Paid to watch porn

The job offer sounded like an elaborate joke. What man wouldn't want to receive a very high salary to watch pornography every day, and carefully classify footage as either "pornographic" or merely "vulgar," using criteria such as whether the bikini-clad woman was on a beach or on a bed?

The job advertisement, posted by Internet company anquan.org, was indeed real. The company is attempting to recruit for a position called "chief porn identifier," with an offer of a 200,000 yuan ($32,378) annual salary.

By Tuesday afternoon, the "dream job for men," as it had been labeled by most Web users, had attracted more than 4,000 resumes, an HR staff member surnamed Quan from the company told the Global Times. The Weibo post advertising the job has been forwarded more than 125,000 times.

In cooperation with more than 800 Internet companies in China such as Baidu and Tencent, Anquan hires porn identifiers to identify inappropriate material, design certain kinds of software and compile blacklists of porn sites, enabling the websites that use the company's services to filter harmful information.

However, Quan said most of the applicants seem to have misunderstood the job. "It's not only about watching porn, but also having the right mindset to be able to identify what is porn and what is not," Quan said, adding that they are still selecting candidates for interviews.

Fierce competition

In a QQ chat group including 600 people who applied for the job, the discussion revolved around how their accumulated experience watching sexual videos and visiting pornographic websites could make them more qualified for the position.

Typically, married women between 35 and 40 are preferred, according to an experienced porn identifier working at one of China's biggest search engines, who spoke to the Global Times on condition of anonymity. However, nearly 90 percent of the applicants for the position were men.

"Maybe men are more focused and experienced in terms of such things," Sun Jiulong, an applicant who has not yet graduated from college in Anhui Province, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

 "Some of them are not really applying, but just making dirty jokes with this stunt," said Wu Shu, 29, one of the applicants, adding that many people do not know what the job is about.

Wu said the job advertisement for the company gave people the false impression that porn identifiers could watch those things for fun without fear of being found out.

Peng Xiaohui, a sexologist from Central China Normal University, said it was almost like a publicity stunt by the company, but also reflected how pornography has been popularized in China and that people have started to discuss it openly. She said it was also a reflection of how little people know about this kind of job.