Hi. Damon, here. Proprietor of PopCult & Pinups, and co-master of the Paintball Pinups of Texas.
If you’ve been visiting our websites at all, even if just occasionally, you have my heart-felt gratitude. This all originally started with the Paintball Pinups of Texas. With the Paintball Pinups, I am the artist, but not the brains. I work closely with a female paintballer to create content that she, the pinups, and their fans love and enjoy. I help bring their vision to reality. But aside from that, and making sure the website doesn’t go up in flames, I’m pretty much useless in the world of paintball.
So I created the PopCult & Pinups page, where I could contribute and create content that I knew about, and would be able to constantly update the site with new stuff, even if we go periods of time without a pinup shoot. This is a great setup for me because not only is it a creative outlet for my photography, but I get to play games and write about them without the pressure of deadlines or word counts. But there is a problem.
I sat here at my desk yesterday and looked over the PopCult & Pinups website and Facebook page. I groaned a little at the limited scope of my content, and the lack of anything really compelling or entertaining. I am trying to gain and maintain readership after all.
I have always intended this site to grow, and gain additional contributors as it did. But for now it’s just me. I do everything myself. I’ll repeat that. I literally do everything myself. I write every post. I create every custom graphic. Every pinup photo is shot, edited, and uploaded by me (though I usually have help during the actual shoot). I drew my own avatar pic. I do what I can because I love doing it. But I can only do so much.
I also realize that when there are so many other websites out there that offer more, why should you bother to spend your time here? Well if you’re anything like me, you have a circle of trusted websites that you hit up daily. For me, I rotate through my preferred gaming sites like IGN, Eurogamer, TheJimquisition, MajorNelson, GiantBomb, and DayOnePatch. Also, if you’re like me, you consume everything they have to offer on Monday morning before your coffee’s even cold.
I want PopCult & Pinups to be in that trusted circle of websites. Even though we don’t do reviews (yet) because the thought of obtaining a retail copy of every big new game, while wonderful, is a bit of a pipe dream right now. Besides, there are thousands of websites out there that do “reviews” and we don’t really trust any of them, do we? That’s where I’ve always thought PopCult & Pinups could be different. We don’t bother with reviews, because you have that already. We don’t do news because, well let’s face it, we’re in South Texas, so yeah.
But we do try to offer fun and interesting things to read. We don’t have a political agenda, and we don’t have corporate sponsors. Our website is maintained and paid for by our Patreon donors. Because of this, we don’t have any ridiculous, full-page ads in your face or hovering boxes over our stories. We don’t have any Top Ten slideshows with ads smeared across every blank space on your screen.
Side note: Even though I am writing this as the sole contributor, I use “we” in plural when referring to the website. This is how I’m differentiating my personal thoughts from the PopCult & Pinups as an entity. I don’t have a mouse in my pocket.
I try to play everything I can get my hands on, but I can still only do so much. I’m always brainstorming. I know video consumption has sky-rocketed, and with the capturing of footage being as easy as it’s ever been, this may be the natural progression of the website. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a podcast. I’ve wanted to do some Let’s Plays with featured pinups, or interviews with gaming personalities (if they can get over our photos of ladies in very little clothing).
I do want to grow. I intend to grow. But right now, the money’s just not there yet. In this line of work (photography especially) people try to get as much as they can from you without paying for it. I refuse to be one of those guys. When I shoot a pinup, she is paid. If I have someone write for this website, they will be paid. If we do a podcast, I want to be able to pay these people for their time, even if it’s not much. But the money’s not there yet.
With your help it can be. If you have any interest in our website at all, please check out our Patreon page. For $2 a month you can help support us and get a high resolution version of our Pic of the Month. It’s a shared Patreon for both the Paintball Pinups and the PopCult & Pinups, so it won’t always be PopCult related, but we try to alternate. If you want to donate more, those options are there too, but honestly I’d rather have a hundred $2 donors than ten $20 donors, if that makes any sense.
This website isn’t going anywhere yet. On the contrary, we have exciting stuff to look forward to. PAX South is only three months away, and takes place right here in our backyard. The Alamo City Comic Con will approach quickly after that. Last year, these two events were the main inspiration for this website. We were trying to shoe-horn the Paintball Pinups of Texas into events that were not paintball-related. The pinups were there, and enjoyed a pretty good level of interest, but trying to convince a guy who’s clearly not into paintball to hit up a paintball site was like pissing in the wind. We’re going to try to be there again this year, but in a different capacity. Even if I’m just there by myself. Who knows who I might bump into.
In any case I hope that you, dear readers, stick around long enough to see what may become of our little pop culture and gaming site. I truly believe there is room out there for small sites like ours, when readers and gamers are tired of being advertised to, tired of shady reviews, tired of the typical bullshit, and they just want to read some quirky junk about what some guy has been playing lately, even if that particular game is months or even years old. Or maybe they just want to see what the latest pinup of the month is, that’s okay too.
I think that might wrap it up for this Letter from the Editor. I’m not trying to make anyone feel sorry for us. Just the opposite. Be excited! We have some great things planned for the future, we’re just waiting for the timing to be right. In the meantime I will continue to add to the site, and we will continue to increase our PopCult Pinup roster as well as introduce as many quirky and different features as we can. If you’re reading this on Monday, that’s about five minutes of your workday gone. You’re welcome.
