AVN Stars Grab Spotlight at 2021 AEE Panel

LOS ANGELES—Five of the top content creators on the AVN Stars platform assembled virtually last week in the AVN 2021 Adult Entertainment Expo “Shining Bright on AVN Stars” panel, presented by MyFreeCams, where they discussed how the platform enables them to communicate with fans, compared their online identities to their offline selves, and recalled fond memories of kicking boys in the balls. The Friday discussion was a do-over from the previous day, when audio difficulties beset the Zoom session moderated by AVN contributing writer Gram Ponante and featuring four dominatrices among the five panelists. But it was during the Thursday panel that the women explored their routes into, as Ponante put it, “being mean to men” for money.  “I was mean to men before I realized that I could profit off of being mean to men,” said panelist Candy Glitter at the Thursday session. “In high school I would get a kick out of kicking guys in the balls, if they would let me. Just little experiences like that. I’ve always kind of been a sassy brat.” AVN Stars creator Princess Mindy related a similar story of her entry into the dominatrix field, also saying that she attended a school where boys seemed to enjoy it when a girl kicked them in the testicles. “I was in tap-dance lessons in elementary, and I discovered that when I would wear my tap dance shoes to school, the boys would like it if I chased them and tried to kick them in the balls,” she said. “The funny thing was, when I would stop chasing them, then they would chase me to run after them and kick them in the balls some more. Then in high school, I started to notice that my relationships with men were a little different. Where other girls were a little nicer and sweeter, I was making mean jokes. I just noticed I was a little different.” In the Friday session, AVN Stars dominatrix Violet Doll shared her own experience, recalling her “first memory of kicking a boy in the balls, in gym class” when she was only about eight years old. But at that time, the kick was a response to an attack by the boy, who initiated the altercation by kicking her in the crotch. “It may have been an ‘ah ha’ moment for me,” she said. “I do real time sessions that involve CBT ballbusting. I do it online as well, and it’s definitely one of my favorite kinks by far. It’s so much fun — of course, only if the client enjoys it.” In addition to discussing how they developed into the personalities with whom their fans interact online, the panelists highlighted how the tools accessible on the AVN Stars platform enable them to “get your brand, which is you, across,” as Ponante put it.  Panelist Muse Naadia pointed to the platform's user friendliness, and “ease maneuvering across the site for our clients, who tend to be stroking their lives away. It’s kind of hard to overwhelm them or make anything too complicated,” she said. “As I moved people over from, say OnlyFans to AVN, it ended up being way better because the interface is just better. People enjoy interacting on there. It makes my business a lot easier to run.” The panel’s lone non-dominatrix, Joey Kim — described by Ponante as “a wonderful photographer, almost a photojournalist of porn, as well as somebody who creates content of herself.” “A lot of my customers who I brought to AVN Stars have been my fans for many years,"Kim said. "So moving to AVN Stars has been really good for me. There are so many ways to connect with your fan base in a way that is perhaps more intimate, ways that allow them to really connect with you and stay with you for years to come.” Kim also pointed to the variety of tools that exist on the platform which, she said, allow for differing styles of communication, tailored to fit a creator’s needs or mood at any given time. “Hopping on live stream, and being able to connect with them in real time,” she said. “Or being able to connect with them even when I’m not online or streaming is really like how I stay engaged with my fan base, and how they connect with me.” Candy Glitter added that AVN Stars allows her online personality to serve as an extension of her “real” personality. “For me there’s not an on and off switch that you would think of me flipping,” she said. When she is online performing, she said, “Candy Glitter” is not a separate character, but instead she feels that she is “playing another part of my own personality. AVN is great for being able to express that part of my personality. Because I do feel like Princess Candy, Candy Glitter is just one aspect of my personality. On AVN there’s so many ways you can express yourself. There’s live streaming, there’s clips you can buy. If you’re not in the mood to type, I can just click a button and send a voice memo. Or if I feel like being sassy and laughing at people, I can go live. There’s groups I can group people into. One day, I want to talk to my virgins. I have a virgin group — I can send them a message.” For Princess Mindy, an advantage of AVN Stars is not only the tools to express her persona to her fans, but the ease with which she is able to earn cash off of those interactions. “In addition to the free communication you can give on AVN Stars, I find that it’s really easy to switch from free to pay. I really like that I can make a free post, and point to my clip store, or take it to private messages, chat a little, make them pay in there,” she said. “I am chatty. I do like to chat. I find a lot of other platforms are missing that, where you can, in that same environment while talking, then just slip in a little, ‘pay for this!’” But beyond the tools for communicating and monetization, according to Joey Kim, perhaps the most important benefit of the AVN Stars platform is that the options available to her have freed her from the need to remain online almost constantly and “taught me so much about confidence and self love.” “Before I moved over to AVN Stars, I was that girl who was working every day, streaming every day for sometimes 12 hours. Sometimes more. It was a little but unhealthy, I’ll admit. A lot of it came from my passion of wanting to prove to myself that I was worth it, that my work is good. When I moved to AVN Stars I stopped streaming every day, and I gave myself one day a week to stream. And the rest to focus on the other things I love equally, which is creating content. Or hanging out with my friends. Or dancing.” The platform's flexibility has given her “more time to enjoy the little things that I kind of took for granted when I was absorbed into this kind of unhealthy, hustle culture.” For Candy Glitter her role online is about more than the ability to earn a substantial income. “It’s not really about selling myself. It’s about something that brings me joy. And happens to bring me a lot of money.” To view the full panel, click here.