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When it comes to sex, America can be a little prudish. Sex ed comes and goes (depending on your community), we flipped out over Janet Jackson’s nipple being exposed for 3/8 of a second, and it’s been really hard to start a spontaneous orgy lately.

When it comes to sex entertainment, though, we’re dogfighting the Germans for international dominance. Traditional porn is rather ho-hum. Now it’s all about doin’ it digital, baby, and the rest of the world seems to have taken note of our excellence.

Via the Hindustan Times, Asia News International sounds very excited about our latest development:

Jenna Jameson, the first porn star to be immortalised by wax museum Madame Tussauds, has now brought forth her new venture – a new virtual reality sex game.

According to TMZ.com, people visiting the website VirtuallyJenna, can choose not only the locations, toys, positions, but also partners and acts, all for the price of 29.95 dollars a month.

As if that were not enough, Jameson and the other virtual models also make actual love sounds such as gagging, slurping and yum noises while performing their acts.

As for all those still not sure whether or not they want to be pleasured for an entire month, well all they need to do is dish out 9.95 dollars for a 3-day trial while they make up their minds.

Hooray! Virtual love-gagging complete with sound effects! Take that, Kaiser!

Australians, meanwhile, were very interested in San Francisco’s Sex in Video Games Conference held last month. Using it as a lead-in, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a feature piece on the burgeoning field of adult video games:

“A lot of game genres are becoming more narrative-based,” [Dr. Mark Finn, lecturer in media at Swinburne University of Technology] says. “As the stories become more intricate, sexual content will naturally become part of it, in the same way that the treatment of sexual content developed in film and television.”
[...]
“It will be revelatory,” [local game designer Mark Angeli] says. “First-person shooters that deal with the real consequences of violence, real-time strategy that has real-world political issues, Sims-style games that explore the intricacies of all possible sexual relationships. Sign me up.”

While Australians are dreaming it, though, Canadians (and presumably many other people — even Australians) are living it now through a game called Second Life. 43% of the 350,000 gamers are female, and anything goes.

The Globe and Mail delved into this user-created massive multiplayer online game through the life of housewife Airdrie Miller:

“I have two girls who are 8 and 6,” Miller says. “My husband works full-time, and he has his own podcast, and he’s a musician, so he’s very busy. I really go stir-crazy, because I’m at home so much with the kids. Second Life brings entertainment to my life. I call it my window to the adult world. I can dance, meet new people, and have fun — without worrying about offending anyone.”

[Aside: Poor Airdrie! This is like a cartoon of the horrible life of a homemaker. Her husband is too wrapped up in his "podcast" to pay her any attention or help with their children, and she's so isolated from meaningful human contact that she has to go online to experience the adult world. Note that she is also afraid that dancing, meeting new people, and having fun might offend people. Someone help this poor woman.]

Anyway, Second Life offers a Sims-style escape realm, just like the Aussie game designer imagined, and it’s becoming rather mainstream. BBC 1 rented a “tropical island” in the game for a year and simulcasts concerts there. Sex-crazed American Apparel has a Second Life store. $9 million dollars (well, Canadian dollars, so that’s like $4.50, right?) is transacted between players per month. And, yes, you can get it on (kinda):

Not surprisingly, sex permeates much of the social-networking going on in this virtual world. Players can purchase cyber genitalia that animate with a fellow avatar’s touch, or — for those into bestiality — animal parts and costumes, which are exceedingly popular.

Whoa! That was a bit of a leap. I hope there’s a middle ground between animated genitalia and cyber animal sex. Is bestiality all the rage up there in Canada or something?

Anyway, our neglected housewife sums the game up this way:

“There are fewer consequences, there are fewer constraints, so people are more free to do what they want,” says Miller. “But it’s not out of control or anything. People are there to have fun.”

Virtual sexual content has repeatedly proven to be popular and lucrative. As Miller says, you can live out your fantasies with fewer consequences.

I wonder what will happen when true virtual sex becomes available. Imagine a world where people can slap on some VR goggles and slip into a suit that simulates on one’s body everything experienced digitally. If watching/controlling some character alone is this popular, adding yourself into the mix with actual physical stimulation should become the most popular hobby on the planet, no?

The rest of the world is clearly waiting with bated breath for us to make it happen, so let’s get to it, people. If the Matrix is coming, we might as well invent it ourselves.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 8:14 am and is filed under Sex, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.