Health and Beauty"

Jordan Golson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:54 PDT

Yahoo's recently launched video site is having a difficult time catching up to Google's YouTube. It did find one way to get pageviews though: porn. As of this writing, Yahoo has a pair of hardcore porn movies hosted in the Yahoo Video Health & Beauty section. Click on to see some mostly-safe-for-work screenshots and links to the not-safe-for-work videos in question.

Each of the videos have received more than 5,000 views, suggesting they've been around for quite a while. Other videos on that page have view numbers in the single digits. I guess Yahoo has the same video filtering problems that YouTube has.

NSFW takes a blow

Melissa Gira Grant — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:30:18 PST

Calling for an end to "NSFW", the "Pink Ghetto Blaster" panelists at SXSW questioned why all blogging about sex is classified as "inappropriate" when playing a Flash game — or reading Valleywag during billable hours — isn't "safe for work," either. "It's wrong when showing an interest in human sexuality can cost you a job," says panelist Elizabeth Wood. We can't disagree — think how messy it gets around the office when sex is your job?

Gene Simmons sex tape leaked on Web (NSFW)

Owen Thomas — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:06:28 PST

"Watch the sex tape Gene doesn't want you to see," GenesSecret.com promises. The website purportedly hosts a NSFW sex tape of Kiss frontman Gene Simmons. Leave aside the question of whether anyone wants to see Simmons in flagrante. Does Simmons himself really object to the site? Nothing revives the Q factor of an aging rocker like a bit of scandal. Since he's no longer recording, just touring, he doesn't have a skittish label to appease. And thanks to the Internet, he doesn't have to rely on the tabloids to get his name out. Welcome to the age of DIY career makeovers. Is it really Simmons? Judge for yourself from these excerpts in which his face is most visible:

Update: Gene Simmons's lawyer has confirmed the sex tape's authenticity in a cease-and-desist letter sent to Valleywag. With Simmons's identity established, we've shortened the excerpts to the bare minimum: Simmons's face, unquestionable; the activity he's engaging in, unmentionable.

Mashable's female readers like to get naked

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:20:38 PST

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore is "hot," StyleDiary's Patricia Handschiegel told me the other night at dinner. Overhearing us, another chimed in. "Oh yes, he's hot," she said. Keep your pants on, girls! Literally. Cashmore doesn't have to worry about Handschiegel stripping — she's a lady — but a screenshot of "recent visitors" who have built profiles on the site indicates some of Cashmore's readers aren't. After the jump, see their profile pages. A warning: Not safe for work.

Here's Mashable reader Mrs. Hot Sticky Wet Panties. We recommend Gold Bond for that problem, but maybe they don't sell that in "USA, Ohio, wet panty land." Click on the image if you really need to expand it further.

Here we have KL Hot Babes Escort, located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pete looks like he doesn't know why he' friends with KL. Pete, it's the pageviews.

Facebook porn ads getting more graphic yet

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:20:16 PST

The first time we noted Facebook's porn problem, a commenter responded, "That isn't actually full frontal nudity, though." Well, 0x6772, whoever you are, your wish is Facebook's dirty command. Here's the latest pornographic ad Facebook failed to keep off its servers.

Okay, we lost our nerve and Santa-tized the image for your protection. We'll leave the original to your imagination.

Yahoo suggests NSFW video

Jordan Golson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:06:39 PST

A tipster sent us this interesting screenshot. When you search for the word "link" on Yahoo, the search engine helpfully suggests a few "related" links. For those who don't know, "2 girls 1 cup" is an outrageous, disgusting, horrendous Not Safe For Work ^TM video that has been making its way around the Internet the past few months. It is so bad, we won't link to it, but here is a video of someone watching "2 girls 1 cup" for the first time.

Update: Yahoo has changed the related links to something less ... controversial.

Fark applies for "Not Safe For Work" trademark

Jordan Golson — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:20:05 PST

Fark.com LLC, Drew Curtis' company which operates the zany headlines site, has applied for a trademark on "not safe for work" with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Given how long "NSFW" has been around, we suspect it might be difficult getting the mark granted, never mind how Fark founder Drew Curtis proposes to enforce it. We suspect it might be part of a prank, but who knows? Only Drew. Maybe if we send him a beer, he'll spill the beans.

Photo site shares NSFW images

Owen Thomas — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:57:44 PDT

I've always wondered what kind of people use Zooomr, the also-ran photo-sharing site run by underaged and reportedly credit-deprived developer Kris Tate. Apparently, people who feel they've got something to share with the rest of the world. Something very personal, and something they're attached to. Intimately. Recent visitors to the site's "Discover" page were greeted by a collage of images that included some unpleasant and definitely not safe for work contributions. If you're easily shocked, move along now. But if you're curious to see what Tate apparently considers acceptable on his "No Limits Photo Sharing" site, click through to the jump.

(Photo of Kris Tate by geodog)

Genitals, guns, and merchandise in Second Life

Chris Mohney — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:20:14 PST

After a couple previous visits into Second Life, I decided to give it one more try. Several people sent in suggestions for places to visit, and I hit as many as I could stand while accomplishing a few other objectives. This time, it's all about penises, nudity, sex, guns, politics, virtual artistry, and so forth. These are, after all, the specialties of Second Life. Note that both the subject matter and visual material that follow are in no way safe for work. The report and a few choice pics are after the jump, and there's also a full gallery. Consider yourself warned.

For the most part, I quickly abandoned my plan to check out more Second Life incarnations of real entities. They're just too boring for words. As discussed before, no one seems to really go to them except for scheduled events. So I went with the first travel tip I received for reliable crowds — a nude beach.

Much as I enjoyed floating around like a naked beach messiah, the naughty thrill of a nude beach lacks something when you don't have any genitals. In fact, very few people were naked at all, genitals or not. One woman was bound up in a giant blood-red antebellum hoop skirt. When I asked if maybe she was overdressed, she responded, "Do you want me to have you banned?" Sheesh. There were a lot of people at the beach disco, including a gyrating superhero guy who kept shouting "WHOOO WANTS TO HAVE CHILDRENS WITH SUPERMAN". Not I. However, Superman had a point. I couldn't have childrens with anyone until I bought a penis, which I embarrassingly failed to do before. So it's off to the cock shoppe(s).

There are many, many penises to buy in Second Life. (For snapshots of me trying the penises on and activating their various "features," you'll have to see the gallery.) Walking around the usual big empty box-house filled with ad-splattered cubes, my eye was drawn to a solid-gold penis with flames dancing around the head. And only L$150! I had over a thousand Linden-bucks for signing on as a "premiere" subscriber, so this seemed like a good investment. Unfortunately, the gold cock never becomes flaccid, making it problematic for polite society. Plus, the flames weren't all that impressive. It looked more like the penis had a sort of orange miasma emanating from its tip. Not so hot.

I ended up going with the HUD-controlled supercock mentioned previously. It allowed me to "arouse" or "relax" myself on a sliding scale, plus cum or pee on command. This peen even came with three programmed masturbation sequences, including autofellatio. The cum was voluminous, the pee torrential and sickly green. What more could any man desire?

That mission accomplished, I needed to get my mind out of the gutter. SL aficionado Wagner James Au had sent me a best-of list of locations to visit, starting with an elaborate functioning ecosystem. As soon as I teleported in, the first thing I saw was a naked woman standing expectantly at the ready. Not sure if this was part of the ecosystem, I fumbled with my new penis's HUD display, but she turned away in disinterest before I could virtually whip it out. Oh well. The ecosystem island is a verdant, trippy jungle, and no, I did not take the tour. However, I was impressed by the giant blue potbellied wolf avatar that was walking around the island. He had on some awesome pants.

At Au's suggestion I visited several other SL highlight locations. There was the futuristic anime shopping city, the futuristic dystopian shopping city, and the medieval combat shopping city. All sold lots of clothes and furniture. However, while exploring the medieval combat shopping city, I remembered that I wanted to get some kind of gun to go with my new penis. I popped off to various gun stores, only to be amazed at the prices. The cheapest guns cost more than the most spectacular penises. Make of that what you will. Fortunately, I discovered two things. Number one, there are several freebie warehouses that give out crappy free items, including guns. And number two, it turns out I did in fact have a John Edwards presidential campaign t-shirt in my inventory.

Badass as I looked in my Edwards tee, M60 machine gun, tighty whities, and Tevas, the gun was not very satisfying. It made shooting sounds, but I couldn't ever shoot things or people since I wasn't in a violence-permitted area. In fact, the gun would spit out little error-message balloons. Not so intimidating. I stowed the gun, then decided I liked this new look of mine. Time to kick back, chill out, and find some new pals.

One of Wagner James Au's other recommendations was the Block, a city-themed shopping city which is sort of like a Broadway metropolitan set dressed by Urban Outfitters. The social aspect of the place was heavily emphasized though, so in I went. Of course, there was not a soul in sight. I wandered all over town on foot (flight was disabled), seeing no one. Finally I went to the coffeehouse, lounged in a puffy chair, and waited for someone to appear. No one did. And yes, I'm a little ashamed to say that I started playing with my new penis. When you get that bored, you might as well drop all pretense and just head to the sex clubs.

I am not exaggerating when I say that the sex clubs were the most consistently populated areas I visited in Second Life. I raced through about a half-dozen, just to see if any were different. Aside from cosmetic theming, most are not. I ended up stopping at the most pathetic, a barely-constructed box housing various sex beds, racks, chairs, and toys. Casual conversation was discouraged. I asked one male figure, sitting alone and masturbating, if he wanted to talk about what he was doing here. He said he would talk if we fucked, went into an appearance-editing trance, and suddenly became a voluptuous black woman. I retreated, and he/she strapped himself/herself into a rack. As for myself, I couldn't resist trying the "giant vagina," which was something like a big pink kidney bean. You inserted yourself through a fleshy slot and writhed around inside. Brought up all kinds of buried psychology.

To finish up, I figured I owed one last visit to the John Edwards campaign headquarters, as they'd just been mass vandalized (by, among other things a "feces-spewing obscenity"). All the damage had been undone by the time I arrived, but there was actually a small crowd hanging around this time. About half of them were furry griefers who'd set up an adjacent clone of the Edwards campaign HQ dedicated to psychic John Edward. I ran into politico-journalist Aldon Hynes, who was taking a break from blogging the Scooter Libby trial. Unfortunately he was ignoring me as a griefer (I did turn up still in my underwear). I put my clothes back on and sat down in the middle of the group, and just as I started talking to someone who might have been somehow involved with the Edwards campaign, a squirrel woman showed up and shot red balls at my groin. I suspect this was somehow tied to my new penis, or is that vanity? Anyway, Hynes fell into conversation with Squirrel Lady. It turns out that old dog Hynes has lots of friends in the furry world, and he and Squirrely were getting on famously without me.

After this, I just couldn't take it anymore. I will readily admit that there's a great deal of stuff in Second Life that is the obvious product of much care, time, effort, skill, and artistry. But just as much of it — and probably most of it — is tedious, boring, repetitive, tawdry, and vacuously commercial. The economic aspect of Second Life is the hook that gets so many people involved in creating and selling things, but at the same time, it's crassly in your face everywhere. I can sympathize with people who hate it when griefers muck up their work, but often the griefers are more interesting or entertaining than the placid, sterile utopias that fill up Second Life. Though even the griefers are often trying to sell you something.

Anyway, plunge into the full gallery of grossness, if you haven't already.

Sex shopping in Second Life

Chris Mohney — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:00:06 PST

As promised earlier, a first-timer's experience when sex shopping in Second Life warrants its own post. I'll tell you right up front that my immaturity levels do not speak well of me as a sex correspondent. Chris Peterson's Second Life Safari at Something Awful puts quite a bit more thought and action into the topic. That said, with even the Dutch getting lathered up about virtual child porn (and not in a good way), Second Life's burgeoning sex industry is almost politely underplayed when everything else about the service is praised to the skies. So let's go penis shopping, shall we? NSFW, if you haven't guessed.

I should mention that I have only slightly more experience shopping for sexual novelties in the real world than I do in Second Life. Still, I came to the process with certain expectations, pretty much all of which were confounded immediately. The first sex shop I visited was also a home-design for sale — a sort of open-air California modern with outrageous cyber-porn on every interior surface, and no people around. Like every red-blooded American youth, I'm curious about genital attachments, so that's where I began browsing. Plus, I figure that's the basic building block of Second Life sexuality, as otherwise, what's there to do?

Ignorant as I am about the technical side of how such things work — in Second Life! only in Second Life, I promise — I examined what seemed an appropriate penis attachment for my male avatar. The "aroused cock cut version" was a "scripted penis with HUD control unit, skin color control, sound, animations, cum, pee, touchable by other players to make you aroused." First off ... SOUND? Is having a great-sounding cock now important, as well as length, breadth, stamina, and sperm volume (judging by favorite spam email subjects)? My attention was diverted by these questions when I realized that two people had materialized nearby and were fucking on the desk next to me.

I backed away in alarm — what's the social convention here? Was this their house? Would the guy think that I had no penis because I was looking at the penis attachment advertised on his wall? The male disengaged right as I took the snapshot above. While his lady remained bent expectantly over the desk, he walked over to me and said, "Hi." I was so alarmed by this sudden attention that I panicked and tried to fly away. Instead I hit my head on the ceiling and lingered there a moment before awkwardly aero-stumbling through the top of the doorway. After checking to make sure I wasn't being pursued, I hid in a tree.

OK, so perhaps I'm much more of a prude than I thought. Or really, I'm just a chicken. But I'll try again. This time, a casual search lead me to an elaborate sex-castle-dungeon store. I didn't see anyone around, so this looked like a good place to unobtrusively peep.

Don't ask me why, but I was drawn to the bukkake billboard. Here was a graphic multi-phase depiction of bukkakic delights; I liked that in addition to the act of bukkake, you are also purchasing a range of bukkake-appropriate facial expressions. I hadn't been standing there 30 seconds — still sipping my Irish coffee — when a tall fetishwear dominatrix sidled up next to me.

Her nametag identified her as a vice president of this sex dungeon. She said, "hi," and I replied, "hello." She then asked, "do you need a whore?" I had to think about this. Did I? Need one? "no thanks, just browsing," I ventured, figuring that usually works on the service industry types. But not on sex dungeon vice presidents. "i have the bukkake you were looking at," she said. Busted! I managed to control my mortification long enough to mumble something politely negatory and walk away, rather than flying in fear. After browsing on the upper level, I realized I couldn't afford anything here, so I jumped off the parapet. This caused me to land on the castle's drawbridge, right in front of the vice president! She sallied forth, and I flew off to hide my shame.

I made one final attempt to visit the furry subculture that has gotten so comfortable in Second Life. A casual perusal revealed hundreds of furry places, so I just picked one at random. It was a medieval tavern, and inside were about a half-dozen animalistic avatars chatting in mangled medieval-speak. I stood among them in my t-shirt and blue jeans, and yes, I felt like a freak. After a few moments, a fox-woman — who earlier had been writhing on the floor in laughter, ectsacy, or a grand mal seizure — approached me and asked that I wear a furry avatar while in this space. I fled so quickly I didn't even have time to take a snapshot. That scene may require its own post.

Like I said before, if you want to suggest places to visit where Second Lifers actually gather, feel free. More later, as warranted.