What drew Baden first to websites like sellyoursextape.com was an uncertainty about new technologies and their influence over definitions of sexual activity; where intimacy once necessitated physical contact, it could now unfold on a screen. Scrolling through the pornographic photos and videos of others, he felt that many had been staged not for the mutual pleasure of the parties involved but for those that would be consuming the final product. In some ways, he suggests, the trend paradoxically represented an alienation and separation between partners, and private acts became public property, regardless of the consent of those pictured.