NSFW/Not Safe for Work is a funny concept to me because I have on separate occasions worked as 1. a creator of porn comics for an online subscription service, 2. a film archivist, digitizing material for the The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. I got to experience the dissonance of writing a crisp, professional email to my editor like I was taught to in art school and then attaching 18 pages of dong pictures to it. I’ve called a coworker over to dispassionately watch hardcore pornography over my shoulder so that they could help me make sure I was scanning a film at the correct frame rate. We were both wearing lab coats at the time. In terms of raw percentage, I have likely spent half or more of my professional life working in situations where it would not be all that unexpected to see someone’s hole(s) in the course of my duties.
One time in my archiving job I was scanning a film from probably the 1960s or so, and the male performer looked straight down the barrel of the lens, so I had this transcendent moment of connection through time and space and the medium of film with a stranger whom I will likely never meet, who may indeed be no longer living on this earth, and then he turned away and started railing a woman. Felt like I got whiplash.