Perversity Think Tank attempts to formulate a philosophical conception of sexual perversion. It emerges directly from PervScan in the sense that the web site has served as a sort of research laboratory — a place to examine real-world examples of deviant behavior, to experiment with concepts, and to workshop them with the thousands of visitors who have left comments on the site.

To be clear, Perversity Think Tank is not a “blook” or a “book of the blog” or a compendium of entries from PervScan. It is an entirely new work that considers a variety of perversions drawn from literature, art, individual experience, and sometimes PervScan. If you have followed the site, you may recognize a few favorites such as the German cannibal who ate his own penis. However, these case histories have been subsumed into an entirely new conceptual framework never explicity offered on PervScan itself.

At any rate, there is no need to sell you on Perversity Think Tank. You can freely download a pdf of the entire book from supervert.com. You may also choose to purchase the printed version.

Because Perversity Think Tank is a culminating effort — and because, to be honest, PervScan has left its author in a jaded, seen-it-all and heard-it-all place — PervScan will cease operation effective immediately. The site will remain online, comments will remain open, but no further cases will be posted.

Perversion, however, remains an integral part of Supervert’s vision. For those of you who delight in the daily churn of deviance provided by PervScan, you might want to subscribe to Supervert’s Twitter feed, which regularly offers telegraphic versions of the same type of material previously featured on the site.

All of you are also invited to keep supervert.com on the radar. Supervert has a master plan to produce six books. Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish was the first. Necrophilia Variations was the second. Perversity Think Tank is the third. Supervert plans to concentrate its efforts on the three books to come — a plan that, roughly speaking, ought to take another ten or fifteen years (yes, yes, man plans and God laughs) — and then…

Well, who knows? A plan that the poet Charles Baudelaire once announced to a friend comes to mind:

I intend to write a novel in which my hero will be a scoundrel, I mean a real scoundrel, a murderer, a thief, an incendiary and a buccaneer, and who will conclude my book with the following little speech: “And in the soft shade of this tree planted by my own hands, surrounded by a loving family, by children that adore me, a wife that dotes on me, I savor amidst peace and tranquility the fruits of my crimes.”

A curse on the spammers who have wasted countless hours of precious time and a tremendous thank you to everyone who has made PervScan such a stimulating forum over the last six and a half years. RIP PervScan, 2003-2010.

First, from a certain vantage point, it’s sort of boring. Little of substance is said via Twitter. When a twitterer mentions necrophilia or 2 Girls, 1 Cup, the reference tends to be fleeting, without context, brief as a flash in the pan. As a reader, it’s hard to give any more more thought — any more time — to the tweet than it took the twitterer to spew out his 146 characters. That’s what makes it a little boring. It’s like a bag of popcorn from which you only eat one kernel of corn.

Second, perhaps it is unfair to say that “little of substance is said via Twitter.” Substantiveness in Twitter lies not in a single tweet but in the conversation of which that tweet forms a larger part. If somebody makes an incest joke in a tweet, it’s not so interesting. But if you consider that a conversation originated with a random observation and proceeded to reference a deviant form of sexuality, it takes on a new meaning. Or if you consider that any given mention of a perversion implies something about the person who tweets it, it takes on yet another meeting. Or if you speculate about the larger story that a tweet sometimes implies, it can acquire even further significance.

All this, however, takes some mental activity on the part of the reader. You have to unpack the tweet, so to speak. You have to follow it more deeply into the conversation or the user or, if possible, into life. It’s what a doctor does when a patient describes a symptom — he tracks it back into the body, into behaviors, into history, into the environment.

With that in mind, PervScan gathered a few tweets today from DeviantTwit.ch. None of them are particularly special or shocking or entertaining. They were just tweets that grabbed the eye somehow. For example:

nearmars: the guy in the seat behind me is having phone sex while people are boarding the plane. He’s trying to be all discreet, not working.

“Trying to be all discreet” — or maybe not. Somebody who’s trying to be discreet doesn’t have phone sex in airport lounges or airplane cabins. It makes you wonder whether this was an undeniable urge, as though the guy just had to get his rocks off that second; a fetish activity, as though the guy is sexually stimulated by flying; or just a businessman’s way of consoling his spouse for all the time he spends away from home.

shannonsixtwo: a lil freaked out by the footprints outside the bay window in my room that doesn’t have curtains… peeping tom?? eww freaky

The peculiar thing here is that shannonsixtwo is freaked out by the thought of voyeurism, and yet she prolongs it somehow by engaging in an exhibitionistic activity, ie twitting about it. Hmmm….

BKilby: Old creepy guy just got on the bus. He collects young girl pics in his jailbait menagerie. He also watches cute baby vids on the youtube.

Twitter and epistemology — how did BKilby know about the young girl pics and baby vids? Was this speculation based on the creepy guy’s appearance? If so, it’s rather like a Twitter version of the pseudoscience phrenology. If not, then did the creepy guy have a laptop on the bus? Was he ogling his collection of baby vids on public transportation?

Minish: Rick Rolling is the WORST internet phenomenon EVER. Even worse than 2 girls 1 cup, and I honestly mean that.

Rickrolling, in case you don’t know, is a bait-and-switch where somebody posts a link whose name is inviting but whose destination is an awful Rick Astley video. That Minish prefers 2 Girls, 1 Cup to Rickrolling is, on reflection, rather astonishing. It says something about the way information technology has influenced morality when a person is so frustrated by wasting two seconds following a mislabelled link that he would prefer to watch others literally eat shit.

Balut: Why am i so diligent about learning the names and definitions of bizarre sexual practices (e.g.Dirty Sanchez) that I would never engage in?

That’s a great question. Ever wonder the same?

This edition of Venus in Furs is being put out by the new publisher Bookkake. (No doubt PervScanners will appreciate the allusions in that brilliant name.) Bookkake aims to publish “new and classic works of transgressive literature” using all the means provided by contemporary technology. Think of it as something like an Olympia Press for the Information Age.

Unfortunately, the printed books are not yet available outside the United Kingdom. The printed books are now available (with free shipping) from Bookkake.com. In addition, Bookkake makes ebooks available for free download and has posted Supervert’s introduction, originally titled “Sadistic Introduction to a Masochistic Book,” on its site.

To be completely honest, Supervert has no idea what sort of interest there is for a site such as DeviantTwit.ch. However, it somehow makes for compelling browsing. Every minute or two (if you refresh the page) there is a brand new scrap of smut — random observations on sex, links to articles, lovers flirting, insomniacs describing the porn they’re viewing, friends chiding each other about sex with midgets… It’s random, unpredictable, almost cacophonous, like putting your head in some crazy space that’s part echo chamber and part porn booth. You may find yourself wanting to dip in and out of the site a few times a day. It will be different every time — and to titillate your jaded mind, is there anything better than a continual improvisation on filth?

Since 2003 there have been superficial changes — designs have been revised, advertising has gone up and down in prominence — but the focus of the site has remained razor sharp. Some prominent users and commenters have come and gone over the years. (Intothewind, where are you?) To the best of PervScan’s knowledge, no commenter has been around for more than three years or so. It is difficult to say whether this reflects on PervScan or on a larger trend about blog readership. Have any of you been reading the site for more than two or three years? Is there anything about the site that you’d particularly like to change? (It’s difficult to predict whether users prefer a site to innovate or remain the same. There was an uproar recently when one popular site introduced a new design. Its users were so dismayed that they set up their own site and copied the old design.)

If you’d like to offer a birthday wish to PervScan, you could do no better than to buy a copy of Supervert’s books Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish and Necrophilia Variations. Meanwhile, many thanks to all of you for so much thoughtful and stimulating input. Have you noticed that there are six times as many comments as posts on the site? It’s not just PervScan that’s been blogging since 2003. It’s you too. Thanks.

Do you like your literature transgressive? Ok, quick, can you name the author of the first book since Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn to be sent to an English jail for his creative work?

You would think that doing a few months in prison for having written and published a novel would earn a guy some serious notoriety. Instead his work appears to be so transgressive that it dumbfounds even those who normally claim to like that sort of thing. It transgresses the transgressors. It freaks them right the fuck out.

Horror Panegyric seeks to redress this situation — to give notoriety where notoriety is due. Horror Panegyric is a hardcover book published by Savoy Books in England. It begins with Supervert’s essay “Horror Panegyric,” an analysis and appreciation of the Lord Horror novels created by David Britton and Michael Butterworth, the founders of Savoy Books. It was the first of these novels that got Britton sent to Strangeways Prison.

In addition to Supervert’s essay, Horror Panegyric includes excerpts from the difficult-to-find Lord Horror novels (Lord Horror, Motherfuckers: The Auschwitz of Oz, and Baptised in the Blood of Millions) and a timeline of Lord Horror productions (books, comics, CDs). It features cover art made by the renowned John Coulthart.

Horror Panegyric is a limited edition hardcover that you can obtain directly from Savoy Books or from Amazon.com (while supplies last!). The entire text — including Supervert’s essay and the novel excerpts — is also available online here at supervert.com.

This was not a work-for-hire. Supervert wrote “Horror Panegyric” on its own initiative out of a desire to publicize the underappreciated work of Savoy Books. Please tell your friends.

Regular PervScan posting will resume this week. Meanwhile please have a look at Horror Panegyric. Thanks.

Partly this caused PervScan to wonder about the relationship of perversion and habit. When life events intervene — and when these interfere with your usual routines — does perversion drop away or recede in importance? And does that mean that perversion is just a part of your routine? A habit? It sounds odd to say it. When you imagine the relationship of habit and sexuality, you think of stagnation, a thousand consecutive nights of missionary position. Isn’t perversion that which always launches us out of these routines? Turns us from the missionary position to the foot or the dog?

In a related vein, PervScan also wondered about the relationship of perversion and leisure. Does perversion only arise in the hearts and minds of those who have the time for it? There are old sayings such as “idle hands do the devil’s work.” Is there a seed of truth in these? Behind every deviant act, is there an unarticulated block of free time? There are all sorts of therapeutic programs that attempt to cure deviance. Do you think that if you took a pervert — a pedophile, say — and made him incredibly busy, his perversion would lessen in intensity? Or would it remain there the entire time, undercutting his focus, his energy, his productivity? Would he sneak away from his responsibilities to indulge in his freaks?

In the meantime you might want to fill the void in your life by talking to Angela or reading her blog. Maybe you’ll want to pick up the exciting new update to Apple’s operating system. You could read some of the classic erotica from Olympia Press. You could discover how the world is starting to resemble the writings of J.G. Ballard. You could experience The Joy of Sexual Physics. You could puzzle over some eccentric porn or download some good shit. You could check out the wonderful blog Morbid Anatomy. Hell, you could even save the planet.

You know what else you could do? Show Supervert some love and buy its two books, Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish and Necrophilia Variations. If you like PervScan, you’ll love the books.

As a way of approaching these questions, PervScan has been thinking about why one proclivity is considered more perverse than another. Are some kinks more perverse than others? Are there orders of magnitude inherent in perversity? If so, what are the units of measure? What makes one behavior more perverse than another?

Listed below are some common paraphilias. They’re given in alphabetical order so as not to prejudice you. Which of these do you think is the most perverse?

And which of these paraphilias do you think is the least perverse?

After voting, please consider leaving a comment. How would you rate all of these on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 10 is most perverse)? Is there anything you would add to the list? What do you think makes one thing more perverse than another?

What sorts of stories should you submit? The topic matter should be anything that you think you might find in a Psychopathia Sexualis 2.0: aphrodisiacs, Big Beatiful Women (and feederism), bestiality, breasts, coprophilia, cybersex, exhibitionism, fetishism, gerontophilia, homosexuality (is it a perversion anymore?), incest, masturbation, necrophilia, nymphomania, oral sex, orgies, pedophilia, phone sex (hi Angela), S&M, sex changes and sex toys, sodomy, virginity, voyeurism. And if you find something that you think doesn’t quite fit any of these categories, send it along anyway. If it’s sexual and it’s deviant, PervScan wants to know.

PervScan reads every story that is submitted. However, it doesn’t utilize every story. There is a simple reason for that: it has to inspire PervScan with something to say. It has to seem interesting or unique. It has to have an unusual angle or detail. It has to be inspiring somehow. If you find it remarkable for some reason, don’t be bashful about explaining your thoughts when you submit the link. Maybe you’ll see something in a story that wouldn’t necessarily strike anyone else until you point it out.

Beyond this subjective criterion, there are some other criteria that PervScan uses to eliminate stories:

(1) PervScan tries to be topical, so it avoids stories more than a few weeks old. However, if a particularly stunning tale of depravity fails to appear on the site, feel free to submit it.

(2) PervScan gives preference to stories that appear on accredited news sites. Yes, yes, it may be impossible to state for certain what a “fact” is, but all the same PervScan tries to ground its analyses in stories that appear to be supported by factual evidence.

(2a) Because of this, PervScan has slowly come to avoid stories that originate with Ananova and Mainichi Daily News. The sites are entertaining to read — but perhaps a little too entertaining.

(2b) In addition, PervScan rarely comments directly on other blogs. If you write or read a first-person story about somebody’s wild night in a sex club, it’s probably not something PervScan will cover.

(3) Stories involving pedophilia are vetted even more carefully than others. Pedophilia has become a controversial, hot-button topic. It can bring scrutiny from law enforcement, online vigilante groups, and heedless visitors who think they can post potentially illegal requests here. You really don’t want this sort of activity here, and neither does PervScan.

(3a) For God’s sake, do not send PervScan links to sites featuring child pornography. There are legitimate ways to report child pornography to authorities. If you send pedophilia here, PervScan will forward your email, email address, IP, and any other identifying information to the appropriate authorities.

(4) PervScan has gotten a little tired of stories about the politics of sex offenders — where to house them, brand them, reform them, etc. While these are all important questions, they deal less with perversion than with rehabilitation — and this isn’t RehabScan.

Finally, why should you submit links to PervScan? Mostly for the hell of it. However, if you have a site of your own, PervScan will happily link to you if it uses your story. And while PervScan is not making any promises about holiday gifts, last year it did offer free copies of Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish and Necrophilia Variations to a few people who submitted bunches of links and comments.