This week at the Austin Social Media Club, @db, one of the evening’s presenters, used a tongue in cheek porn analogy to comically discuss social media. He showed highly pixelated pictures of beautiful naked women (with the BEST designer shoes anyone can buy) captioned with crowd sourced responses to his question “What do porn and social media have in common?”. I found it amusing. Not everyone did.

Let me say, I don’t think porn is bad. Yes, I am a feminist, but not the kind that thinks being naked, or overtly sexy, or having sex (whether you film it or not) is exploitative. I am speaking generally here, of course, but I actually fall more into the consenting adults can do what they want to category. And, frankly, some porn is hot. If I had a complaint, it was that @db didn’t include any beefcake pictures to make the analogy more accessible to the women in the room. I mean, these pictures weren’t of anyone doing sexual acts – they were of naked women in high classed fantasy situations. And, again – the SHOES! Wow.

Some women in the audience complained that the pictures were offensive. Some other people (both men and women) complained about the f-bomb usage in the presentation. Again, I didn’t agree. I was able to look past any potential offenses, as it appeared to simply be @db’s style rather than a verbal affront, and listen to his message. And what a message it was!

Perhaps @db could have chosen a different approach, but he was brilliant, simply brilliant. I approached him after his presentation and he was friendly, accessible, very well connected, and a super nice guy. He made many relevant and helpful comments that I will put to use in my social media and I hope to meet up with him again. I liked him a lot.

So what about you? Does porn affect your listening? Have you ever been so put off by a person’s presentation style or power point slides that you couldn’t pay attention to the good stuff they were saying? I want to hear how you feel about this. Was @db wrong to give this type of presentation? Time for you to sound off!…