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Comments: 3893 • Responses: 47  • Date: 

Squirrel_Whisperer15236 karma

How frustrating was it waiting for your 18th birthday before beginning work on the site?

greeners1de32906 karma

as much as it was frustrating to wait until my 21st birthday to consume my first sip of alcohol

notsofatdude4691 karma

What do you think your friends, family, school and potential universities would say to learning of your porn site?

greeners1de9188 karma

  • friends: "bro that's so cool omg i love porn look at me i have so much testosterone ARRRR"
  • family: (wouldn't talk to me)
  • school: (expelled)
  • potential universities: (revoke admission)

blizzardalert1209 karma

I think you vastly underestimate the desire universities have to curate a diverse class. While that largely means racial/gender/whatever demographics diversity, it also means they love interesting people.

Yeah, if you're applying to BSU BYU it's a terrible idea to mention this. But certainly liberal arts schools might love this. Don't mention it in every application, but definitely do in a few. You'd be surprised how much they'll value your work ethic and initiative, even if it is in a more controversial field.

Also, props to a truly impressive accomplishment. Not many people have created something as well done as this.

greeners1de401 karma

thanks for the suggestion! and kind words :)

eastriverdriveII4331 karma

what do you find more arousing, a nice booty or a beautiful line of code?

greeners1de10837 karma

a girl with a nice booty who can write a beautiful line of code ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

forjakessake1770 karma

tabs or spaces though...?

greeners1de3654 karma

tabs all the way

StormlightHero53198 karma

Haha, what a story Mark! By the way, how's your sex life? (Actually though, how is it? Does watching that much porn everyday affect it?)

greeners1de6278 karma

it's gotten pretty desensitizing tbh. i actually recently added a "sanity mode" that replaces all the porn with random pokemon gifs: https://imgur.com/a/lgI6L

Mosqueeeeeter223 karma

That's actually really smart and innovative thinking... damn your only 18 yet companies would pay a shit load to have you work for them. Seriously.

greeners1de157 karma

thanks! means a lot :)

gazoogle2479 karma

If you were on Shark Tank what percent of your company would you sell for what amount of money? How would you use the investment to grow the business?

greeners1de2142 karma

oh boy, so many things i could grow with that money besides just the business. idk, i don't really need outside investment per se but if i had to i would maybe take $50k and spend a lot of marketing

shubik23652 karma

How do you actually get the word out? How did the site become popular and what would you say works best for promoting?

And by the way: awesome work!!!

Edit: guys I get that an AMA is a good marketing idea. I was thinking more about actual paid marketing possibilities :)

greeners1de356 karma

i posted it on some forums and it organically grew from there

OhyeahOhio2350 karma

At what point will infrastructure costs cause you to monetize the site?

Follow-up question, have you been contacted about your site being acquired? At what price point would you say “yeah that’s enough”?

greeners1de3066 karma

it'd have to be pretty significant for me to get to the point of monetizing. the servers currently cost me around $250/mo. i wouldn't start until it hits past $2k+/mo.

in terms of the site being acquired, i've had one or two that reached out but i don't think i'd sell it anytime soon. development costs alone (considering my time spent on it) is well over $50K+.

SteviaSteve2287 karma

How are you able to afford your servers as a high school student? Props for making it work bro.

greeners1de3295 karma

i do some freelancing coding projects on the side

rocsNaviars326 karma

As a high schooler, you have access to $2k/month? How does that work?

greeners1de631 karma

i'd basically put all my income from freelancing gigs into it until i can't handle it anymore

DoctorJinxx307 karma

Why are you doing all of this if you have to keep it secret for fear of backlash from colleges/parents/school as well as having to spend loads of extra time (on top of the actual time put into the site) to earn enough money to run the site?

Do you just enjoy porn? Enjoy making sites? Do you one day wish to sell the site? Use it on your résumé (not college)?

greeners1de627 karma

i just like building stuff. done it since i was super young and always will. i don't do it for the money at all.

Fancycam264 karma

How is it that you've made up the costs thus far?

greeners1de1008 karma

selling weedjustajoke

Dkm21435 karma

How was cummingle.com not taken?!

greeners1de1924 karma

ikr? i snatched it up right away

bradmajors691279 karma

Two questions that I'm re-submitting as questions. (Thanks, moderator bot.)

Are you aware of this bug?

Just checked out your site on Chrome on a Samsung S7.

FYI, my "endless feed" under the Gay category stops after exactly 9 results and no more will load. (Similar result under the "Popular" category.)

Do you mind if I make a suggestion?

Check out the way pornhub and xtube allow users to toggle the content of the entire site to be gay or straight. You're not going to retain a lot of gay viewers with just one umbrella category for us. I like clicking on category headings like "feet" or "bdsm" (or "bears" or "daddies") and seeing only dudes. Currently, I see a lot of tits and only the most popular (ie, bland and mainstream) gay videos.

I know such an apparently simple feature might represent weeks of programming work, but you've already got a great site name that will get gay clicks. Would be a shame not to retain those users, especially if you plan to monetize this.

greeners1de1534 karma

thanks for the feedback, it really helps.

  • as of now there just hasn't been enough new content from gay subreddits recently. if you can suggest some more active tumblr accounts with gay content, i'll add that to the system and it'll start pulling more content
  • i'll take your suggestion to heart and build out a gay version of the site that only shows gay content like you said.

catword1123 karma

How did you get started in programming?

greeners1de1929 karma

I really wanted to build a game for iOS so just started messing around with tutorials on YouTube with no programming background at all. It's amazing how much free learning resource there is online. You can pretty much find tutorials to do/build/code anything out there.

catword423 karma

That’s awesome. I’ve done some coding, and it’s not too hard. I’ve never tried programming apps or anything like that though!

Follow up question: do you plan on going to college for programming or computer type degrees?

greeners1de631 karma

yeah programming is super fun and useful for a bunch of stuff. and yeah i'm planning on majoring in either computer science or computer engineering.

stupid_giant861 karma

Since you feel the need to keep it from your family, do you come from a liberal or conservative family? Religious?
Colleges might actually find your extra curricular activities as a positive, depending on the school and your planned major.

greeners1de1186 karma

yeah i come from a pretty religious family. they'd kill me if they found out (not really but would be v mad). and ha, maybe but i don't think i'd take my chances with the colleges

Wizzerd348852 karma

Do you plan on or have you monetized the site? What are your thoughts on invasive advertising (pop-ups, autoplayed audio) and why or why won't you use those on your site?

greeners1de1813 karma

I think intrusive, scammy ads ("grow your dick by 5 inches in 2 weeks!") are horrible and never plan to have those kinds of ads on my site. I understand why sites have them but I'm just focusing on keeping the quality of the site clean for now.

Sno_Jon1015 karma

You're going to go far with this approach.

Side note, if you put ads on, put a friendly reminder asking users to disable Adblock and the ads aren't intrusive.

Personally this encourages me to turn my Adblock off rather than companies forcing me to turn it off as I'm just not going to visit their site if they do this.

greeners1de608 karma

well noted, thanks!

Wolfszeit464 karma

[deleted]

greeners1de951 karma

the porn industry is really old school and traditional brands and advertisers (say, like ZARA) don't want to ever get associated with adult entertainment. this leads to very little competition and low bids for clicks/impressions. low bids in turn attract scammy advertisers (say, like grow your dick by 5 inches in 2 weeks)

Cyrino420642 karma

How do you get around copy right laws?

greeners1de1297 karma

Cummingle doesn't actually host any of the content. They're all linked out to Imgur/Gfycat/Tumblr/etc. that have their own takedown processes for copyright holders.

anonforbacon366 karma

You'd still have to have a procedure to remove infringing content even if it is automated. Just because you don't host but facilitate & link to copyrighted works means you have to comply with DMCA requests the same as Google. Otherwise Safe Harbor Exemption for not policing content same as if one of your scaped hosts contained child porn. You would have to remove it or face legal issues despite it not being on your site. On the other hand if you're hot linking of their servers I can't imagine they'll be too happy with you over time & may rewrite their API's to exclude your scrapping.

greeners1de511 karma

yeah i'm in the process of making a dmca takedown form on the website itself. should be pushed out soon.

BrandanosaurusRex639 karma

Are there links to the source videos? Or just the GIFs?

greeners1de627 karma

it just links out to the actual source url of the videos since there's no way to tell where to actual source is from. sometimes you can find that in the description of the original gfycat (or tumblr or imgur) links

thegraymaninthmiddle638 karma

Have you had any close calls while working on the site when a family member happens to suprise you at the worst possible time?

greeners1de1372 karma

haha i have a keyboard shortcut on my linux environment where it instantly switches my screen to something safe for work/family. a couple close calls though.

tusimples497 karma

How were you like during school?

greeners1de1104 karma

idk, i'm actually a perfectly normal kid at school. i hang out with my friends all the time, i pretend to pay attention in class, and teachers like me. it's just kinda boring and not stimulating enough imo so i'm just waiting to get to college now.

AtakuHydra476 karma

So fellow 18 year old coder, what was thought process to make this site?

greeners1de1980 karma

  • 1) watch porn like any other horny 18 yo
  • 2) get sick of ads and sites with terrible UX
  • 3) get high
  • 4) design site
  • 5) build site

mynameisadrean380 karma

Do you ever plan to tell your loved ones? It's a great accomplishment even if it's a bit controversial.

greeners1de534 karma

haha if i tell anyone then it introduces a chance of leaking. so no, i wouldn't.

fricklepicklez335 karma

Do you make any money from your site? And if so, what are your revenue streams?

greeners1de637 karma

I don't make any money from it. There is no revenue stream as of now. I want to keep the site completely ad-free for a while until it's absolutely necessary.

StormlightHero5231 karma

When would it become necessary?

Edit: I'm not discouraging him from putting ads on the site, I was just wondering :(

greeners1de457 karma

it would become necessary when server bills start going crazy. it's manageable right now but if it continues to grow then we might reach that point soon.

Lad83329 karma

Would you have more time for school if you stopped jerking off so much?

greeners1de584 karma

i've actually done less of that since starting the site. i just see so much of it now that i've become much more desensitized to it.

deadaselvis194 karma

Can you increase your Gay content ? I'm asking for a friend !!!

greeners1de319 karma

(answering for a friend) yeah, i'm building out an entire gay version of the site that replaces all the generic categories right now (i.e. hardcore, amateur) with gay sub-categories. stay tuned! xo

beautiful_woman184 karma

What made you choose to go into the porn industry? Do you still find porn exciting now that you're working with it all day?

greeners1de655 karma

i didn't choose the porn industry, the porn industry chose me ;)

_Entity_CS143 karma

Do you plan on telling your friends and/or family about your site? If so, when will you and how do you think they'll react?

greeners1de233 karma

no, i can't afford to let this information leak at all.

hary62798 karma

Do you have any tips on learning how to code in this way?

greeners1de159 karma

youtube is such a great resource. i would start with interpreted languages like python and javascript to begin with!

orange_box90 karma

How long did it take to build this project ? Where do you host it ?

greeners1de114 karma

the first version was super simple and took me less than a week. i've since spent much more time adding onto it. it's currently hosted on heroku.

hey-look-over-there46 karma

Anyone you know use this site?

greeners1de39 karma

not that i know of personally, since i haven't told anyone i know

Tacoman300545 karma

What's your tech stack like?

greeners1de38 karma

react frontend node/mongo backend

dany_zero34 karma

2 questions. Before them, just wanted to say you are one of my idols now.

1.- Does the website track any sort of user-activity (most searched, time, etc.)? And if so, what are some of the most popular or common things people do?

2.- Has your website been acknowledged as competition by other porn companies? Heck, have they tried to buy it or the algorithm you use?

greeners1de31 karma

  • For now I don't track user activity for the sake of privacy
  • Haha not yet! I'm just trying to build the best porn site that I personally would use

Creeees185819 karma

How do you feel about the nofap community condemning porn and making others feel bad when they watch porn?

greeners1de27 karma

to each their own!