“The past couple of years we’ve been bombarded by all these super produced things and I think everyone just needs a bit of reality now, a bit of authenticity. It’s the same in porn. It’s so accepted to watch porn just to enjoy it, so of course you want a bit of quality.”
That quality can’t necessarily be found in mainstream porn, Suveges explains. “You don’t want to see someone bloody pounding someone in a handstand, that’s just so unrealistic. I think people crave that [authenticity] because it feels real. It’s almost like you’re there with them and I feel like that adds an extra layer of excitement into it.”Continuing the legacy of the amateur category , reality porn allows people to film themselves doing what they personally enjoy.
This helped put the reality genre on people’s radar – explains Paulita Pappel, founder of curated homemade video site. “There are more and more people that are really into the stuff they’re doing and that makes them into amazing performers or producers. It has really opened up the horizon to what is a huge repertoire of different fetishes that people have,” she observes.
But Pappel worries that the surge in demand for authenticity could have an antithetical effect on the category: “In a way we’re levering so hardcore on this reality thing that it’s becoming unreal again. People seem so eager to have the real deal that they’re also willing to buy into things that actually might not be.” While amateur and reality porn seeping into the mainstream has its benefits, it also depreciate its implied genuineness and spontaneity.
And that didn’t reflect her own experiences. She started to wonder: “How can you come the closest possible to document or represent real sex the way it’s happening in people’s lives?”. Away from the pre-packaged idea of sex, she created Lustery to put the camera in the hands of real couples with an established connection without giving them rules for what to film.