Warning: This blog is about something sexual. Sex is not the focus of the discussion, but if you are too immature, shortsighted or boring to come to understand the underlying concepts I’m exploring – please change channels now.
Watching late night television is a journey into the occasionally informative, but generally comedic, inane, fraudulent or misguided.
Just before my eyes slowly slipped closed the other night, I saw the usual gaggle of suspiciously attractive women making their pitch for phone sex. But I was floored when I saw that what they were selling wasn’t phone sex at all, but rather text-based sex chat! It doesn’t fit the commonly applied definition of “sexting” between knuckleheaded peers: No, this is another type of virtual prostitution.
But what struck me about this is how far removed we’re getting from authentic experiences. Look at how many layers or degrees of separation are involved in something as sterile as text-sex.
Degree 1: As is the case with all sex-for-hire, there is no relationship or emotional bond.
Degree 2: If you’re cool with that idea, there’s also no actual physical contact with another person.
Degree 3: There is no line-of-sight view of an actual person.
Degree 4: There is no live sound of an actual person.
Degree 5: There is no visual representation of another person via video or DVD.
Degree 6: There is no aural representation of another person via phone or online audio.
Degree 7: There is no proof you are texting a person of your preferred gender.
Degree 8: There is no proof that you are interacting with a person at all. Artificially intelligent speech recognition software can carry the conversation.
Degree 9: The use of written language is actually a degree of separation.
My thought is this: If something like reading text on a small phone screen is sufficient to “work” for a person sexually, the degree to which that person has surrendered himself to the virtual is just stunning. In order for such an exercise to be “effective,” the buy-in has to be extraordinarily comprehensive – and that’s scary.
Deriving a sufficiently powerful experience from a text message to achieve sexual arousal takes more than the traditional “willful suspension of reality.” Frankly, I think it takes a near psychic-break. Not for moral reasons necessarily, but because the expanse across which the mind must travel is so large. Just think: A silent, tiny text crawling across a little screen – enough to sufficiently engage both mind and body for a fee.
I think the implications of this for future generations are amazing. If our kids can be sexually gratified by simple text, lock themselves in a trance happy to play Xbox for eight uninterrupted hours in favor of any sort of authentic experience – imagine what will happen when our grandkids can take a drug, enter a sensory-rich virtual reality chamber in a state of semi-conscious twilight sleep, and experience things we can’t even imagine.
Talk about addictive.
Natalie Woods’ last movie, Brainstorm (1983), gestured at this new reality. I feel confident saying the movie’s vision will become reality. The revenue potential for such devices is unlimited, and so is the potential for the utter collapse of authentic experience of any kind right along with Democracy and Liberty.
The opiate of the masses will be a lockbox the size of a coffin filled with every image and experience an isolated and unknowing nervous system could ever want.
