ManCrush: Seattle Dad
We follow him hard.
Seattle Dad describes himself as a friendly bear next door who builds furniture and makes dirty movies.
He was recently a guest on the Naked Men Talking podcast where he bared all and took us behind-the-scenes of his online life.
Seattle Dad, welcome.
Hey, how's it going?
Really well, thanks. Let's start with the dirty movies. What led you to start exploring a career in adult entertainment?
Well, I had been posting a lot of free stuff for a long time on Twitter - just for fun, for maybe over 10 years - before I ever heard of OnlyFans or JustFor.Fans.
It was just like little clips - little short clips that I was putting out just for fun, just because I'm an exhibitionist. That's kind of how it started.
I’d really never planned on monetising it.
The fan subscription channels sort of changed the game in terms of the way that you could distribute that kind of content - was it an obvious move to think, well, I can do more of this?
I think so.
I didn't really know anything about them, but a friend of mine had just started his own and I thought it would be like a fun little side-project.
I had no idea I could turn into an actual career.
In your bio, you reference “dirty movies”. That’s obviously slightly tongue-in-cheek but it does sort of denote some sort of level of shame with the creation of that style of content. Is that something you've had to grapple with?
Not really, no.
I just think it's a funny little tongue-in-cheek thing to say.
I live in America, so it's pretty puritanical over here, even to this day.
Maybe even getting worse?
Exactly, Yeah. It's getting worse.
But I've never really struggled with the shame of any of that.
Since the first time I ever got my hands on the video camera as a youngster, I was recording myself - not really showing it to anybody, I just liked watching them back for myself and then erasing the tape.
Have you always been confident and comfortable in getting your clothes off in front of other people?
Not confident in front of other people but I always liked my body.
When you're younger and you're kind of awkward, it's not that exciting to take your clothes off in front of other people.
I started getting hairier in junior high school - then, when I got to college I was very hairy.
I've always been pretty happy with my body but showing it off more and more has made me even more comfortable with it.
I'd rather be naked than wear clothes. I just feel more comfortable that way.
You talk about how you got hairy, relatively young. Quite a number of guys find that difficult because it sort of marks them as different to their peers. What was your relationship like with that sort of process?
I couldn't wait. Bring on the hair!
There were a couple of guys in my class that really liked it.
There was a guy in my art class in school that would just touch my arm-hair because he thought it was so nice, I guess.
I’ve never understood why people don't like their body hair. I love it, and I love it on other people.
I've never been self-conscious about that.
The exhibitionism kicked in fairly early? You talk about filming yourself and enjoying filming yourself. When did you sort of join all those dots together?
I felt confident. I was just wanting to show off and felt turned on-by that sort of exhibitionism.
I started back in like, I don't know, 2006. As soon as I started posting little clips, the comments were so complimentary - I just got a really great response.
The more that people reacted to it positively, the more I wanted to do it.
It's more than just validation? The positive reaction fuels you to go further and deeper?
Yeah.
Guys send me pictures of themselves watching my movies or that kind of thing. I'm on someone's 80-inch screen in their living-room - that's hot. That turns me on.
When I'm making movies, I think about that - I think about like, will this look good if it's on a giant TV screen in someone’s living room.
You're thinking cinematic?
Yeah, to a certain extent, yes.
But you must get a lot of requests from fans - in terms of what they want to see? Does that help shape the content you're creating?
Yeah. I try to break it up and keep it interesting with a lot of different kinds of content and different kinds of guys.
I'm into a lot of things. I don't have just one niche that I keep going to. But the comments and people telling me what they like, you know, that always kind of inspires me.
I have a little journal that I write everything down and when I'm feeling horny and I'm like well, I should make a video, I look at that and get some ideas or a scenario that I know a guy that I could film with would fit in. I text them and say: “Come on over, we're going to do this.”
Creating content like this means that you're really seeing yourself from every angle - you're filming your scenes, you're doing your own editing, so you're looking at your body in a pretty specific way. Has that changed your relationship with your body in any way?
I got really used to seeing myself really quickly. When you're filming with a couple of different cameras, you do see every angle - every roll and every wrinkle.
The thing that shocked me the most was that I did not know that I had thinner hair on top - it looks fine from the front.
I'm kind of detached when I'm editing. I don’t really look at myself - I’m looking to see what looks good, what's the best angle, and how to crop it the right way.
Does that enable you to be hyper-critical - you need to be very objective so it’s almost an out-of-body experience?
Yeah. I'm looking at a video of Seattle Dad, not myself.
Is that helpful to have that distinction between yourself and your on-screen persona?
I think so. I think you need to have your private life and your public life.
They blur often because a lot of the people that I film with, and a lot of the scenarios I'm in, that's just like my real life.
So yeah, it's not as separated as like a business would be or like a studio would be, or if you didn’t know the people that you're filming with.
The people I’m filming with are my friends - 90 percent of the people I film with are guys that I’m friends with. Sometimes, we're just hanging out - we’re playing video games or whatever and we decide to make a movie.
I do try to keep some things private - you’ve got to have a little bit of something for yourself. I can't give it all away.
You’ve talked about how you make a range of content, but the clue is in your name in terms of the Dad element of it all. Is that daddy identity something that sits comfortably with you?
It does now, for sure.
When I was about 30 to 35, I was starting to thicken up a little bit - I’d been pretty thin most of my life.
Then, in my early 30s, I started to thicken up and get a little grey in my beard.
The first time someone called me “Daddy” in a bar, I didn't really know what to make of that. Daddies weren't all the rage back then.
It took me a couple of months to think about it, but I was like - well, I'm getting older and I do like that role in relationships and in bed, and I enjoy teaching people things and kind of guiding them. So I've definitely embraced it now.
Is that an example where your personal life is blending into your on-screen persona?
Yeah, a lot of everything just blends together because that's how I comport myself in real life as well.
You talked about how you are filming with friends and you're constantly looking at opportunities to film. Having to put so much energy into that filming side of things, of scheduling collaborations and that kind of thing - does that make it harder or a bit more confusing when it comes to building those real-world connections and relationships?
I don't think the filming or the scheduling affects anything for me.
I've had pretty sexual relationships with most of my friends most of my life, so that kind of is just my life.
But I think the thing that makes it more difficult is all the paperwork and all the admin - that isn't fun.
Takes the sexiness out of it?
It takes a toll, yeah. After you're done having a great time with someone, it’s like - oh, can you sign all these forms and then I have to upload documents and you know, go back and forth with Dropboxes. That part isn't that much fun.
But it doesn't really affect my friendships. We just have fun together.
It must make it easier if your friends are also already creating content - they know how it works?
They’re already in the mindset. I really don't like filming with people who aren't already making content.
I’m sure that I’ve got a lot of people into this business. I’ve certainly given a lot of boys and dads my TedTalk on how to do this the right way.
Can we talk about your furniture making?
I make a lot of things out of reclaimed wood. Lots of beds and TV consoles - that kind of thing.
I've been doing that for about 25 years now, maybe more.
Is the furniture the side-hustle or is the adult entertainment the side-hustle?
The furniture was my main job for about 22 years. I thought that the adult entertainment would be fun drinking money - but it turns out that it's substantially more than that.
So the furniture is taking a little bit of a back-seat to making videos and travelling.
I still have my shop and I still build things from time to time. When I'm there I'm very happy and relaxed. It's more of a hobby for now.
It must be quite meditative to be able to just get tactile with your hands and focus on what's in front of you?
Yeah, sometimes it's nice to put my phone away and just build something and listen to music and not really have to think about anything else.
You know, when you work on your phone or your computer and you're editing porn and uploading porn, it's very distracting.
Especially with social media - there's disasters in the world you want to read about, there’s hot guys you want to look at. It's so distracting.
To just be able to concentrate on one thing and build something physical that I can see in the real world - I really enjoy that.
Do you enjoy the entrepreneurial side of the adult entertainment business? As you talked about, there's a lot of work involved in not only just the filming and the editing, but the marketing and building the brand and engaging with the audience. Is that something that comes naturally to you?
I think so.
I've owned my own business since I was 23 and you have to be business-minded and able to schedule and, you know, keep a lot of dates and numbers in your head.
When I started travelling and meeting other creators, it was no different than just getting on the phone and making sales calls to different furniture stores that I wanted to sell to. It was a lot easier, actually - I think I'm just kind of built that way. I'm very organised and able to plan.
My first work trip for this was when I went to the UK in 2018. I think in two weeks I had scheduled 12 shoots with 12 different people - one day after another. Everybody showed up when they were supposed to - it was really fun but that takes a level of planning and communication.
Having that life-experience before you came into the world of adult entertainment, do you think that gave you a really solid grounding in terms of bringing all those skills with you?
A lot of people think that they can just make a video and throw it up online and people are going to watch it. But it's so much more than that - you have to market, you have to be on social media. you have to continue the relationships with the people you've worked with so you can work with them again.
You know, I've made a lot of friends throughout the years doing this - people that come and stay with me when they're in Seattle or I go stay with them. We have this one thing in common and we find that we often have other things - you just become friends that way.
Having that background in business, of running my own company, you get used to wearing a lot of hats.
You have to wear a lot of hats when you're naked?
No clothes, just a lot of hats - marketing director, travel agent, HR.
Do you get a lot of complaints to the HR department?
No - which is good, I think.
You mentioned that you could give a TedTalk for new guys coming into the industry - what sort of advice or guidance would you give someone if they were interested in exploring a career in the world of adult entertainment?
I have a lot of older guys come to me because they see that I'm doing well and they want to start doing this. I ask them - how many followers do you have on Instagram or Twitter? And they're like, oh, I hate social media, I don’t have any followers.
We've got a problem.
It is called OnlyFans and JustFor.Fans.
If you want to do this, get on social media and get a little bit of a following. It doesn’t have to be big, maybe 5000 people or something, but it takes a minute.
The other thing is consistency. You have to be consistent if you want people to pay a monthly fee.
I put out probably six to eight videos a month. I try to do two a week and then I also do like a throwback because I've been doing this for so long that I have like eight years of movies backed up that I know the people who just subscribed will never scroll all the way back to see.
It must be such good value for someone subscribing to you because of the the huge library of content you've got there. They're paying the same price?
I have like 600 videos, yeah, for $10 a month.
For $10 you can jerk off every single night.
For the rest of your life!
Yeah.
The subscriptions help me travel and fly people in so that we can make videos together.
I subscribe to so many people who put up little 3-second clips twice a month and I'm like, you want people to pay for that?
You have to respect the people who are giving you their hard-earned money. Take it seriously. Even if you don't have a lot of followers now, you will build up if you treat them right and take care of them.
That's my biggest advice. Be serious about it and be consistent.
