In December 2014, CEO Scott Flanders hinted that nudity could vanish completely from the Playboy brand.
In a bid to make itself more relevant, Playboy magazine has officially announced they're no longer running photos of fully nude women:
Playboy officials have declared that they've won a culture war, so they're moving on. "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture," said Scott Flanders, Playboy's CEO, in an interview with the [New York] Times. He also said: "That battle has been fought and won."
[Ed. note: I was unsure as to whether this story was germane to our site. But then I stepped back to look at the bigger picture. At one time, Playboy pretty much *owned* its category, though with time other publications later rose up to challenge it. Times have changed. Just how relevant are print publications these days? What other storied publications have disappeared? Which are next? What will the publishing landscape look like in ten or twenty years?]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Francis on Friday October 16 2015, @09:04PM
I guess this means nothing is changing because everybody was already reading Playboy for the articles anyways.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @09:17PM
For those who legitimately did read it just for the articles nothing will change. Those who read it for the nudes would... wait... who reads Playboy anymore anyway? It used to be a right of passage for an of-aged teen to successfully hide issues of it from their parents/guardians. Now it's a relic from a time long gone. It's too easy now. Just make sure you're incognito, Google with safe search off, and bam.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @09:30PM
10 year olds now have access to all the midget farting porn with baseball bats they desire. This is a good move for Playboy.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Francis on Sunday October 18 2015, @12:56AM
That sounds more like Hustler than Playboy.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday October 18 2015, @11:34AM
Naw, smartphone, tablet,, and of course the good ol' computer.
If I had had access to portable porn like those, I would of spent all my time in the bathroom and today I would be known as "Needle dick the bug fucker...."
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 5, Funny) by davester666 on Saturday October 17 2015, @03:05AM
I still remember having breakfast in a restaurant, reading a newspaper, and a friend of mine comes in with his girlfriend [I knew both of them though a church I no longer attended], and the place is busy, so they ask to join me. No problem. They sit down, and she notices I have a magazine in a plain brown bag.
"Is that an explicit magazine?", she asks (but doesn't pick it up or look in the bag).
"Yes, it is".
"Do you read it for the articles or the pictures"
"Mostly for the articles, but the pictures are also pretty important."
Finally, she looks like she is ready to lay into me for being a creep and decides to critique the specific magazine I bought, picks up the bag, pulls out the magazine, and.... Electronics Monthly.
My friend starts laughing.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 17 2015, @10:19AM
I'm sure it contained many pictures of undressed electronics. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday October 17 2015, @07:51PM
The pages did wind up getting sticky.....
I always would read it eating a jam sandwich.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @12:30AM
You laugh but I know multiple people who read the braille edition. They definitely don't do it for the centerfolds.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday October 17 2015, @01:11PM
I can only imagine what the, um, artifacts on the braille version do for the reading experience of the blind.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @02:03PM
They tried a braille version of the centerfold but ran into a problem. They couldn't fold it.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 17 2015, @09:05AM
http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-writers-published-in-playboy.php [toptenz.net]
No one subscribes to Playboy for the nudity when there's so much free nudity on-line. They can and should serialize short-fiction and comics targeting the same or slightly more adult demographics from Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead towards The Sopranos and Game of Thrones.
Honestly, if they'll just steer clear from the DC \ Marvel's "rich patrician wears mask and protects the poor plebians from themselves" propaganda, then they'll do fine.
compiling...