
Everyone seems to be ignoring MLNP and other sex-tech startups — maybe because they see it as the domain of mainstream porn and don’t want to touch it.
“Sex-tech is the next trillion-dollar disruption,” Cindy Gallop, the founder of MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, tells me, calmly sipping a fresh lime soda in the cool, dark interiors of the Leela Palace Hotel’s coffee shop on a blistering hot summer afternoon in Bengaluru.
Fifty-seven-year-old Gallop, a popular speaker who visits India often on speaking engagements and lecture tours, is on a different kind of mission this time. She is looking for an intrepid investor who will take a chance on a bootstrapped startup that promises to revolutionise the multi-billion dollar global porn industry — all the while claiming that what it does is not porn.
In fact, it isn’t. Although Gallop says she’s not “anti-porn”, her startup is quick to define itself as an internet platform that defines its identity as ‘not porn’ but ‘social sex’.
Although Cindy Gallop says she’s not “anti-porn”, her startup is quite quick to define itself as an internet platform that defines its identity as ‘not porn’ but ‘social sex’
Before it took on this avatar, however, MLNP started life as a somewhat clunky website that shared sex advice. In 2009, Gallop, launched MakeLoveNotPorn.com at TED. The video of her presentation quickly became popular, and was the sixth most popular TED Talk of that year. MLNP.com made the point that real sex is often very different from commercial pornography, which has released quite a few myths about sex into the world. In fact, such is the power of these myths that they are in danger of being passed off as facts by people whose first exposure to sex is through pornography.
Gallop’s TED Talk:
Despite the fact that its messaging was primarily limited to illustrations that showed the divide between real-life sex and hardcore porn, it became quite popular through word-of-mouth reviews (her TED video also contributed). The questions and feedback that she received led to the launch of MakeLoveNotPorn.tv.
“We are pro-sex, pro-porn, and pro-knowing the difference,” says Gallop, who used to be a top British advertising executive who worked on accounts like Coca Cola and Ray-Ban, and continues to be an advertising consultant. She clearly knows the power of a pithy phrase. “The mainstream porn industry today is all about white guys talking to white guys about white guys. It’s getting stale. And this has led to the explosive growth of violent porn — because you have to keep dialling up the shock value.”
“We are pro-sex, pro-porn, and pro-knowing the difference” — Gallop
But MLNP has received very little love from investors, and continues to be bootstrapped. For the time being, everyone seems to be ignoring it and other sex-tech startups — maybe because they see it as the domain of the mainstream porn industry and therefore something they won’t touch because “it’s not something we want to be associated with.”
While they talk of disrupting this and disrupting that, they are not interested in disrupting pornography — one of the biggest money-spinners online — which Gallop believes needs disrupting badly. Learning about sex only from porn, she says, is making sex furtive and shameful and violent. “The issue isn’t porn, but that we don’t talk about sex in the real world, and porn ends up acting as default sex education. The problem isn’t porn, but society.”
While they talk of disrupting this and disrupting that, they are not interested in disrupting pornography — one of the biggest money-spinners online
“Empathy, generosity, kindness — these are the values we want to see in porn. When we own our sexuality, we make it easier for everyone to have a conversation about sex” — Gallop