May 30, 2015 | The Biz

Str8UpGayPorn breaches rival blogger's privacy

In a questionable move, Str8UpGayPorn has outed the previously anonymous blogger of competing gay porn blog Queer Me Now. 

You are no doubt acquainted with both of these sites, since we regularly link to their blog posts.  Zach Sires is Str8UpGayPorn's blogger and co-owner; his style is gossipy, bitchy and very often entertaining; he actually digs for stories and comes up with original, often sensational, items on a regular basis. QueerMeNow is very different, preferring to focus on the positive, covering the gay porn world with an exuberant, fan-oriented approach. 

Last Saturday, at Chicago's Grabby gay porn awards, both Str8UpGayPorn and Queer Me Now were nominated for Best Gay Porn Blog. Queer Me Now won - for the second year in a row -  and the owner/blogger of the site accepted in person.

QueerMeNow's owner lives in an Asian country where, while homosexuality is legal, gay men and lesbians are not legally protected from discrimination. More to the point, pornography is illegal, so anyone caught operating in the industry could find themselves in big trouble. Even in tolerant countries, like the US, most individuals in the porn industry use a "porn name" because they want to keep their sex trade identity separate from the rest of their lives. Though people in the industry may know each other by their real names, they generally respect each other's wish to be referred to by their porn name in public forums.  

Zach Sires blew that code of conduct out of the water last week when Str8UpGayPorn published an article that  outed Queer Me Now's blogger, disclosing not just his name, but his home city and real-world occupation. The name was repeated over two dozen times in the article, a tactic used to guarantee it would turn up as the number 1 result in a Google search.

What possible reason could there be for this? Most likely professional jealousy, though why anyone would be jealous about a Grabby Award is a mystery to us. The effect, at the very least, was extreme anxiety for Queer Me Now's blogger, who we have met on more than one occassion, and who is a soft-spoken, intelligent and funny guy. The consequences for him could be much worse.

Reaction from members of the gay porn industry was swift, with condemnation coming from all corners and demands that the article be removed.

The co-owner of Str8UpGayPorn, Davyd Dixon (who is also the publicist for Bel Ami, Cocky Boys and Naked Sword) claimed he had little control over Sires' editorial decisions. However, after QMN's blogger and others in the industry appealed to Dixon, the article disappeared. 

At the same time, Sires blogged that Str8UpGayPorn had been hacked, that the hacker deleted the offending article and, because there had been such a kerfuffle, Sires would not re-post it. Comments casting doubt on the "we were hacked" blog were deleted by Str8UpGayPorn the minute they were posted.  
 
We're willing to bet that Str8UpGayPorn won't be nominated for the Best Porn Blog Grabby again any time soon. At least until someone learns how to be a good loser.