Welcome to the Adult Metaverse!
Burlesque-Virgins, NFT collection
High street businesses have been flocking to the metaverse in droves, eager to leap on the NFT gravy train while also appealing to a crypto-savvy new consumer base. First it was luxury brands, then fashion labels, and most recently big names like Hyundai, Coke, and Disney. Now we have more adult venues making the quantum leap into Web3, including casinos, and yes, even strip clubs.
One of the first traditional strip clubs to embrace blockchain technologies back in 2021 was Russian strip club chain Burlesque-Virgins (surely, an oxymoron?), offering NFTs with wildly innovative utilities on the popular platform Rarible.
The first NFT entitled collectors to a dizzying 3 hour ride in a limousine in the charming company of five of their top dancers.
The second NFT made it possible for the holder to hire the club out for 4 hours during the daytime along with employees and dancers. Be the boss for a day!
The third NFT allowed buyers to visit the physical club and gather up and keep the bra and panties (presumably a bit sweaty after a long night of lap dancing!) of the dancer of their dreams.
The final NFT on offer gave buyers the right to play the DJ and decide on the official club music for the night. If the music is original, the purchaser gets to own the copyright too!
Oh, those Russians!
Welcome to the adult metaverse -image courtesy of Rob Sloane TreatDAO.
How about becoming a talent manager and owning your own professional dancer and having her earn crypto currency for you in the metaverse? Live the dream with the NFT staking game StripperVille.
Launched in 2021, the central idea of StripperVille is to purchase your own cartoon-style dancer with her own unique traits from the collection available on the OpenSea platform. You then stake your NFT dancer in one of the clubs online, and simply, the more she dances, the more you earn in StripperVilles tokens ($Strip coin). The StripperVille NFTs are stored as ERC-721 tokens and are hosted on IPFS (Ethereum ($ETH) Blockchain).
The $Strip coin can’t be exchanged for in real life (IRL) fiat money, so your ambitions to become rich from a harem of dancers will need to be put on ice. It can be used on the platform to purchase unique in-game merch, raffle tickets, dancer traits and upgrades -and even secret items to further diversify your ladies!
StripperVille is more of a game than a strip simulation. The game graphics emphasize cute over sexy, and everything is rated-g and safe for work (SFW). As of the current 2022 generation, V2 NFT dancers are more anime-inspired or minecraft-style, and both types can be viewed as avatars in the metaverse.
The Sims were never this sexy!
Streaming the live strip club experience was a great way to beat the Covid-19 pandemic blues for those long, long hours spent working from home. There are sexy cam shows, there are live streams, and then there is the alternate reality of Cool Cats Online shows!
It’s the best show, it’s the most fun, it’s the most diverse, it’s the most impressive... [I’ve loved] watching Cool Cats pivot to what the culture needed.
These are some of the most diverse and inclusive adult streaming events of recent years, putting gorgeous women of color front and center and very much the top cats in charge of the show.
The coolest of cats, Charm, Susan, Teddy, and Honey (ex-Cheetahs, Hollywood dancers) founded the stream during that slow, dragging summer of 2020. It was created as a way for dancers to keep paying the bills while clubs and bars were forced to shutter and everyone was living through lockdown. It was also a reflection of the dancers' frustration with an industry that limited their earnings, policed their every move, and encouraged toxic levels of competition between dancers.
“Club management really fosters nasty competition among girls, because they know they’d actually be fucked if we all banded together,” Charm told LA news site thelandm.com. “ So that’s what me, Susan, Honey, and Teddy did. We banded together to take ownership over our bodies and our earnings.”
You can’t get to a strip club? No problem, the strippers will come to you!
Vaccines and the gradual phasing out of the pandemic rules may have led to in-person clubs re-opening, but virtual strip shows are here to stay. For the Cool Cats, the events not only provide supplemental income for their dancers but also provide a safe, fair, and more empowering outlet for their abilities and creativity.
These cats got milk!
Let’s ask a VR professional. So, what happens when you do a virtual lap dance?OnlyFans Girls could be the first to really embrace adult VR. -image courtesy of Rob Sloane TreatDAO.
We talked to Liza Cristal (pronounced like the famous Champagne), a 19 year old club dancer and recent convert to OnlyFans, all about her experiences as a virtual reality strip dancer.
“Hi Liza, can you tell our readers about your typical day as a dancer at a club?”
In-person is a drag. I don’t really get much sleep, as I am at the club for eight-ten hours straight, with costume and makeup, then drive an hour home, and it’s light already. When I wake up, I start my ritual to ‘get in character’. I shower, shampoo, blow dry, make a protein shake, and then the real prep work starts. I sit by the mirror with my ring light, apply foundation, draw on my eyebrows, glue on my lashes, rouge my lips, and blush my cheeks. Because I love comics and anime (and had ambitions to be an actress), my speciality is cosplay-style and I like to lip sync to Rihanna and act out on the stage. So I selected a crazy bubblegum pink wig, rouged my (normally whitish-pink) nipples, put blush on my d-size natural assets, dotted a few freckles on my face, and padded my hips before lacing myself up in a whale-bone corset. This gives me a proper Renaissance-style hourglass figure. The whole prep can take me over ninety minutes, longer if I’m hungover from the night before, or have my period and feel like shit.
I then climb into my car and drive to the club, which takes an hour without traffic or a jam, and when I arrive, I spend more time checking in and waiting for my turn on the stage. I usually spend that time applying some fake nails, adjusting the corset, and getting my head right. I don’t check my mobile (that goes in the locker) as the other dancers do. I get distracted easily and forget who I’m trying to be.
“You aren’t Liza when you dance?”
No! Hell no. That’s just my stripper identity. When I climb on the stage and the music starts, I’m Harley Quinn or Betty Page, or I’m Marie Antoinette, or I’m Lady Gaga. I don’t think the “real me” exists when I’m in the club. I leave her back at home. Hence my ritual to get into a new persona. It’s like when you use Twitter, you are just a fake profile name and the pic you choose to suit your account. I do the same thing, but with an audience of real people.
“Do you enjoy yotur work at the club?”
Honestly, there are two sides to club work. It’s a nuanced thing. There is walking the stage, miming to songs, stripping and teasing. That’s entertainment, and I get a buzz from knowing I’m doing it well. I can see it reflected on the faces of the guys; they are pumped; and sometimes I see it in the eyes of the other girls, though they can be really competitive and critical. Especially backstage, where there is a culture of judgment and gossip. The other side of it is all physical, and I guess social and psychological as well. I’m like a lipstick therapist, especially with regular customers who are almost always married men with kids who have forgotten how to talk to their wives. They tell me how much they really love their family,... And then they ask me to sit on their lap, talk dirty in their ear, and jerk them off for $100 in tips. Go figure.
“So please tell us about how you got into virtual reality stripping.”
Okay, so you can probably guess I’m a nerd (Liza chuckles). I don’t have a cat at home; I have a stuffed Totoro (from the Studio Ghibli animated movie My Neighbor Totoro). My days off are spent on my laptop looking at cosplay stuff, adult forums, and OnlyFans posts. So I’m on Reddit scrolling through posts, and I spot one about VR Chat. Then I read that they have a (virtual reality) VR strip club and my mind is racing. No way!? I set up a profile and logged in to try it out.
To begin with, my ritual is about 15 minutes long now. I don’t need to get dolled up, and I can leave the car in the garage. Before I go to VR Chat, I hit up my clients on Twitter and Discord, and let them know I’m going live. Then I put on a headset and simply log on, customize my anime avatar named “Le Cristal” (with pink hair and a corset; some things don’t change) and I’m on stage in seconds. No lockers, no managers, no gossip. I’m also a lot more physically comfortable as I don’t have sweaty fingers pinching my boobs or stubble burn on my neck and ears after a night in VR. I also don’t have a major downer from hearing about a guy's girlfriend having inoperable cancer. You could say VR has restored my faith in humanity. During the lockdown, I got myself a new PC and an Oculus Rift, and it literally changed my perspective on my life. In VR I am the real me.
“Can you explain the differences, as opposed to those in real life clubs?”VR Chat is a community that includes adult multi-user virtual reality spaces -image source: FlameKnight7 on Youtube
During the lockdown, I got myself a new PC and an Oculus Rift, and it literally changed my perspective on my life. In VR I am the real me.
So some things are the same as with in-person clubs. There is an age check before you can join the VR club. Everyone over 18 years of age can join. Once they join, my clients can request a private room and lap dances. Unlike in traditional clubs, clients can solicit sex. Virtual sex online is considered to be pornography, so it is legal. In real life, direct sexual activity is considered prostitution and is illegal in most states. Obviously, VR sex is still limited; it is all about waving controllers in mid-air and trying to get polygons to match up and not clip through each other! But I can see myself in third person, which is a turn on! I consider the screenshots my loyal clients post to my Discord my ‘polaroids’ of my finest VR sex moments. My clients tip me for the lap dances and performing sex, and generally will also follow me on my OnlyFans and tip me there for customized videos and photo messages. I’ve really just started experimenting, and I’m mainly doing this for fun, but I can pay the rent and bills. I’m looking at minting adult NFTs too in the future (I think you guys at TreatDAO can help me with that!). I’ve also started a piggy bank portfolio of alt-currencies and have made money by investing in $Doge coin.
If I were talking to other professional dancers, I’d tell them virtual stripping is still a niche, and VR can’t support you as a career yet. Do it for fun and to make new followers for your Patreon or OnlyFans. I can say that as the metaverse grows, I’m confident so will the potential for income.
I don’t really miss anything from the in-person experience. Before, if men were badly behaved, you’d have to rely on the security to help you out. If clients are offensive in VR Chat you can instantly block them and they disappear from my room. If clients break the rules of service (like lying about their age), their accounts are removed, and they are banned for life.
“Thanks for your VR story, Liza Cristal!”
Thank you, TreatDAO. Keep up the vital work of providing an online platform and a magazine that supports all of us adult creators, models, and dancers.
“Is VR dancing lucrative? Can it compete with earnings from in-person clubs?”
“Do you ever miss the in-person club?”
Alternative interactive VR experiences include VRParadise, a single user virtual strip club accessible by Oculus, Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality devices. Just like in a real stripclub, users can enjoy a hot gentlemen's club environment with several simultaneous shows onstage, table dances, and explicit nude private dances on demand. They can also access and download new content (DLC), customize their dancers, and interact with holiday themed rooms and events.
The leading UK children's charity, the NSPCC, has raised a red flag to warn the media and industry that some VR apps are inherently dangerous and that unsupervised and underage children are able to enter adult virtual spaces, including strip clubs and bondage (BDSM) dungeons, and inadvertently witness, or potentially interact within simulations of sex acts as part of Facebook's gateway to web3 apps and the metaverse. The interactive spaces allow chat with anonymous multiple-users, which also potentially leaves the children vulnerable to further exploitation and recurring abuse online.
A BBC News investigative report discovered that grooming, explicit content, racism, trolling, and rape threats were prevalent dangers to child wellbeing and mental health in certain VR apps lacking any know your customer (KYC), parental controls, or age verification.
Girls and boys as young as 7 years old were reported to be able to use a Facebook Meta Quest headset to log on to VR apps and view other users in the metaverse in simulated nudity and sexual acts, interacting with computer-generated avatars, so they were left to mix freely with predatory adults.
While researching the report, a BBC reporter posed as a 13-year-old. Her avatar was able to freely access rooms where other avatars were engaged in simulated sex. The adult fantasy spaces were designed to simulate stages, pole dancing, bondage dungeons, and even "play" rooms full of child-like accessories, costumes, and sex toys.
Other users in the public room propositioned her openly for sex, in spite of her declared age, and bullied her with threats of rape against her. An NSPCC spokesperson has expressed "shock and anger" at the findings. Mark Zuckerberg has invested heavily in the metaverse - both financially and in terms of software engineering—developing VR and augmented reality (AR) headsets and apps as the keys to a persistent online 3D world. He has been very vocal in the media about his belief that web3 is the future of the internet - so much so, he recently rebranded Facebook as Meta. The
Facebook’s Meta Quest Headset allows children potential access to harmful VR sites.
social media giant is investing billions of dollars in development around its core Meta Quest 2 headset. The VR headset is thought to have as much as 75% of the market share already.
While the app used by the BBC reporter is not software developed by Facebook, it is published and can be downloaded from an app store on Facebook's Meta Quest site. The app has no safeguards, no instructions on safe and responsible use, parental locks, or age verification checksthe only requirement being a valid Facebook account.
Treat’s take on this matter is that VR and AR are fun. The metaverse is fun. The future should be fun and safe for us all. Treat is constantly building on our online platform, our blockchain, crypto, and NFT services, and the dynamics of our amazing DAO community to promote the metaverse as a force for good. However, to achieve safe fun for all requires a very serious and responsible approach to user safety. Developers, publishers, and especially tech giants, have a clear duty of care and responsibility to ensure that vulnerable people, especially children, are not exploited or harmed by the technology and software they create, publish, and promote on their platforms. Especially as they directly profit from selling the users' data and advertising opportunities. Meta is a global corporation with a captive audience of billions with the resources and means to develop appropriate safeguards.
For the current generation of kids weaned on videogames and used to a yearly cycle of ever-more immersive console, PC, and mobile simulations, the appeal of virtual reality can hardly be underestimated or overlooked. In the neo-gold rush, as major brands and big tech companies scramble to mine the potential of the metaverse, they need to invest equal time and resources to ensure they also keep their consumers and creators safe from the collateral damage of their commercial ambitions. Web3 should open people's eyes to a new frontier of possibilities - not turn the metaverse into a toxic dark web version 2.0.
While we don’t want to see any more “big brother” style censorship online or in web3, and we champion the freedom of expression and right to the creation of NSFW content for consenting adults in the metaverse, we will never condone negligent behavior in allowing exploitation or abuse, either by ignorance, or by design - especially from corporations that should know their market and their users better.
Twenty years ago, people argued that the internet wouldn’t affect jobs. Twenty years before that, people claimed personal computing (PCs) wouldn’t impact the workplace. History has proved them wrong in their assumptions. We are currently mid-way through the next twenty year cycle of a technological revolution that will change how we work and live. The automation age.
Math professor John McCarthy first coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) in 1955. McCarthy subsequently regretted the term, preferring computational intelligence as a more accurate interpretation of a machine's capacity to mimic cognitive processes. Even today, it can be argued that AI is artificial logic, with predictable outcomes, rather than the simulacra of human imagination and self-determined purposes that popular science fiction movies like “The Terminator” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” predict. The general perception is that AI is an evolution of the “thinking machine” that conforms to the principles of the Turing Test and will be competitively superior and capable of beating us humans at everything from chess to the spelling bee.
Various forms of AI have been under research and development in corporate data science labs for decades. Data scientists use deep learning to train a computer model to imitate the human process of acquiring and understanding knowledge. This allows for better statistical problem solving, interrogation of complex databases, and predictive modeling.
Today, companies such as Nvidia are developing AI chipsets specifically for rapid problem solving, accelerated analytics, immersive video game worlds with complex interactions, and powering next generation text to image (AI art) apps that rely on raw GPU processing.
You’ve probably already encountered simple pop-up chatbots on websites - sometimes known as virtual assistants. These simulate a conversation and handle basic tasks, such as answering a question or relaying an email address or website link. You’ve likely also been aware of how advertisers try to display advertising based on your browsing history, likes, shares, and related data. This is a targeted result of machine learning AI, designed to predict your habits and influence your potential future purchases.
You may not be aware of just how much you rely on the AI being used on your mobile phone. The most obvious example is the voice assistant (think Siri and Alexa) that handles voice recognition and word analysis in real time. They can read out your emails, surf the web for you, find a location on the map for you, launch your apps, and even complete an order on Amazon for you.
Use the built-in phone cameras? The AI is capable of automatically selecting the right cameras and calculating the settings based on the depth map of the scene and applying the right filters for noise, aberrations, and adjusting the levels for low-light conditions or a night view.
Augmented reality (AR) combines with AI to recognize objects, convert them to text terms, and automatically translate them between apps and between different languages. This is great when you go on holiday and are in a foreign country, the phone's AI apps can tell you exactly what you are ordering from the menu.
AI is a part of our daily lives already; it’s everywhere in our offices, our homes, online and on our mobile devices. It doesn’t need to be seen as competitive but collaborative, helping us to perform routine tasks and our jobs with better results and more efficiency. As AI develops and becomes more sophisticated, it is becoming ubiquitous across public employment sectors and private companies seeking to profit from the many benefits of automation.
As with previous cycles of innovation, there will be disruption to our current jobs and ways of working, with political challenges for society over the long term. This isn’t an abstract idea, as AI is here today, and over the coming decade, could change modern society as profoundly as electronics and digital devices have in previous generations. AI is also converging with the latest metaverse, crypto, and blockchain technologies, with profound consequences for online commerce and global markets. Let’s take a deeper look at some of the ways that automation, robots, and AI could impact all of our lives.
A look at the industries where AI is going to be your boss.From language translation to digital marketing, AI automation is already prevalent in many modern industries.
From office cleaners to security guards, doctors to soldiers, robots with rudimentary AI and network connectivity are already replacing people in jobs that were lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic or in sectors that are hard to recruit.
Artificial intelligence displacement across industries is expected to have a global $15.7 trillion economic impact by the year 2030.
Let’s look at some of the AI terminology that most applies to the future workplace:
Artificial intelligence (AI) simulates human intellect using digital computing processes, databases of trained information, and pattern matching.
Machine Learning (ML) is where computer models can learn from recorded data, identify patterns, catalog errors, and complete processes and tasks with little human intervention.
Robots are machines that are capable of carrying out predefined tasks automatically. They can replicate human labor more efficiently and work 24/7/365 (without rest, food, vacations, or unions).
AI-enabled robots are next generation machines that can navigate spaces, detect obstacles, and monitor their interactions through sensory inputs. AI enables the machine to learn from experience and modify its actions according to its environment.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables a machine to automate repetitive tasks by interpreting human interactions and communicating with business applications. It can modify data, make decisions, and execute processes automatically.
A recent study by MEPI indicated that up to 2.7 million construction jobs could be replaced by robots by 2057. The advantages of employing custom-built machines in arduous, repetitive, and hazardous work are obvious. A robot has no safety concerns, is far more durable than a human, and can work 24/7 in any weather. Companies like Cat are even working on autonomous construction vehicles to handle demolition, dozing, drilling, and hauling for mining and heavy industry, which could entirely displace the human workforce.
From automatic nursery seed planting, to crop analyzing and dusting drones, to harvesting, herding, and milking, robots are increasingly popular in every aspect of the agricultural business. Farming companies like John Deere are developing self-driving tractors and lawnmowers.
The retail sector was hit hard by the pandemic. For high street stores looking to remain profitable, AI kiosks for self-checkout provide an answer, as do robot shelf stockers and automated inventory applications. The success of AI kiosks, providing an interactive menu and payment, is already being adopted by restaurant chains and will continue to replace cashiers, barkeepers, and drive-through workers. No need to tip the robot waitress!
The ten industries where jobs are most at risk of being replaced by robots and automation over the coming decade:
Robots could displace more than 20 million manufacturing jobs by 2030. When the human production process for most commodities is replaced by robots, the operational and logistical aspects will be handled by AI. There are already plans for robotic ‘mega-factories’ operating 24/7 to produce everything from electric vehicle components to the 3d-printing of industrial parts and materials. Foxconn, the manufacturing goliath, recently replaced 60,000 employees with robotic alternatives.
Autonomous vehicle technology and self-driving cars are rapidly impacting the public transport sector. Soon you will see shuttle buses, trains, taxis, planes (or large drones), and even boats that utilize AI-enabled robotics to pilot themselves. There are robotic warehouses where AI automates customers’ orders, execution, and tracking and then ships goods to their door by driverless vehicles or flying drones.
AI and robotics are transforming healthcare in every area, including patient diagnostics, early detection and treatment, prescription of medicines, research, training, and decision making. AI for clinical research helps to detect anomalies and discrete patterns while cross-referencing complex data. Robots are increasingly being used for surgery, eliminating the risks of infection or human error.
Since most customer service calls are highly scripted with predictable outcomes for each interaction, many companies are turning to chatbots with speech recognition and synthesis to replace entire floors of agents. Digital marketing is another industry where emails are received, read, and replied to by fully automated processes. Simple account ‘bots are prevalent in the rapid dissemination of information and in boosting engagement on social media.
Automation and machine-learning for trend prediction and market research applications are already in use in banking and trade exchanges. Organizations are increasingly automating their back offices as well - for data entry, bookkeeping,and accounting—finding that AI handles complex statistics, math problems, and financial reports far more efficiently than their human counterparts.
Translation services use natural language processing systems to generate vast amounts of documentation in different language pairs efficiently and accurately. These systems are fast and accurate. Combining data science and machine learning to generate simulated human written content. A good example is OpenAI’s GPT-3 which can write marketing material, business reports, and even essays and poems from a single prompt. In business tools, internet browsers, and mobile applications, automated spelling and grammar checkers to proofread your text are taken for granted.
It was a long held belief that AI couldn’t create artificial art because a machine couldn’t see, experience the world, or have emotions to paint. Those assumptions have been tested to destruction by recent innovations such as Dall-E2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion - all neural networks that prove that computers can do a good job of copying human artists, styles (Pixar to Picasso), and genres (architecture to portraits). The concepts are derived from text prompts and can generate shockingly coherent and usable results. Recently, a work of AI art won the Colorado State Fair art prize. AI art is causing controversy among designers, who fear that future iterations of the applications could render them clientless.
Advanced robotics are on the way - are you ready to live in a machine-society?
How are we going to live in a machine-society without workers' salaries?
In the wake of the pandemic, and with the impact of years of fiscal austerity, inflation, cost of living rises, and real-term wage stagnation, we’ve seen a societal shift in values. The “great resignation” and “quiet quitting” show workers are increasingly unhappy with the work/life balance afforded by the labor markets and seem content to have their jobs replaced by machines.
The Age of Automation asks some profound questions about society. Would people be willing to augment their organs and brains in order to compete with robots? Would people be happy to merge their consciousness and cyber-link their minds directly with AI software to increase their efficiency? Would people be willing to perpetuate the economic cycle as peripherals to a machine-society for even further reductions in their economic security and personal freedoms?
“More than 70% of people would be willing to augment their bodies and brains in order to improve their employment prospects.”
- PwC
Andrew Yang (Democrat candidate and businessman) asserted during his campaign for the 2020 presidential race that technology - and in particular AI, automation, and robotics - will deprive one-in-three American workers of their jobs in the coming decade.
To avoid a societal and economic crisis precipitated by the AI revolution happening across the public and private sectors, Yang proposed that the US government adopt Universal Basic Income (UBI), or in other words, give $1000 a month to every eligible US citizen.
A recent Skynova poll found that two-thirds of Americans are in favor of UBI - with the majority being Generation Z'ers, who see it as only a matter of time before the system has to be adopted.
In effect, the cost of enacting the policy and seeing a state’s wide UBI would be covered by implementing a value-added tax (VAT). The VAT would tax every company for every service and product produced, distributed, and supplied (whether produced by human or robot labor). VAT is baked into the supply chain, and therefore can’t be avoided.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that by 2025, the majority of companies will have adapted their workplaces to technologies such as AI and automation. The WEF strongly encourages governments and educational departments to focus now on required education and skills, generalizing in STEM and soft skills to meet the impending shift in needs. Microsoft reported that advances in these technologies will replace up to 50% of existing jobs in the US alone. The disruption caused by automation to educational institutions will be severe and lasting, as entire categories of employment disappear and the curriculum is forced to adapt to a new reality. Microsoft goes on to encourage students already in education to start adapting now to master facets of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics before they graduate.
The Age of Automation is here. A radical rethink of current policies is required to prepare for the disruption, but also for the potential benefits. Policymakers need to be proactive to address the impact on careers, education, and our way of life.
A sustainable UBI payments system would bring about cost savings to society from increased economic activity, reduced incarceration, less reliance on emergency services, less work-related stress and long-term illness, and an end to homelessness.
We’ll leave you with a few choice quotes to mull while we await our AI overlords:
"Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks." -Stephen Hawking, Theoretical Physicist
“The real question is, when will we draft an artificial intelligence bill of rights? What will that consist of? And who will get to decide that?” -Gray Scott
“Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, and we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.” -Ray Kurzweil
"What all of us have to do is to make sure we are using AI in a way that is for the benefit of humanity, not to the detriment of humanity." -Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
We are very proud to present Brittany Andrews as our September 2022 Treat of the Month (TOTM)! Here the legendary Playboy centerfold talks exclusively to Treat about herself and her life in the adult entertainment business.
“Hi, Brittany, and a warm welcome to Treat! How are you today?”
“Fabulous! Thank you!
I am originally from Wisconsin, and yes, I am a cheesehead, and no, I don’t follow the Packers, I’m just not into sports whatsoever-at-all. Currently, I live in Las Vegas, “sin city”, baby! I’ve been in Vegas for probably 10 years, and before that I was in Manhattan for 10 years, and then I was in LA for about 15 years - and then I was on the border of Mexico for 2 years in Texas. In between those, I’ve lived in Guam, Tokyo, and San Paulo in Brazil.
How would I describe myself? Um, I would describe myself as very independent, haha. I’ve lived alone my entire adult life. Where are my four-legged friends that are around the house? I’ve always had pets but have always been single. I consider myself to be a workaholic. I consider myself very spiritual as well. I'm Leo, so I’m also generous, slightly egotistical (just a hair), oh and I’m a funny bitch too, haha! (Or I like to think so at least).
You know, I have a really good work ethic. Also, I’m a workaholic, so you know, that’s what I do. It’s my nature to just get up and work everyday -seven days a week, all day and all night. I actually go to workaholics' anonymous, so I’m trying to learn how to say “no” more often to a lot of different projects. But, yeah, I get a lot of fulfillment from my work, and I enjoy a lot of different projects, and I just get very passionate about a lot of different things and look at them as a puzzle that I like to figure out. I like challenges and I love learning, so it’s really easy for me to get into my work, and really hard to set the work down.
I think it’s just something from within, but I do have a lot of mantras that I do use in life, because anybody who has been involved in a lot of different projects knows that 90% of them are going to fail, right? So if you are somebody who is putting themselves out there to consistently starting new projects, and I’m somebody who is a triple-fixed-sign, so not only do I start them, I finish them. I will beat the dead horse and work on a project for way too long. Failure is something that is going to happen, and so one of my favorite sayings is “obstacles are detours in the right direction”. So if I’m working on something, or if things in general are not working out in the way that I want them to go, - which the universe quite often likes to remind me, I’m not in charge (cheers) - I remind myself of my favorite saying or mantra.
Well, being that I’m a workaholic, ha ha ha, I pretty much work a lot. I like being at home. I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve been in jail in the Dominican Republic, Egypt, and Dubai, so I’m fine staying at home! I like being around my dog Bella and my cat Mia. Like I said before, I’m a very spiritual person. I enjoy meditation, I enjoy walking the dog. I love watching films. I had three years of film school, so I appreciate watching one of my favorite directors. I was just in LA, and David Cronenberg has a new film out called “Crimes of the Future” - it’s not playing in Nevada, it’s a limited theatrical release. I very much enjoyed going to see that film with other filmmaker friends of mine. Oh, and I love the Earth Cafe as well. Eating healthy foods and drinking coffee and tea: that’s probably about the extent of it. I’m still working on finding other things to enjoy doing because when I end up finding something I like - like crypto! - that was supposed to be a side hobby, and then I started integrating it into my work life. Oops!
I started my modeling career in 1991 - don’t tell anybody, but I was (shhhhh) 17 when I first started. I had a fake ID and I started off as a stripper, then I started feature dancing, then I started doing magazines, I could go on and on, then I started doing films and production coordination. Then I built my first studio at the age of 23, started directing, producing, distribution, internet company, blah-blah. There you go.
I started my modeling career in 1991 - don’t tell anybody, but I was (shhhhh) 17 when I first started. I had a fake ID and I started off as a stripper, then I started feature dancing, then I started doing magazines, I could go on and on, then I started doing films and production coordination. Then I built my first studio at the age of 23, started directing, producing, distribution, internet company, blah-blah. There you go.
You know what, having the hindsight of being in this business for 30 years, I think what has surprised me the most, is how much of a fulfilling and
I’m just surprised because when I was 30, the word “MILF” (Mother I’d Love to Fuck) just came out. I thought at 30, my career was over. The fact that I’ve been able to do this for so long and to be able to look back at such a rich experience, I’m just so beyond grateful that I found this business, or that it found me.
amazing life it has given me. You know, when I first got into it, I was a fucking stripper at 17, with a fake ID at some shitty hole-in-the-wall that had a basement pole with ducktape around it! I’m fucking completely surprised that 30 years later, it’s led me to be able to do all these amazing things, and travel, and end up in jail in all kinds of strange countries, to take care of my family, pay all my taxes, to be a very spiritual human being, and to love myself. I’m just surprised because when I was 30, the word “MILF” (Mother I’d Love to Fuck) just came out. I thought at 30, my career was over. The fact that I’ve been able to do this for so long and to be able to look back at such a rich experience, I’m just so beyond grateful that I found this business, or that it found me. I dropped out of school in 7th grade, and I came from nothing. My mother was handicapped. I grew up on welfare, so I was supposed to be a 15 year old with multiple kids on welfare. That’s what my trajectory was supposed to look like. Instead, I got into this business, and there are so many people that think women are being exploited in this business, but it’s been the exact opposite for me. It’s given me a really beautiful life that I’m so grateful for, and I don’t think when I first got in that I had any idea I’d be able to say that 30 years later and I’d be still performing in front of the camera.
That’s a lot, ha ha ha! Let’s start off with food: I have a massive sugar addiction, but it’s actually kept me skinny, ha ha! There are a lot of models that have sugar addictions, and if you are a model, don’t start a sugar addiction now, because 30 years later, I’m still trying to figure out how to get off sugar. That’s one I have not figured out quite yet. Portion control; I pretty much eat anything and everything, I just don’t eat a lot of anything (except sugar). I am working with a personal trainer at the moment. I never have before, but recently I had back surgery a couple of years ago and I’m getting to “that age” where if I move the wrong way I could be permanently damaged (even if I sleep the wrong way, I could be permanently damaged) for the rest of my life! So I have to make sure I do that. I’m a very spiritual person and that’s how I keep my sanity, by meditation (I have a mother goddess named “She”), my crystals, working with the universe, and having humility. That’s something a lot of models definitely need to work on with time and age. I know I did not have it in my 20’s. I like to say, “I’m so humble, I’m humble like Jesus." ha ha. I think I stole that from Russell Brand! Therapy doesn’t hurt either, and I’ve also been sober for 10 years. All of that stuff takes a long time to get to where you have balance. I’m still a workaholic. I still have my sugar addiction. So one thing at a time, progress, not perfection.
I have a lot of mentors that I like to often check in with. I would say Deepak Chopra is one of my favorites, along with Anthony Robbins and Gabriel Bernstein. I love her as well. I read a lot. I don’t know how many books (a lot of them are spiritual). (My cat is lavishing herself between my toes!) Louise L. Hay is probably at the top of my list. As it goes with business, I love Ray Dalio. I'm really into crypto, so I listen to a ton of crypto podcasts. I love Paul Barron and Bankless, which is my favorite crypto podcast! I also have favorite people for sales and marketing, but I put my spirituality at the top of everything else. If I’m spiritually fit, then things with business and marketing all kind of fit into place. I remember an exercise that Anthony Robbins had you do which is to make a wheel, and this is like the tire you are driving your car on. Then split it in the middle, and these are your personal goals, and these are your professional goals. So for each one of them, think of a pie chart, like finances. Are you 20% or 80%? Friendships are 30% or 100%? What you want to try and do is get that wheel to be even so you can drive your car on it. I do try to give each and every one of them attention. They are all really important! For me, the wheel itself is all, and my mother goddess spirituality comes first.
I’d probably say there’s been a couple of different highlights in my career. The number one was getting into Playboy magazine, and it especially means more now that it doesn’t even exist anymore. It wasn’t like now where you can pay photographers to be on the cover of FHM, Maxim, or whatever - I was in Playboy when you had to be picked by the ‘Heff (Hugh Heffner) to be in it. That was a really, really big deal as that was the only time they ever shot adult film stars. I was the one and only time and there were 10 of us top porn stars and I was one of them. It was a very coveted position. The second would be that just this year, I won fan favorite dominatrix of the year. That means a lot to me, not exactly for what it’s supposed to mean, but for what I gave it as a meaning for myself. For me, that’s a culmination of 30 years of all the different things I’ve brought to the femdom world, such as being the pioneer of pegging (female to male anal sex with a strapon dildo), and doing all kinds of things that really nobody was doing that was femdom back in the day. I’m giving myself a pat on the back for having one of the first ever femdom domination websites. So that was a culmination of all these things I’ve done in the last 30 years. When I left the business, I won some 20 awards for mainstream film producing. I had a film of mine at the Cannes Film Festival. I’ve won awards from the Toronto Film Festival. So when I was doing independent filmmaking, I won a lot of awards, and I’m really proud of that. Also, the fact that when I was
doing the DJ stuff, I got to travel all over the world and spin vinyl. I had a gig in Tokyo that was on top of a hotel, playing my favorite kind of music. Those have been some of the highlights of different aspects of my career that I’ve really enjoyed and am proud of.
My sobriety is something that has nothing to do with my career, but I’m proud of it today. I definitely don’t do that perfectly, but I do work on it really hard. I’ve been sober for 10 out of the last 11 years. I don’t smoke weed, I don’t drink alcohol, and I’m pretty proud of that as I live in fast paced lifestyle (and I do love drugs and alcohol and sex together, God bless it’s euphoric!). So for someone like myself who loves a little ecstasy, and ketamine, and a candy flip, to sacrifice all of that, ha ha. I do have lupus and two auto-immune diseases, which is why I originally got sober, but over the years of working a program, I’ve gotten so many amazing rewards from my sobriety, so I’m really glad I’ve stuck with it. That is the one thing (outside of business) that I’m really proud of... and I’ve paid all my taxes!
It’s funny right now, as I left the business for about 10 years and I was doing the DJ thing, and I was doing the independent filmmaker thing, and then I came back and people were like “I’ve heard really good things about you” and it's hard. Are people really going to tell you they heard really bad things about you? One of the other things I’m really proud of is that, overall, I consistently hear that I’ve got a really good reputation after 30 years. I don’t think that’s something that is easy to do. I think primarily just being professional, like showing up on time, having a good attitude, there’s some individuals in the business where it goes back to that one thing of not having any humility. Being down to earth, accepting when you are wrong, and knowing your lane to stay the fuck in is a big deal in life. I think a lot of people think I’m a good business person and that I’m professional and I work really hard, so I second that.
It’s interesting as it’s impossible if you’ve been in this business as long as I have, especially when you’ve left and come back, just to understand where you sit, to have that humility again in the industry on multiple levels, you have to pull back and have a better perspective. One of the things that kind of behooves me was when I went to the AVN awards. I was like, “oh my God, the fucking red carpet line is so long -what the fuck?”. Who are all of these people? Back in the day, porn was the main show, the matinee. Now it’s not anymore. The webcam business is much bigger than porn these days. So I needed to have a little humility on the red carpet as there were all these people who weren’t porn stars on the red carpet, and oh, they’re webcam people... So I needed a perspective adjustment when I came back to understand where porn’s place is and what people's perception of it is. I heard the webcam people say they were more stars than the porn stars were. Things are really different from what they used to be. Not to say it’s better or worse, it is what it is, and I need to adjust my attitude to fit where things are at this moment. I think one thing that is the same now as it was back in the day is respect for the talent (the performer). I remember in my youth that there really weren't many female directors, and definitely not many who were also producers. There are definitely not many directors/producers who are doing their own distribution. So I would be consistently talking to groups of men who owned distribution companies when I had the studio, and the website, and I was the talent. All these different things. And they would step on my toes to talk to a man who knew a quarter of what the fuck I did. Still, to this day, you are still finding that same kind of thing where these platforms don’t respect the talent that’s on them. That these are business people trying to run a business. They still assume that everybody is an idiot, and they give you the least number of tools to be able to run a proper business. Some of them actually listen to the talent and loyal fans (thank you!) and the things that they need in order to be successful on the platform. But a lot of them disregard what creators say about the backend admin and being able to break down the bookkeeping, sales numbers. Your numbers are the most important thing, and they give you next to no information at all. Almost everyone nowadays is a content creator, which means they are the producer, the director, and the distributor, and most of them are doing their own editing, their own
design, they are shooting it themselves; they are these one-women shows! Yet they are still treated like some dumb bimbo that doesn’t need the tools they need in order to be successful. So I think the more empowerment the talent has the more successful the platforms are going to be as well. Because the talent is going to make more money, and the platform is going to make more money. You are seeing it more and more. Fansly is doing a really great job of listening to creators and giving them the tools they need. The more we see that, the better this business becomes, so everyone can just do what they need to do.
My personal goals for the coming year I’m pretty focused on one thing at the moment, I had my comeback in 2018, one year before the pandemic -great timing Brittany -NOT! So I had to take a year off because of COVID, and I had some complications with plastic surgery on my boobies, and I had to take another year off, so just at the beginning of this year I started my comeback all over again, so I lost the momentum I’d put into it from the first year. At the moment, I’m just working on becoming relevant again. Getting my fan numbers up to a certain place where I can retire (again!), ha ha. Obviously, the more relevant you are, the more fans you have, then you don’t have to be shooting as much and can be on platforms and still be able to financially take care of yourself. I’m not a spring chicken but GILF’s are now trending and I’m actually really enjoying it at this moment, being back in the business and doing what I’m doing. Right now I’m really focused on trying to shoot as many scenes as I can and get my relevancy back up again, so I can meet my other long term goals.
The number one thing is that if you are a performer that’s filming with companies or working with an agent, then you must have healthy boundaries. Know what you're comfortable with, and know what you’re not comfortable with, and be very comfortable with saying “no”. Even if you have to go into a lawsuit with an agent or whatever you have to do, as at the end of the day, if you are doing things that you are not enjoying that are pushing your boundaries and putting you in situations that go against what you believe in for your soul, that is what is called selling your soul. There will be a price to pay for that long term. As somebody who has been in this business, I’ve seen it time and time again. It just produces anxiety,
depression, alcoholism, suicidal tendencies, and a life time of misery, pain, and struggle. I’ve seen it so much. It’s really painful to watch, and I’ve seen a lot of models die from it. It’s really important to never, ever do anything you don’t want to do. Personally, I feel that’s why I’m still here 30 years later, as I wasn’t willing to do anything that made me uncomfortable. That’s my first piece of advice. My second one is that it’s a business, so treat it like a business. Get a filing cabinet! Ha ha! I guess they don’t have those anymore? Get yourselves multiple hard drives, alright? Organize things, be professional, know your lines when you show up, go to YouTube and learn lighting, find different things that excite you besides just being a performer. Because we are all going to burn out at one point in time or another. Try to find different things like set design, hair and makeup, whatever it is, so when you are burned out in front of the camera, you have different things you can bounce around and do, so you can recover and still take care of yourself financially. It’s good to keep learning different things because then you’ll always have the confidence that this isn’t the only thing you can do. You know, you can do tons of different things and be happy. It’s never a good place where you feel stuck having to do something. If you are consistently learning, then you don’t have to. SO I APPRECIATE ALL OF THE SUPPORT, ALL OF THE LOVE, ALL OF THE EJACULATIONS AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! I’M JUST TRYING TO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER, ONE ORGASM AT A TIME!
Thank you to the fans. You know, I’ve been around for 30 years and I’m just doing my first DP (double penetration) and y’all have stayed with me! Seriously, I have a lot of fans from 25 years ago that still adore me. A lot of those fans, when I left the business and I started producing mainstream films, would come to my theatrical releases, they would come to the independent film festivals. I DJ’d all over the world, and a lot of fans would show up at my gigs. I've always had an outpouring of love and support from my fans that I’ve never gotten in my real life. I can’t help but think -that it plays on my subconscious in keeping me happy, healthy, confident, and with good self-esteem. So I appreciate all of the support, all of the love, all of the ejaculations after all these years! I’m just trying to make the world better, one orgasm at a time!
“Thank you, Brittany, for sharing your time with our readers.”
“Thank you, TreatDAO.”
The video of this interview can be viewed at this link: https://www.youtube.com/c/TreatDAO
Don’t forget to sign up for Brittany Andrews's Treat creator account to collect her exclusive NFTs: https://www.treatdao.com/creator/britandrews
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Want to see Elvis sing again in Vegas? How about ABBA at the height of their concert powers? Hatsune Miku? Mozart? Welcome to the world of Virtual Concerts!
The Covid-19 pandemic had a huge impact on the music industry as restrictions on gatherings wreaked havoc on live music concerts, festivals, and club events. The bread and butter for most artists is touring and live appearances, which far outweigh royalties or ad revenues. The industry had to pivot toward new opportunities and revenue streams to offset the pandemic losses and to retain engagement with music consumers. To do this, artists have become innovators in live streaming, virtual reality, 3D avatars, holographics, and the metaverse - allowing them to stay connected to their fans, create media buzz, and generate sales.
Let’s look at some of the ways that artists are embracing these next-generation opportunities.
The virtual Japanese pop sensation Hatsune Miku on stage in Montreal -image courtesy of CBC News
Epic Games invited pop star Ariana Grande to perform in the hit video game Fortnite, and her virtual event took place over the course of several days. The overall theme and message of her concert resonated with the millions of players and fans for Season 7 of the video game, fittingly titled “Moment of Togetherness.”
The popular online game Roblox allows people to program, create, and share their own games with others as part of a dynamic online community. The users have their own avatars and can interact in virtual worlds
Kai is a 16-year-old virtual influencer who developed “Splash”, a game world on the platform that allows people to record their own music and perform their own music live. She’s been able to use her virtual celebrity to inspire other budding-musicians to use the platform to build their own music careers online.
The Virtual Elvis Week 2022 honors the entertainer with a virtual live event from Memphis to mark the 45th anniversary of his passing. Fans can celebrate the legacy of the King of Rock and Roll with a unique online live concert, special guest events, fan experiences and more. It's all streamed live in HD from Graceland August 9-16.
The legendary French composer Jean-Michel Jarre is renowned for innovations in sound and vision and for staging really big concerts. He has famously lit up the Eiffel Tower, the Houston skyline, the Pyramids, the London Docklands, and even the Forbidden City in Beijing.
In groundbreaking style, Jarre rang-in the New Year 2021 for his fans with a stunning live performance from a virtual reality Notre-Dame cathedral. The spectacle combined realistic 3D concert visuals in VR with a motion-captured live studio performance. The event was the first of its kind to bring state-of-the-art high definition media to virtual reality.
The event attracted a staggering global audience of over 75 million viewers: more than the population of his natal country, France! The landmark event saw Jean-Michel trending at the top of the Pollstar charts for live streaming. His “welcome to the other side” concert stream out-performed the entire top 10 combined.
Jean Michel Jarre in Notre Dame Jean-Michel Jarre streamed a VR concert in a virtual Notre Dame Cathedral in 2021 -image courtesy of jeanmicheljarre.comAgnetha, Björn, Benny, and Anni-Frid (collectively ABBA) are part of our shared musical history; pop music royalty with a song book familiar to all. While their music has proved timeless, the four superstars have aged, now in their 70’s. However, the passage of time hasn’t dimmed their desire to blow away the audience, nor the fans' eagerness to fill an arena and share the musical magic.
ABBA Voyage is a new state-of-the-art concert tour -image courtesy of abbavoyage.com
So ABBA decided to create the kind of big, no compromises, dazzling concert they always dreamed of performing for the fans: in their 1970’s prime. To achieve this alchemy, they created fully 3D and motion-captured digital avatars (or Abba-tars?) of themselves. Work on the ambitious production started in 2016, and went through many evolutions. Eventually, technicians from George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) were called on to handle the digitization and performance capture of the stars. In total, more than 1,000 visual-effects artists and over one billion computing hours were invested in making the group as convincingly real as possible.
So in 2022 in London - ABBA, after four decades away from live events, made their much-anticipated return to the stage. With live in-person musicians rocking the nonstop hits, the Swedish supergroup were simply back; able to blur the lines between physical performance and virtual reality and wind back the clock 40 years.
For fans, it provided a once-in-a-lifetime chance to gather for a jaw-dropping triumphal parade of ABBA’s greatest hits live in concert. The timing couldn’t be more serendipitous: coinciding with the easing of restrictions on mass gatherings, here was a way to celebrate the end of the pandemic and help usher in a new era for events.
For the music industry, it was a historic turning point, proving that nearly anything is possible with modern technology. The future of earth-shaking live music events may well lie firmly in the past. Every artist's back-catalog is now being re-evaluated by producers eager to entertain and profit from the possibilities of virtual reality.
Achieving the impossible does come at a high price, and the production costs for the research, the production, and the tour itself are estimated to be in the region of $176 million.
A hologram concert is a virtual musical performance that happens in a physical, in-person venue and uses lights, videos, and lasers to project a 3D representation of an artist onto glass panels (or sometimes as a digital mask covering an impersonator's face).
The first time we saw holographic technology blow up in a big way was during Coachella 2012, where an in-person Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre performed alongside a hologram of a posthumous 2Pac.
In 2014, the Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku opened for Lady Gaga’s tour. Miku then went on to headline her own world tour in 2019. Unlike most other celebrities, Miku has always been nothing more than a 3D avatar, and the singer has never existed in real life. This certainly hasn’t set back her music career!
In 2018, a hologram of Roy Orbison embarked on a 28-date American tour, the biggest of its type. The digitally resurrected holo-Orbison then took up a residency at the Andy Williams Moon River Theatre.
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Elvis, the King of Rock and Roll, is back -thanks to cutting-edge hologram technologies.
Elvis Presley still fascinates the popular imagination and excites millions of fans' anticipation of some kind of live concert return, even decades after his untimely passing in 1977. In 2008, a version of Elvis made a surprise appearance in a duet on American Idol with Celine Dion. The special effect was achieved with a professional Las Vegas Presley-impersonator and a video of Elvis’s real face projected as a digital mask.
Despite the demand, it is unclear whether the Graceland Estate would condone a holographic return to the stage for the King. Joel Weinshanker, a managing partner of Graceland Holdings, explains that, by definition, there is no soul in a hologram. He elaborates, “Elvis Presley’s shows were all about him pouring his soul out to his fans. A hologram couldn’t begin to capture that in any meaningful way. It would be a pale imitation.”
Elvis Presley’s shows were all about him pouring his soul out to his fans. A hologram couldn’t begin to capture that in any meaningful way. It would be a pale imitation.
The last decade has seen Elvis re-emerge on-screen as a powerful force to entertain, most recently in the 2022 “Elvis” biopic. Directed with dynamic energy by Baz Luhrmann and starring Austin Butler (in an all-singing, all-dancing performance ripe for an Academy Award nomination), who channels the King of Rock and Roll to perfection.
The sequel to the 1982 neo-noir film “Blade Runner", directed by Denis Villeneuve and titled “Blade Runner 2049” (released in 2017), featured a holographic Elvis on stage in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas - his musical legacy continuing, despite few being around to appreciate it.
The question is no longer - “what if” - we could experience Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a live concerto, streamed direct from Austria from 1780AD to 2022AD - the question is - “should we?" —and who has the right to make it happen? -. We’ve already seen artists including Roy Orbison, 2Pac Shakur, Whitney Houston, and Michael Jackson being given a second-life through technology.
Some people argue that virtual concerts are wrong, merely designed as a macabre exploitation of past artists and their old music. Others contest it is a passing fad or gimmick, and just a quick fix to our lockdown lifestyles. To the contrary, this entertainment is more likely a natural convergence of digital mixed-media enabled by high speed internet, bringing together HD video streaming, VR, AR, web3, and immersive video games technologies. A trend that has been on the horizon for years and has only been accelerated by us all spending more of our time, and our dollars, online.
One of the biggest questions is how, in the age of the metaverse, the corporations that are actively acquiring music catalogs and the rights to existing and former celebrities' likenesses are going to distribute the millions (billions?) of dollars among the stakeholders. These would include the original creators of the content, their families, producers, distributors, remixers, promoters, and so on.
Whatever the future may hold for virtual livestreams, holograms on tour, or events in the metaverse, artists need to take into consideration what rights they are signing away today, and who controls their likenesses tomorrow.
Treat says, “Let’s rock!” Come and join us in our VR space in RDLand.
