Amateur porn in Filipino Twitter alter community: affordances,commodification,ghettoization,and gay masculinity

Abstract

This research tackles the alter community or a collective of Filipino Twitter users producing and circulating amateur porn in the form of videos or text. This article analyzes the ways in which Twitter’s features and user practices enable and constrain the production and circulation of porn, as well as its implication in understanding gay masculinity and sexual politics. By looking at Twitter’s affordances and the dynamics in the alter community, I argue that the alter community is a site where Filipino perform and validate their masculinity. This takes place alongside commodification and ghettoization that fits neatly into restraining attitudes on sexuality in the Philippines. This article contributes to a more complex and nuanced understanding of pornography, as well as the ways in which technological affordances and dynamics in distinct virtual spaces impact our understanding of gay masculinities.