Another day, another headline about the proliferation of VR porn, this time from CNBC: “CES’s Favorite Brothel Wants You to Know Virtual Reality Porn Still Isn’t the Real Thing.” But rather than talk about the inevitability of VR porn, CNBC interviewed some of Las Vegas’s legal prostitutes to see what they thought about the, uh, sticky subject of VR porn.
A couple of weeks later, ultra-sex-positive website Slate ran a piece – “Does Sex in Virtual Reality Feel Like Sex?” – that reviewed the experience of VR porn.
We were very surprised by what we read. Especially these three things:
1) They admitted that porn is a cheap substitute.
Check out this quote from a prostitute who goes by the name Red Diamonds:
“If men begin to rely on virtual environments to satisfy their sex life, rather than having a legal courtesan help them overcome their sexual anxieties, they will be less inclined to date real-life women and more likely to be trapped in a less-fulfilling virtual world.”
Now, obviously, we’re going to disagree with the specifics of this. A “legal courtesan” is not what you should be after, because sex is best in the bounds of marriage, between two committed spouses. But we find it oddly comforting to know that a sex professional like Diamonds would cop to the basic truth that porn is a prison that trades the real thing for the fakest of fake things. Good on them.
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We were even surprised CNBC couldn’t help but point out that this is essentially the same thing that we talk about here at XXXchurch! For real:
“[Licensed prostitutes] use language to make their (persuasive) argument that sounds strangely similar to what anti-pornography activists say.”
That’s CNBC talking, not us. Feels good to be on the same team.
[shortcode-variables slug=”mypilgrimage-inline”]2) They point out how limiting VR porn is.
This is from Amanda Hess, writing for Slate, a website so liberal about sex and with such a countercultural reputation that it’s spawned an entire Twitter meme (known as #slatepitch):
“VR porn makes a bid to enhance the porn viewer’s experience, but in a way it takes them further away from the action: Slip on a headset, and you can look up at a porn star’s boobs or down at “your” new [penis], but you’re otherwise trapped inside [the porn company’s] fantasy. Look to the left or right for a new link to click on, and all you’ll see is black.”
VR porn is poised to make a lot of money, but it remains to be seen how long-standing the industry will be. For all the creativity that something like virtual reality offers, it’s still extremely restrictive by engaging visual and aural senses far more than touch.
In other words, VR porn is setting itself up to be a letdown.
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Technology wouldn’t be technology if there wasn’t some nerd somewhere figuring out how to use it to get off, but by getting closer to the real thing than a hand and an iPhone, VR porn is looking more and more like the ultimate disappointment.
3) They point out how clueless VR porn producers can be.
Here’s Ela Darling, a porn performer and someone with a startup stake in one of the first VR porn outlets, as quoted by CNBC (and cleaned up by me):
“There’s so much more that people want. They want a human experience. They want something that helps fight the loneliness in their lives. They don’t just need to [have an orgasm], they need to connect with someone.”
Yeah, exactly. Except Darling said this about VR porn. Like, she believes that VR porn will provide this kind of connection and “human experience.”
We know that some people are clueless about the ways porn affects people, but we didn’t know they could be this misled.
Sure, the whole point of porn is to make promises to people that this product – up to and including VR porn – can fulfill them and make them a little less lonely, a little less stressed, a little more calm. We also know that porn can never deliver on that promise.
Still, virtual reality is about as far from human contact and actual reality as you can get without being asleep. It’s closing off your senses to the real world in an attempt to find something fake in a fake world. The end.
Porn isn’t sex. It isn’t even close. It never has been and it never will be. It is a cheap, unfulfilling imitation and always will be.
The other day we wrote about the onset of VR porn and what you can do about it, but if you don’t want to listen to the crazy Christians and take our word for it, then maybe you’ll listen to the prostitutes. In this case, they know what they’re talking about. [shortcode-variables slug=”my-pilgrimage-bottom”]