Here's an experiment for you. Go onto YouPorn, at (no surprises here) www.youporn.com, and type in "cam strip." The results page will display, as of this writeup, three hundred and twenty-eight rather compelling reasons why my kids, if ever I have any, will not be having webcams on their computers.

YouPorn is a bit like YouTube really, and certain among the more wanky end of the techie sites and publications spectrum have been referring to it, and its various knockoffs, as "porn 2.0," whatever that is. I think it's meant to be like web 2.0 but more X-rated. But I digress. The idea of YouPorn is that anyone with access to some form of video editing software and an Internet connection can upload videos and things, and, since the name of the site is YouPorn, specifically videos of an adult nature, and others can then rate and comment on the videos that they upload, and so forth. It's still a bit of a mystery at this time as to when it was founded, or by whom, but a preponderance of German titled clips on the site pushes me in that direction.

Now while proponents of this incomparable web resource might claim that it'll usher in a revolution in the adult feature film business, with users able to create and share their own filth without having to conform to the pneumatic, bottle-blond expectations of such firms as Red Light District or Vivid Video, these people are, of course, totally wrong. YouPorn's content actually consists of a mélange of excerpts from feature-length blue movies, clips pirated from subscription porno sites on the internet, and grainy, blurry, footage of young ladies frigging themselves in front of a cheap digital video camera or doling out sloppy blow jobs in front of same which belongs to their boy friends. Oftentimes the picture is jerky, the sound fails to sync up, and there's every so often an inexplicable rustling noise as the subject of the masterpiece in question realises that the action's going to be out of frame and repositions the camera. So it's almost exactly like YouTube then, in that respect.

And then there's the comments. Oh dear. Once again, almost exactly like YouTube, the comments are either I. spam, or II. illiterate earslings explaining how many wanks they fit in to that clip. Except unlike YouTube, logging in isn't required to comment or even to post a video, so it's even more fuckwitted (if that's physicaly possible) than Google's latest acquisition.

Thankfully, though, YouPorn hasn't generated any internet phenomena yet, and nobody's starred opposite Rocco Siffredi or Cytherea thanks to their performance in a YouPorn clip. Though the closest seems to be one clip of some girlie engaging in an act of fructophilia while a techno remix of "Ausgerechnet Bananen" plays in the background. That little lot's garnered several items of speculation as to whom the star is (including, of course, the invariable claim to have "fucked her silly"). In fact, this sort of thing makes me wonder rather... who's to say that posting a clip of one's ex on YouPorn doing something particularly odd with a candlestick and a small cat, for instance, won't become a method of getting one's own back after an acrimonious breakup. Because if the aforementioned bananadildonicist and her future employer stuffs her name into Google, who's to say he won't be presented with her engaging in just that with her face quite clearly discernible? Food for thought, methinks.

And that's about it really. Please be reminded, though, that your home may be at risk if you fail to keep it free of grainy webcam footage of distinctly average folks doing it.