Dear Readers: The twentieth anniversary HUMP! Film Festival — the world’s biggest and best festival of short porn films — kicked off in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco over the last two weeks. Our amazing new collection will be touring to more than forty cities over the next few months. (Go to humpfilmfest.com to find out when HUMP! is coming to you!) We had a big party in Seattle to celebrate HUMP!’s twentieth birthday — big thanks to Naomi Price-Lazarus and Breona Mendoza from Seattle Sex Trivia for hosting — and I took questions from the crowd and I’m using those questions this month’s Quickies column. There are a few questions about HUMP!, which I’ll answer first, some good sex questions, and a few personal ones that I normally wouldn’t answer but I’m making an exception. — Dan
 1. Congrats on twenty years of HUMP! Did you know it would be such a big success when it started?
We did not see it coming.
When we made our first call for submissions twenty years ago — when we invited people in Seattle to send us their amateur porn — we weren’t sure we would get any submissions. I mean, were people in Seattle going to send us homemade porn to be screened for Seattle audiences that could include their friends, neighbors, and coworkers? The answer to that question was yes — we got tons of submissions that first year — so, we booked a theater and announced the First Annual HUMP! Film Festival. Then we wondered if anyone would show up. I mean, would people come to a theater and sit next to strangers in the dark and watch pornography the way their grandparents used to? The answer to that question was also yes — tickets for the first HUMP! Film Festival sold out within hours — and a few years later we were taking HUMP! to other cities.
We get so many great submissions for HUMP! that last year our dirty little film festival came out as biannual: HUMP! Part One tours in the spring and HUMP! Part Two tours in the fall. For the full list of cities HUMP! 2025 Part One is coming to this spring — along with the trailer, ticket info, and everything you need to know about submitting your porn for HUMP! 2026 — go to humpfilmfest.com!
 2. What was the most surprising submission to HUMP! this year, why was it surprising, and did it make it into the festival?
HUMP! audiences love surprises — as does every member of the HUMP! Jury — so the most surprising submissions almost always get accepted. My favorite surprise in HUMP! 2025 Part One: an original live-action movie musical starring a horny gooner and a sentient cum sock. Little Sock of Whores is surprising, sexy, laugh-out-loud funny, and gloriously pornographic. The kind of film you can only see at HUMP!
3. What is the single most likely thing to get a HUMP! submission rejected?
Length. We reject a lot of films that would’ve been great — and would’ve made it into the festival — if they were two- or three-minutes long but wear out their welcomes/premises at five minutes. If you’re thinking about making a film for HUMP!, remember that five minutes is the maximum running time, not the minimum!
 4. What is the most useless thing you know how to do?
I know how to find the clitoris — useless for me, useful for most other men.
5. What is the one way that sex has changed over the last twenty years that has surprised you?
I’m surprised by how much less sex people have these days. We’re entering the second decade of a sex recession that shows no sign of abating, and I don’t think the efforts of “pro-natalist” Republicans to renormalize sexual assault, ban abortion, restrict birth control, and make abusive marriages harder to escape are going to turn things around. I’m also surprised by the growing number of hyper-online queer incels way more outraged by sex scenes in movies, age-gap relationships, and kink at pride than they are by attacks on LGBT civil rights.
Read the rest of this week's column here! And this week on the Lovecast: A man in a throuple with two ladies can’t sleep because their bed gets too toasty at night. Somebody call 911!
On the Magnum, we welcome back sex & culture writer Magdalene Taylor to talk about gooning, and the gooners who goon all day long. (Gooning is obsessive porn use.) She and Dan talk about conspiracy theories around keeping young men on their phones and disgruntled. And, she and Dan discuss a call from a woman who wants to make sure her NEXT boyfriend wants to have as much sex as she does. LISTEN HERE!
