Botching Online Debauchery
You think we’d learn a thing or two from our experiences in real life about sex and go about it in a more savvy way in cyberspace. Not so, based on the repression, neurotic behavior and just plain stumbling around that I’ve seen so far in online adult interaction.
First of all, I wanted to sound off about how in some cases you inconveniently have to technically engineer your own sexual encounters in certain online games and virtual worlds because of the socially, philosophically and psychologically misguided and warped hands that created these programs.
Looking at it more objectively, there seem to be good points and bad points to taking on all the technical logistics of your own sexual escapades in artificial environments such as Second Life, I suppose. You get to custom tailor aspects of your own erotic experiences, including how they play out animation-wise. After all, who knows better than you what makes your sexual psyche sizzle?
Another significant plus as far as personally orchestrating avatar intercourse (or masturbation) is that users can become more savvy about manipulating their digital environments and parallel existences and they can thereby grow more proficient at taking virtual matters into their own hands, versus engaging sheepishly in some prefabricated fornication application, for example.
This bodes well for individualism and for the future of personal liberty as we begin to spend more and more of our lives in simulated spaces. Simply put, virtual worlds such as Second Life represent a set of training wheels in terms of preparing and assimilating into the more sophisticated and complex artificial environments of tomorrow.
I would say that the downside of having to technically cobble together your own virtual sexual scenarios involves what I will generically call the discouragement factor, for lack of a better term. For example, it’s frustrating how Internet-enabled devices — including computer-compatible sex toys — aren’t more within reach of the consumer to help make for a more immersive experience in simulated settings.
I also am referring to how programs like Second Life just prudishly neglect to include even the most primitive of dashboard features to allow even novice users to engage in at least some sort of sexual behavior when the situation arises. Yes, SL supplies its “residents” with script language, along with access to tutorials and Web resources. But even these at times are not so user-friendly and palatable for those among us who are less inclined or adept at tinkering around in the more technical territory. For some, computer technology is an evocative phenomenon, not something to get deeply involved with on a programming level.
Then you take an MMORPG like Sociolotron, and you have something at the opposite end of the spectrum, namely de facto anarchy. To explain, Second Life has what it calls “community standards” that wisely discourage behavior such as harassment, intolerance and unwanted sexual advances. Also, users in Second Life seem to maintain a mutual respect for the most part, even when it comes to sexual matters, although I have observed that some male avatars in SL occasionally brush up roughly against me during interaction, seeming to represent some desperate and primitive attempt to derive some sexual charge. My point is I for one don’t want some digital punk having his way with me without my consent, even if it is only in a virtual context.
But I just read an overview of Sociolotron on mmorgy.com, and to say I was discouraged at what I learned is an understatement. The one welcome aspect of Sociolotron is that it seems to recognize the human animal’s darker urges and sexual appetite and allows users to conveniently employ a variety of built-in sexual commands, such as “grab nipple with hand,” “lick penis” and “shove his penis into your sphincter,” as was outlined in the mmorgy post.
And Sociolotron even has a variety of features that cater to those who desire to engage in BDSM and prostitution, among others. I applaud this sort of acknowledgement of the fact that many people fundamentally have the most primal of urges that they want to express when they venture into virtual surroundings, where the conventional codes and social mores of real life by and large lose their authority. However, unfortunately in Socioltron there is a tradeoff: virtual criminal behavior such as killing and rape seem about as common in that MMORPG as chatting and building are in Second Life.
All this just suggests that our distorted attitudes about sex in real life are spilling over even into our opening forays into simulated existence, be it a virtual world like Second Life or an MMORPG like Sociolotron.
– Noche Kandora
Note: Bottom three images from Sociolotron Web site. Top image of Noche Kandora’s avatar in Second Life.
