Do you actually consider it porn?

Yup.

Depends on my mood.
Sometimes yes(but more in the erotical way like other said), but other moments it is just something what makes me very happy.

I like it that this site is not full of 'dirty' words and sentences. That makes it more accessible for shy people like me.

(urgh, crappy english. -_-)

I tend to prefer the term erotica... porn implies to me something more explicit and more gratuitous.

To twist an old saying, "porn is in the eye of the beholder." But yeah, I do keep this in the bedroom. ;P

If there's no penis/vaginal stuff going on, it's erotica. If there is, it's porn (IMO).

perhaps, but there are grades of gratuity.

A story about two people who meet and fall in love and have a passionate affair would be erotica, the sex in that isn't so gratuitous.

A story about a plumber who comes to plumb the sink and randomly ends up plumbing the housewife is more gratuitous that this.

That about sums it up. I'm sure there are people out there who think bondage and sex are cute, too. I doubt anyone would jump to defend them, though.

*shrugs* can't argue with that haha

I always assume anyone outside our circles would see it as porn, so I accept that and have assumed it myself. I don't feel bad about it.

I'm with hfilled: It's erotica, which is not necessarily porn. Taking the "I know what porn is when I see it" argument, I don't think anyone outside the inflation community would read a story about inflating people and think it was a sexual thing (if, obviously, there were no overt sexual references in it). But I can look at an XXX flick and say, "That's porn," whether or not it turns me on. Is that a subjective standard? Of course, just as much artistic criticism is.

My distinction: Erotica aspires to be art, to offer some commentary on the human condition, whereas porn exists to simply and directly appeal to base urges.

In other words, erotica is classy and porn ain't.

And I totally agree that it's subjective and arbitrary.

I say -- jolly good thinking, old chap!

You would still need a top hat and cane. Though then your telling a story about Mr. Peanut...

Then it's just a fancy Pringles guy

dictionary definitions:

pornography: obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, esp. those having little or no artistic merit.

creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire

erotica: literature or art dealing with sexual love.

So basically erotica is a larger umbrella term for any sexually explicit material, but pornography is specifically that which has little or no other artistic merit.

It isn't so clean cut though, Wikipedia has this to say:

Distinction is often made between erotica and pornography (as well as the lesser known genre of sexual entertainment, ribaldry), although depending on the viewer they may seem one and the same. Pornography's objective is the graphic depiction of sexually explicit scenes. Pornography is often described as exploitative or degrading. One person's pornography is another's erotica, and vice-versa. In other words, if a politician or priest finds a work containing only consenting adults "perverted", then it says more about the mental state of the accuser than the intentions of the photographer or viewer. The dictionary also uses different emotive words to describe the same product. Erotica is "Explicitly sexual literature or art, concerning or arousing sexual pleasure." Pornography is "Writings, pictures, films etc. designed to stimulate sexual excitement." Even the dictionary's authors couldn't avoid bringing emotion into their definitions. Erotica is described using the gentle word "arousing" whereas pornography gets the "stimulate", a much colder, clinical definition.

The Ukrainian government defines porn as detailed images of coitus or naked gentials for sexual stimation's sake with no artistic or educational value. The Canadian supreme court specifically defines porn apart from erotica with the words "degrading and dehumanising"

An Indian journalist makes a similar case in this article: Don't confuse porn with erotica

Personally I see a lot of our work as erotica rather than porn because while it aims to stimulate, it does so by appealing to the imagination of the reader/viewer, using sophisticated plot devices and descriptive writing to create an atmosphere and consume all the reader's senses with the image, allowing them to use their imagination to create their own stimulation... rather than crudely displaying an object of desire which needs no further imaginative effort on the part of the reader/viewer.

It's obviously confused somewhat by the fact that we are talking about fetish erotica... what constitutes a 'simple object of desire' is far more complicated for us than it is in mainstream erotica. The Ukrainian definition clearly doesn't apply to us, as we hardly ever depict coitus or genitalia, we depict inflated humans. Whether our inflated humans are a crude object of desire parallel to the mainstream's genitalia is a matter of debate. As I see it, any depiction of inflation requires some measure of imagination as we try to take something which is not real and use our imaginations to make it real. Because of this, you rarely see simple depiction in our community. Artists and writers, understanding that the reader/viewer must use their imagination must add extra sophistication to their images; for example through sound effects and displays of emotion in drawings, and through the creation of an atmosphere and a deep psychological examination of the inflatee.

Arguably this means I believe that erotica in fetishes that have no real-life manifestation can never be pornography. However, other fetishes such as real-life-infation, scatology etc. can have both erotica and pornography.

I suppose I can concede that you've made some good points.

I have my feelings on the subject, but they really aren't objective, so I'll give this one to you, Carnatic. :)

I try not to worry too much about a distinction between erotica and porn; it's subjective an there are as many takes on it as there are people in the world. "Porn" can be a perjorative or just a pop-culture term for explicit sexual content. Sometimes complex and artisitic is what I'm looking for, sometimes direct and to-the-point is fun too. And that's all OK.

My brain takes the concept of body inflation as erotic; that's just the way I'm wired so it's all good to me... but socially it's all NSFW one way or another.

Of course, since the whole concept is erotic to those of us with the interest, a cartoon inflation gag or Aunt Marge in a Harry Potter movie or Violet Beuregarde may be just amusing bits to the "normal" population, but to us it's like a wardobe malfunction on the Super Bowl halftime show...