Comedian, musician, writer, Taylor Andrews posted his “CamGirls Live” video on Pornhub in February 2022. Sometime in March his coworkers (fellow teachers and such) found it. In May, his students found it. In mid-August Taylor gets a letter from the NJ State Board of Examiners stating that his teaching license is being taken away. By mid-December the board sends all their finding to Taylor, and at the end of January just passed he sent in his response to an order to show cause of why he should keep my license.
Believe it or not, Chris and I actually get out of the house every now and again and when I have managed it, I have caught a stand up or two from Taylor. I finally bucked up the nerve to approach the guy to get the skinny on his story. When I simply put it to him, why he put his surely non-pornographic video up on Pornhub, he said:
“I just thought it would be funny to have the credit. I joke and I say that Pornhub is a great marketing tool, but with the way that the videos now have a slideshow of the videos before you even click them. I had a thumbnail where the girl in the video had a dildo on her head, but the video still only got maybe 800, I’m pretty sure 750 of those were my former students.
The statistical likelihood of anyone finding my music on Pornhub was so low, I didn’t really think there would be any repercussions.”
Of course, he was wrong about those stats and repercussions. First his fellow teachers saw the clip and showed up at a stand-up show he was giving, “I buckled down and did twenty-five minutes of material in front of them, despite being very upset and anxious that I’ve been outed. There’s a pretty hard rule in comedy, which is never let your coworkers know you do stand up,” he warns.
In May, while teaching his class one of his students scrolled across her phone to call up a clip of Taylor doing comedy in Instagram (doesn’t uncle Ralphie always warn you about dangerous this whole Interweb thingie is?) and even changing his Instagram name (then changing it back) and talking to his students about everyone respecting everyone else’s privacy, the kids did further snooping and found his clip and began calling him “Dildo Man.”
All too soon there is a the call to the office, a firing, Taylor working in video editing (a skill he learned from making the infamous video) grabbing another teaching job he didn’t keep and in August receiving a letter saying that his teaching license was going to be taken away.
As he adds “ In August didn’t have any of the evidence, so I was granted adjournment until the files were given. I got the files in January and I wrote my defense for why I should keep my license. Given the timelines, it seems that every step in the process takes about 3-4 months, so I’m hoping this gets sorted out by June or July.”
The lessons here:
Its not easy being funny.
Be careful what you post and where you post it.
Somebody is always watching.
But as Taylor says and Chris and I certainly agree with:
“I think our private lives and work lives should be completely separate, it’s criminal that we’ve allowed as a society for that to not be the case; I stand by that to this day.”
Find all things Taylor Andrews here: https://beardudeproductions.org/
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