We Watched That New Porn Reality Show ‘Sex Factor’ So You Don’t Have to

Filming a double penetration scene isn’t easy. Have you ever thought about the logistics? “Hero D Protagonist” hasn’t. He’s squatted against the sofa at completely the wrong angle, and he’s fumbling himself inside “Minx,” who lowers herself onto him with the pained dignity of someone entering a hot bath. The Colonel stands to attention beside the two as the scene unfolds; penis noncompliant, he’s mashing away at it with teeth gritted. Both sets of eyes flit nervously at the cameraman and hovering offscreen guides. Minx has long since retreated to her mind palace. xHamster has produced an original porn reality show called The Sex Factor because God has abandoned us.

The format is pretty simple and follows the same well-worn paths as non-porn reality shows: The contestants come pre-prepared with their soundbites and characters (only, instead of “I’m not here to make friends” it’s, “I wanna be the Miss Congeniality of porn” or, “I love fucking on sailboats”), and they all live in a big house together in an effort to make them fuck (only, the inter-cast fucking isn’t obscured by a blanket and night vision; I mean, they actually make extremely high quality POV scenes in their off hours).

Then, just when you get comfortable in the format, it skews off and gets more porny: They have competitions like “blow-offs,” where the losers are voted out of the house; they have a lineup of pneumatic porn actors saying, “I want my panties to be wet at the end of this competition”; there are a lot of leather sofas with sweat stains on them. It’s a show about people who are extremely bad at sex, but it’s also a character study in the type of person who is totally convinced that they’re America’s great undiscovered penis.

Here’s what you can glean from the first two episodes:

David Caspian cries after doing a bad wank.

All Reality Shows Need at Least One Extremely Creepy Contestant

… although The Sex Factor has generously gifted us two. It’s Day One, and David “Caspian” Caspian—he goes by Caspian for those lusty C.S. Lewis vibes—has misread the mood of the house in a major way. As his fellow housemates decamp to the diary room to say how creeped out he makes them feel, he makes the classic mistake of stripping entirely naked and lying on the floor, masturbating and giggling to himself. Even in the porn house, this is regarded as a faux pas. It’s hard to know what sort of vetting process didn’t catch Caspian before he could begin his own personal wank odyssey.

The Colonel (“I’m here to be a leader… in porn!”) is the worst type of person on television: the serial reality show contestant. He was on a series of Beauty and the Geek, and now he’s on The Sex Factor because he can only get a rod on if he’s doing it to win a television show. He spends an entire blowjob looking down in open astonishment. He doesn’t bother to do a porn face—no leering, no gasping, no encouragements—and, actually, he doesn’t seem to be enjoying it at all. He joins in the double penetration scene—they’ve put the Colonel on vag duty here, although he mostly just looks at it—and spends an agonizing 30 seconds just trying to make it inside. You know in Eastenders when they ask you if you’ve been affected by any of the events in the show? The Colonel trying desperately to thumb himself inside a lady should be followed by some sort of helpline number and a crying break.

Veronica Vain fakes an orgasm for a room full of people.

Reality Television Makes People Forget How to Speak

Do you have a main thing? Asa Akira’s main thing is that girls don’t shit or fart. We know this because she tells us: “That’s my main thing: Girls don’t shit, girls don’t fart.” Tori Black informs us that: “The Colonel is known to keep a hard dick,” like he’s a leathery gold-rush gunslinger rather than your cousin who works at GameStop. In a short piece to camera, the Colonel says that women should “just follow orders… like a meat puppet!” with the unhinged grin of a man who definitely owns multiple meat puppets.

It is a magic all of its own. I doubt people even need coaching anymore. Sit them in front of a camera, and they’ll start talking completely unprompted about how improving their rimming skills is the first step in their quest to be a more complete person. Judge Kieran Lee describes himself as “the man with the million dollar cock. Cocky, arrogant, but overall a nice guy.”

Is it porn that has made him this way? Or reality television? Either way, he’s broken.

The judging panel with host Asa Akira

Simon Cowell Has a Lot to Answer for

And lo, Cowell spoke thusly: “There must always be one judge who is a proper bastard,” and it was so. Kieran Lee is the sole male judge, and he has confused the deadpan tell-it-like-it-is judging technique of real TV with just straight up being a dickhead. The other three judges—Lexi Belle, Tori Black, and Remy LaCroix—all sit next to him looking slightly like hostages, smiling brightly, so he doesn’t turn his critical cock on them instead. And he’s taking this seriously: Every time a decision goes against him, he looks like he’s on the verge of throwing a wobbler. The man is every bad Tinder opener all at once, compressed into the same tight shirt.

The girls

Men Are Bad at Sex

During the blow-off challenge, the girls have to attempt to bring the boys to climax within three minutes. The first two boys manage it without breaking a sweat. They saunter off, celebrating with their pals, still half-flaccid weapons slapping against their thighs. Yeah, bro! High five! The girls only manage to nail the last one after one of the judges scuttles over to lend an extra mouth. The boys have a mini-competition to have a dildo moulded like their member, and all they have to do is get an erection the fastest. The show ends up having to cut between takes because there’s only so much desperate dick pummelling you can take before you start to feel sorry for them.

The girls all seem very normal and are more attractive than the men by an order of magnitude. They aren’t professionals either, but crucially they don’t seem like they’ve learned everything they know about sex from the older boys at school. When the boys are all asked to climb on the stage at once and pole dance together, the scene is like a set of monkey bars at playtime. The Colonel starts doing press-ups. It sort of sums up the whole concept of aspirational male porn stars.

The boys. This is like the start of some weird sex prom.

Porn Is Not Glamorous

How glamorous did you think porn was? No, you’re wrong; it’s much worse. Add a thin film of grease over everything, subtract any actual enjoyment. Have a nice warm bath after you’ve watched The Sex Factor and maybe read the Bible. Be extremely glad that the porn you watch is done by glowing professionals with pearly teeth and wangs like great leathery sea-beasts. Visually speaking, beautiful people fucking is like the righteous coupling of ancient gods. As The Sex Factor frequently reminds us, normal people fucking is more like two furious hogs fighting for a dropped chipolata.

A Porn Reality Show Isn’t Actually That Strange

Here’s the thing that was surprising: The Sex Factor isn’t really shocking at all. Quite a lot of reality TV tiptoes along the porn line at the best of times anyway—once you’ve seen the thrusting, grunting outline of a waxed guy under a thin blanket, can you really say you’d be shocked if the blanket fell off? Michelle and Stu banged under a table in Big Brother 5, and Anthony and Makosi upped the ante by having some low-key pool sex in Big Brother 6. If Big Brother’s Little Brother had offered a CSI video enhance of the vile deed, you know you wouldn’t have turned it off.

You almost forget the porn is happening once you get caught up in the characters and the challenges, just like every other reality show. God help me, I’ve been starting to think it may have stumbled on a winning formula. It has its claws in me. I’m rioting if the Colonel doesn’t win.

You can watch new episodes of The Sex Factor—we’re promised it gets “completely XXXX” in the latest installment—at www.sexfactor.com

Follow Janis Hopkins on Twitter.