To profit from the vulnerable and small population of Giant Pandas, the internet’s largest free porn site launched a campaign for National Panda Day that encourages consumers to create and upload their own porn to their website—dressed as pandas.
We can’t make this stuff up.
Allow us to explain and fact-check this clearly bogus “charitable” campaign.
Make Porn, Save Pandas?
In their launch video for the “Make Porn, Save Pandas” gimmick, Pornhub explains how male pandas have really low sex drives, and the 2-3 days out of the year that a female panda is ready to mate, the males aren’t always “in the mood.” This is true, according to the Chengdu Research Center for Panda Breeding.
Then the massive porn site’s promo explains how, in captivity, zoologists use a variety of methods to get pandas to “get down” with each other. This is also true. According to experts, these methods do include showing them videos of other pandas mating, claiming that the sound of the other pandas mating stimulates the pandas.
Related: The Major Companies That Are Now Using Porn Sites To Advertise Their Product
The whole campaign idea is for Pornhub consumers to dress up like pandas and make their own versions of “panda porn” so zoologists can have videos to show the pandas to get them “in the mood.” The porn site planned to donate $100 to panda preservation nonprofits for every video uploaded for this campaign, and for each view of the panda uploads, Pornhub planned to donate one cent to panda conservation for the month after the campaign, encouraging consumers to watch even more porn. Classic.
And here’s the thing—if the audio of other pandas is what experts are claiming specifically works for pandas, then videos of humans having sex in panda get-ups won’t actually work to “help save the pandas” at all.
And given what panda breeding experts say about the panda videos, clearly, zoologists have zero need for pornographic videos of humans, even if they’re dressed up in costumes that sort-of resemble weird-looking pandas.
Related: The Disturbing Irony Behind Pornhub’s “Anti-Domestic Violence” Campaign
But, nice try, Pornhub. How noble to donate a little money to saving pandas while it makes millions of dollars off of promoting sexual exploitation and glamorizing sexual assault on its site, right? The fact that they’re a free tube site that profits from new content that’s uploaded because of ad revenue probably doesn’t have anything to do with this…right?
Wrong.
We can’t be the only ones who see through this sad attempt to thinly disguise profiting off of sexual exploitation. It’s obvious that they are capitalizing on the idea of a charitable cause just to get people to watch more porn and exploit themselves, all in the name of a “good cause.”
So this National Panda Day, support causes that truly care about saving this beautiful animal, not exploitive sites that probably care nothing for them.
We’re a big fan-das of pandas, can you tell? #NationalPandaDay 🐼❤ pic.twitter.com/qcbhUZpD2w
— WWF_Australia (@WWF_Australia) March 16, 2018
Why This Matters
This graphic porn site’s attempt to market itself as an organization that “cares” goes to show that it will stop at nothing in order to get our sex-obsessed society to believe that porn is a healthy and harmless pastime. Make no mistake, Pornhub, like every other pornographic website, fuels the demand for sexual exploitation in society.
Pornography is not only proven to harm the brain and damage relationships, it is inseparably linked to sex trafficking. To consumers, pornography appears to be a fantasy world of endless pleasure, but to those who create and participate in making porn, their experiences are often flooded with drugs, disease, slavery, rape, and abuse.
Watch just a couple of our interviews with porn performers who have since left the industry and you will quickly see that perception is most definitely not reality. The truth is that while active porn performers rarely, if ever, speak out due to fear of not getting work or being persecuted within the industry, the majority of these very same porn performers inevitably end up speaking out on their traumatic experiences once they leave the industry. And these stomach-turning personal accounts are never pretty.
Related: Pornhub Continues To Normalize Porn, Now Offers To Sponsor Sports Teams
Our friends over at the National Center of Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) have been speaking out against sleazy advertising schemes by Pornhub as well. The NCOSE said in a statement:
“This company is built upon a legacy of exploitation, and it is no more charitable in mind than a tobacco company that offers a scholarship to whichever teen can smoke the most of its brand-name cigarettes.”
Science and research have proven that porn is not normal, harmless, or healthy. And companies like this shady porn site will do anything they can to make teens and other consumers think otherwise, in order to stuff their own pockets with cash and profit from the advertising revenue they get for each video uploaded to their site.
The reality is that porn is just not cool at all and it definitely doesn’t contribute anything positive in the world, despite what they may try and tell us.
If you want to actually help the pandas without fueling sexual exploitation in the process, check out WWF Global.