Noelle Perdue, a Porn Historian, Lends Her Expertise to 'Money Shot: The Pornhub Story'

Noelle Perdue is passionate about the preservation of porn. She's kind of a porn truther. When we meet her in Netflix's Money Shot: The Pornhub Story, she reveals she once worked for MindGeek, the company that owns Pornhub. For three years, she bounced around within the company, eventually landing on porn script writer.

The documentary examines how Pornhub was profiting off of videos uploaded to its site that featured underage kids, scenes of rape and assault, as well as instances of pornographic content being added to the website without the consent of its participants. Noelle provides an interesting and refreshing take on part of the drive behind the attempted take down of Pornhub. Here's what we know about her.

As an advocate of safe, consensual porn, Noelle finds herself in a tough spot in the documentary. While there were certainly horrific videos being uploaded to Pornhub with seemingly no interest on the company's side to take them down, there were also verified models working with the website. It's clear that some of the Pornhub detractors were equating sex work with sex trafficking, which is something Noelle and others in the documentary rail against. This caused a reluctant defense of the organization, on her part.

In an Instagram post about the documentary, Noelle says it’s the "final product of a project I’ve been a part of for the last two years; I was interviewed, and I also worked as an archivist and consultant — mostly as a fact checker and visual reference creator for the historical elements." Her involvement in the documentary is partially due to her interest in putting more "nuanced" information about porn into the world.

"You want it to say everything you’ve ever had to explain at a party or to your relatives or to literal strangers on the Internet, you want it to give every single element of this unbelievably complicated topic the time and energy and care it deserves," she writes. Her commitment and determination are impressive and inspiring. Her hope is that it "inspires people to engage further with the adult industry out of curiosity instead of shame or stigma."

On her very own website, Noelle describes herself as a "writer, artist, internet porn historian, and near-mint condition collector's item." Strangely for someone who's trying to change the digital space as we know it, she is somewhat lacking in her social media footprint. Some of her TikToks are goofy and amusing while others talk about artificial intelligence as it pertains to internet moderation.

Noelle has also written for publications such as Slate, The Washington Post, and Wired. While she is writing about sex work each time, Noelle finds interesting entry points (this isn't a euphemism). Noelle has discussed porn's racist metadata, the ongoing war being waged against OnlyFans, and the loneliness epidemic. Our only complaint is the Netflix Pornhub documentary could have included her more.

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story is currently streaming on Netflix.