It’s no real secret that people who provide “adult” content on the web are treated pretty shabbily by the corporations that dominate much of the Internet. You pretty much can’t do anything adult at all on Facebook (which in my humble opinion is the Internet for people too stupid to be responsibly allowed access to a global communications network, but there it is). Once adult-friendly services like Tumblr, now in the clutches of the corporate suits from Verizon, have begun hiding adult content and stripping it out of search results. And there is now some sort of ongoing fiasco at Patreon, which while it hasn’t quite banned adult content, has changed its terms of service to be considerably more hostile to it. Adult content providers are also mistreated by search engine operators, which their material posted way down in search results.

My blogfather Bacchus at ErosBlog has decided, and announced in a post put up yesterday that we who are still out here on the open Internet to start pushing back. If we can’t be found on social networks or via search engines, we need to start promoting each other’s content. So Bacchus, following the brilliant Girl on the Net, has proposed that we have a regular feature called Share our Shit Saturdays (hashtagged with #SoSS). The proposal is simple:

I’m thinking maybe three links with a sentence or two about each, but here’s the core notion: you put this on your own website, not on a tumblr or a blogspot or facebook or any other social media. And the content you share and promote? Should likewise be content that’s on the independent web, not on anybody’s “free” social media server anywhere. Once your #SSoS post is up on any given Saturday, then, sure: promote the shit out of it on any social media that will allow the promotion. That’s a given. But this meme is all about promoting what’s left of the open web, on what’s left of the open web.

Bacchus has already put up his post, and I too will give it a shot, indeed I will. Here are this week’s shares, all artists.

• Netherlands artist Frans Mensink a site on the open web. I’ve commissioned a fair amount of work from Frans over the years, and his extraordinarily lush, high-polish style has never failed to please. He has been worth every Euro (and makes me wish I had a lot more Euros). Be sure to visit his galleries.
• Prolific CG artist KristinF has an open site, with samples of her work. She also has available products for purchase, like the graphic memoir Diary of a Party Girl. As those who have seen Kristin’s work on this site know, she is a remarkably bold and sometimes even transgressive artist who’s willing to go into some dark parts of the imagination.
• CG artist Drake is still going strong with his site Medusariffic, where he continues to publish his women-only A.S.F.R. universe comic. How many ways are there to transform a pretty woman into a work or art? I’m not sure, but I’m willing to bet Drake will have explored them all before he hangs up his mouse. For a sample of Drake’s work on-site, you can see “A Dreadful Accident”, a minicomic which he generously contributed to Erotic Mad Science a few years back.

That’s promotion for this week; more to come. Long live the free and open Internet!