NOTE: I first published this blog in March 2014. It received such good feedback that I thought it deserved republishing. It’s an unusual subject and I recommend you bring your sense of humour when reading it! It is also ‘Not Safe For Work’ so consider where you are reading from and what device you are using. Otherwise, Enjoy!
The Metadata of Porn.
I once wrote on Twitter that I had fulfilled my job by teaching my housemate what metadata was. To clarify, my housemate is a bouncer and has no interest in or knowledge of Records Management (RM) at all. We’ve been house sharing for 18 months and most things I tend to babble at him go right over his head, but I finally got something about RM to sink in. How did I do it, I hear you ask? I used the example of porn. Yes, Porn.
For those not in the know and who are mostly reading this because they saw the ‘porn’ tag; What is metadata?
metadata
noun
1.a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.
A colleague in IT once told to me that if you can crack the dark art of metadata and search engine optimisation, you could earn bucket loads. I’m geeky but not THAT geeky.
For those among us with 4ft high stacks of adult magazines, this does not apply to you. This is for the 21st century folk, who have sectioned off part of their hard drive and password protected it with some kind of obscure password. *Please don’t use ‘1234’!
Without metadata, you will find yourself searching through your stash of porn for hours trying to find the right video to “do the trick” in your onanistic activity.
When you have a lot of porn, the titles of each video will blur into a mix of names doing a location. Without metadata, you might just miss your mark.
Searching For Porn
I am not responsible for any external web links that you choose to investigate after reading this blog post. However, should you choose to go on to a porn site and confirm you are indeed over 18 (age not maturity), you get the opportunity to use the search box. Each of the videos you see has metadata attached, so that when you use that search function, it can retrieve videos back for your entertainment.
So when you search; MILF, GILF, secretary, maid, babysitter, gay, bisexual, threesome, gang bang, outdoor, indoor, office, pool, spa, transsexual, pansexual, transgender, swingers, vanilla, BDSM, kinky, and so on and so forth, you’ll get a selection of videos that are associated with those words, i.e. metadata.
(Please note, should some of the above keywords not work, it’s because there is no video file with that piece of metadata attached. I haven’t personally tried them all out…)
Now, if you tried to implement this search in the same way on your computer storage like ‘my documents’ or an external hard drive, it’s unlikely you will be able to specify a similar amount of metadata to search. Windows or Mac file information is far too basic for you to be able to do so.
The best data you will get is automatically generated metadata such as the below:
Name: Two Girls One Cup.
Kind: protected MPEG-4 movie (.m4v)
Size: 312.5 MB
Created: 14th February 2014
Modified: 15th February 2014
Last Opened: 14th March 2014
Dimensions: 640 x 480
Duration: 0:01
It’s Not Just Porn Though!
Porn sites are obviously not the only websites with search boxes. Every piece of content that you want to be searchable, whether it be on the internet or on your own private device, will need to add some metadata manually. If you want Google to find your blog, you need to be applying a type of metadata known as tags to your blog that describes what it’s about. Google Spiders crawl the internet on a regular basis looking for metadata to update their search results. The more accurate and specific metadata you have. the more likely it will return on page 1 of the search results. If you don’t add metadata you may as well dump your document/blog/item in a large black bin.
Even Twitter has jumped on the metadata bandwagon by having the hashtag. It’s a searchable field that describes what ‘something is’ i.e. your tweet subject. People often mess up metadata and create very odd tags that reduce the chance of the content being seen by anyone but their followers. So whilst hashtags can be funny, metadata standards are better.
If you cannot use default file information to provide the sort of helpful details you need to search for, what would be the next best thing? Now I don’t advocate taking your porn into work to use in your sparkly EDRMS… that might just get you the sack. But, if you worked for one of the porn hosting companies, you’d likely find that the information you want to add is already defined according to an agreed set of classifications. In the Open Text environment (not a double entendre) this information is generally known as “attributes”.
Should Fields Be Mandatory?
The problem you have with metadata is that nobody finds the time to add it unless you force them and make the fields mandatory.
The more fields you make mandatory the longer it will take you to save your videos, the more unpopular EDRMS becomes and equally the more stress you put on your network when searching. If you have too many mandatory fields you will also find yourself typing letters in the fields just to get past the mandatory stage of filling out. This function needs to be reviewed on regular basis to maintain its integrity, authenticity and reliability.
However, the more fields you have filled out manually, the easier it will be to find your porn. You can search based on the producer, director, actors, length of video, type, language, year of production, and so on. You could even create your own fields that holds bra size if you so desired! Obviously, you cannot make bra size a mandatory field – what happens if there are no brassieres in the video?
Finding that balancing art between ‘easier to find’ versus ‘time to fill out’ is a very hard one. In an organisation, this decision is best made by consulting the senior management for buy-in. At the end of the day, they are the ones that have to promote it. If they wouldn’t spend the time filling the fields out, why would anyone else? Just don’t forget to sell the idea to your front-line staff. Use the carrot, not the stick!
Sssshhhh! Don’t Tell The Managers
Please don’t ask management how much metadata you should put on your porn in their reaaaaally expensive EDRMS system. It will cause many strange looks, and the system has an auditing capability. It will also know how much you’ve put in; how often you looked at it; how long you were looking at it; what times you’ve looked at it; what security permissions you have on it and many many other reporting methods; not to mention all that metadata you’ve attached to it… So whilst you should keep your porn well away from work, perhaps you might consider how important metadata is and how much it makes your life easier in the long run. When you have metadata, the world is your oyster.
#tagthatporn
