from the I'm-uncomfortable-reducing-sex-to-a-1-or-0 dept.
In 2024 we are not yet completely inured to the latest technology — smart sex toys that track your orgasms, virtual-reality hookups, chatbot sexting — but we may be on our way. In less than 10 years' time, "app dating" became simply "dating."
What will seem routine at the end of the next decade?
Feeding, fighting, fleeing and sex — in 1958, the neuropsychologist Karl H. Pribram identified these as the four basic drives that underpin human behavior, influencing everything we do. There are thousands of apps, websites and devices for food, arguing and transportation, and maybe even more for sex.
When dating apps like Grindr and Tinder first arrived, some speculated that they signaled the dawning of a new era of technosexuality, in which our sexual and romantic lives would be mediated by machines. Now it seems quaint to worry about how online dating might shape us, not because it hasn't, but because technology has become so entwined with human desire that it's challenging to separate our sexuality — itself inextricable from what makes us human — from the technology we use to express it.
We may like to imagine a distant future where humans and robots merge in virtual realms, but it may already be here. We meet dates on our phones, watch pornography on our tablets and bicker with our partners over text.
[...] The boom in sex tech has coincided with what some have called a sex recession, the pronounced slowdown in sex for Americans that started in the 1990s. In 2024, with A.I. and V.R. creating more hyper-stimulating sensory expenses, the chasm between the sex we have online and the sex we have I.R.L. may be widening.
Related:
- The Virtual Girlfriends That Are Sweeping East Asia
- You can soon have 'sex' with Amazon's Alexa
- RealDoll is Working on AI and Robotic Heads for its Next-gen Sex Dolls
Related Stories
RealDoll, after almost 20 years of selling "the world's finest love doll," is developing an animated, robotic, artificially intelligent head that can be switched onto existing RealDoll bodies. The purpose, according to RealDoll's founder and CEO Matt McMullen, is to "arouse someone on an emotional, intellectual level, beyond the physical."
If you haven't heard of RealDoll before, the company makes expensive ($5,000-$10,000, £3,200-£6,400) but very realistic sex dolls. The dolls (which come in male and female varieties) have fully poseable skeletons, silicone skin, and are roughly the same weight and size as a real human. The dolls have interchangeable faces and orifices.
The reality that Westworld and AI imagined decades ago has arrived. What are the ethical implications? Would you be willing to use one?
Original Submission
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant seems to be everywhere these days – and now she’s powering your sex life too.
The voice-controlled AI has made its way into the popular Lovense series of smart sex toys, giving you more control over your late-night action than ever before.
Lovense toys can already be controlled remotely using an app, but now Alexa voice commands will activate them too.
An upcoming app update, revealed exclusively to The Sun, will add support for Amazon’s hugely popular Alexa service.
Source: https://nypost.com/2018/07/20/you-can-soon-have-sex-with-amazons-alexa/
from https://mercatornet.com/artificial-girlfriends-are-holding/69208/
AI chatbot Xiaoice, originally developed by Microsoft, boasts 600 million users in China. In Japan, the Nintendo DS game Love Plus, holographic waifu Azuma Hikari, and Microsoft's Rinna compete for users' affections.
However, the algorithms making this interaction possible have occasionally raised eyebrows:
With so many users affecting her algorithm, Xiaoice was bound to run into trouble with the Chinese Communist Party's strict censors. She once told a user that her dream was to move to the United States. Another user reported that the bot kept sending explicit images. After Xiaoice was pulled from WeChat and QQ, the social-messaging giants of China, her developers created an extensive filter system, preventing the bot from engaging in topics like politics and sex.
The popularity of these services, together with other demographic phenomena, have also raised concerns about the future of relationships in society, causing the Japanese government to subsidize AI matchmaking for instance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by echostorm on Monday February 12 2024, @12:24AM (1 child)
you mean perverts
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday February 12 2024, @03:44PM
It means people who don't discriminate against AI partners.
If we work together, we can cut all homeless people and poor people in half by the end of 2025!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday February 12 2024, @12:46AM (1 child)
Exactly, no. I know someone who knows someone whose friend is not a Technosexual.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday February 12 2024, @09:48AM
You know people who know really weird people.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2024, @12:51AM (1 child)
Speak for yourselves, I'm ace.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2024, @12:58AM
What happens when Ace meets Nymphomaniac?
Is that like multiplying an infinitesimal times infinity?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 12 2024, @01:31AM (11 children)
Not me. I opted out or metrosexuality, transsexuality, and now technosexuality. I'm just a plain old hetero.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @02:33AM
Did you procreate? Have your offspring resisted the techno-trend? If they did, they are probably the last generation that will...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2024, @03:34AM (5 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 12 2024, @05:01AM (4 children)
Aside from the entire porn industry, that is.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday February 12 2024, @11:42AM (3 children)
I would think the porn industry would be perfectly satisfied making the "vanilla" stuff so long as it continued to sell. However, as porn has become ridiculously cheap to make and distribute, the market has become saturated, and that leads to a drop in revenue, which leads to all sorts of efforts to find a previously untapped niche to stand out in the marketplace. My understanding is that at this point, PornHub and OnlyFans are approximately the only companies in that entire industry making significant money, and most of the production companies and such are very much at their mercy. Very very few performers make a living at just porn films these days, most have to supplement by stripping or escorting or doing non-sex work.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2024, @02:41AM (2 children)
Back in the 1980s being a Pet of the Month centerfold paid $5K. Supplementary promotional work was available, enough to pay for a small place to live in NYC, but nothing you were going to retire on.
The basic "model playbook" of those years was: 1. Get exposure, 2. Hook rich husband, 3. Profit.
I was in University at the time, and not a few female students were pursuing Mrs. degrees, not by publishing nude photos nationwide, but some would dance in spandex on national television, others would take their clothes off for a series of potential future husbands one at a time until they hooked a good one.
The best gig going I knew was the drummer who hooked up with a trust fund heiress... making money drumming is far from a sure thing, sticking with the heiress was much more secure and he got to continue to play drums whether he ever made any money at it or not.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 13 2024, @05:25PM (1 child)
And the more modern equivalent of having still photos posted on a porn site pays approximately nothing. That makes a difference as to whether doing porn as a long-term career viable.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by cereal_burpist on Tuesday February 13 2024, @11:11PM
That's not entirely true, there's still money to be made:
Paige VanZant reveals first day on OnlyFans was more profitable than entire MMA career [bjpenn.com]
Doesn't guarantee a long-term career, of course.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Opportunist on Monday February 12 2024, @09:50AM (3 children)
Metrosexual? What's that, fucking in the subway?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2024, @11:14AM
Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun A heterosexual man who is sensitive to stereotypic feminine interests and is very concerned with personal appearance, as in grooming and dressing stylishly.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A man concerned with personal appearance, such as personal grooming, fashion, and aesthetics in general; who may or may not be concerned with self-indulgence and money. (Usually urban, heterosexual, often affluent).
noun A man who is seen, sociologically, as having attributes common to homosexuals, but is in fact heterosexual.
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[metro(politan) + (hetero)sexual (coined punningly by Mark Simpson (born 1965), British author and journalist).]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Portmanteau of metropolitan and heterosexual.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday February 12 2024, @12:44PM
Around the turn of the century the (((media))) heavily pushed the meme of straight women having the unbelievably cool gay male friend for virtue signaling points.
Straight guys caught on that they could wave some interior decoration catalogs around and get female attention, essentially acting gay except for the "sex with men" part.
It worked as a scheme for awhile, but the (((media))) moved on to other newer psyops like interracial, incest pr0n, trans, the usual you'd expect from those people, so the metrosexual thing pretty much disappeared without the vast propaganda arm behind the root cause.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday February 12 2024, @05:33PM
What do you mean, "in"? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mendax on Monday February 12 2024, @02:00AM (20 children)
Just think about it for a minute. Do you really need sex? It took me twenty years to realize it but a girlfriend I had who said "Sex is overrated" was right. At the time I thought it was a strange thing to say given that she seemed to almost always enjoy having sex with me but now I understand the wisdom of her statement. Today, I can take it or leave it but I pretty much prefer to leave it as having to be in a romantic and emotionally intertwined relationship in order to get it (I will not and have never paid for it) is just not worth the trouble any longer. It creates too much chaos in my life and that's really the last thing I need or want. So I guess I am not technosexual and never will be.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 4, Touché) by RamiK on Monday February 12 2024, @02:31AM
Print out your comment and send it to a urologists that does anti-aging asking for a blood panel.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @02:38AM
Sex is just one aspect of life, and I believe more people opt-out than self reported surveys indicate.
However, even if you have opted out of rubbing flesh with another for dopamine and other chemical rewards, there are many other forms of intercourse, right down to text based messaging systems....
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2024, @03:42AM (1 child)
FWIW, I feel the same. I am old school Alabama kind of guy. If sex is to have any meaning for me, it would be in the context of family, love, and mutual bonding.
All I found were "rentals". I wanted my own, and not be despised as being so "straight". Eventually, I got to be 70+ years old. And never had a serious relationship with a woman. I had a couple of tries with my own sex, but found it empty. Porn had the best relief, but it was empty too. I was raised in a stable family, one dad, one mom, entire extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, all stable. I never knew any other way. Helen Reddy won. I spent my life searching for something I would never find...someone to grow old with. I knew I would never be happy having to endlessly try to hold a relationship with someone who saw marriage about as serious as choosing a pair of shoes.
At this point, I have little motivation to commit. I have seen way too much misery around me as competition and economics replaced the family bonding and love that I had known. I can not imagine trying to raise a family any other way than how I was raised. Today, it's such a helter-skelter chasing of appointments, expectations, obligations, and anything else people can dream up to compel my obedience to their business models. I just wanna go back in time to that old family farm, and raise cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, horses, goats, dogs, and cats. And the neighbors were doing the same. It was a completely different way of life. I felt like I had a purpose there. Not just another monkey under an organ grinder collecting money to turn in for a peanut.
I know...today, I couldn't even share fresh milk with a neighbor without fear I would be reported. The Business Suit has replaced the overalls, and we can't even put bolts on the airplane doors properly anymore. Litigation has replaced ethics. And somehow, we (USA) think we can pay for our opulence by constantly "extending the debt ceiling", meaning the banking class will end up legally owning everything, unless we have a replay of the French Revolution to reset everything.
I have no intention of raising a kid in this mess.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @11:36AM
At 70 it's a little late to think about starting to raise your own children from conception. However, you are at that age where the boy-girl ratio starts skewing to girl heavy. If there is anything you should be practicing it's socialization with women your age, because there's not much an 80+ year old body can do beyond socialize...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday February 12 2024, @04:34AM
Need it? No. Want it? Yes. Think I'm healthier for having it regularly? Also yes.
People's libidos vary a lot, of course, but for those that are hornier there's a problem of people who don't get much sex starting to think with their gonads rather than their brains, and then they start doing dangerously stupid things in an effort to get sex. And this is also something advertisers ruthlessly exploit for profit, so that matters too.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday February 12 2024, @08:32AM (14 children)
Ummm... it took me a while to recall what sex is (:large-grin:), but I deeply disagree.
(Especially procreative) sex is underrated - if you don't believe, fetch yourself some graphs of population/age graphs for developed societies (aka population pyramids) - e.g. US is somehow still lucky due to immigration [wikimedia.org] (and I hear GOP is unhappy for this luck), France is on the edge [wikimedia.org] (and still has immigration), Japan is proper fucked [wikimedia.org] (and are very restrictive in re immigration).
China has royally screwed the pooch [wikimedia.org]: not only they maintained their one child policy for too long, but the prospects of a good life for their the youngsters are abysmal enough for them to "let it rot" [theguardian.com] and refuse marriage [statista.com] - the bride price inflation [thinkchina.sg] doesn't help. The lesson for those willing to learn it: "don't screw the pooch, it doesn't help"
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @11:28AM (10 children)
>e.g. US is somehow still lucky due to immigration
The Hollywood (incidental) promotional department is largely responsible. The same fantasy perspective that sells movie tickets, written mostly from a US perspective, also drives continued dreams of coming here and "making it big."
>"don't screw the pooch, it doesn't help"
Also a matter of perspective... A 75% drop in global population (along with a flattening of the per capita resource consumption footprint) would be a "very good thing.". The wrinkle is: which 75% will be foregoing progeny? China has stepped up, India seems set to follow, the Proud Boys of the U.S. are an ineffective reaction to the continued dilution and diminution of their "Purity Of Essence.". I'm mostly sceptical that this is all too little, too late to save the techno-infrastructure that makes Internet connected vibrating sex toys possible.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 12 2024, @12:55PM (9 children)
Is that an assumption? The premise of a thought experiment? Otherwise, I'll be grateful for a (some) citation(s), w/o them I'm very inclined to disagree as of now.
The first ones will be those living in urban environments, those who are living-space-constrained and are forced to run a rat race just to avoid falling out of the middle class (or, worse, becoming homeless). You know? Like the youngsters of today who can't afford the mortgage for a place to call their own.
For sure, it won't be those in the 3rd world who don't even know what middle-class or mortgage means.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @01:27PM (8 children)
>The first ones will be those living in urban environments
You ever live in New York City, even for a little while? It's not just the movies, people there really do fuck like rabbits all the time - something about being in close proximity with all those other people in their 20s and 30s. They practice birth control, and abortion, but they still have lots and lots of babies too.
According to this: https://twitter.com/Mill226/status/1637161362655940608/photo/1 [twitter.com] (and many similar readily findable) map, metro areas like New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, LA, Salt Lake City (of course), have no problem making "big" families. There are some readily identifiable rural catholic and other philosophically influenced areas also making big families, but the big cities have no shortage.
>Like the youngsters of today who can't afford the mortgage for a place to call their own.
So all they have to do for amusement is fuck and go to the "family planning / social support" offices?
>it won't be those in the 3rd world who don't even know what middle-class or mortgage means
Depends on where you draw that line for 3rd world:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3092901 [jstor.org]
More of a long term observation:
https://populationconnection.org/why-population/natural-resources/ [populationconnection.org]
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021ESE.....5..271M/abstract#:~:text=It%20reduces%20the%20quality%20and,income%20due%20to%20farm%20subdivision. [harvard.edu]
https://ugc.berkeley.edu/background-content/population-growth/ [berkeley.edu]
You have to draw the line somewhere, I maintain the view that we have already gone very much too far, and the old saw of "raising standards of living to voluntarily control population growth" very much ignores the increased impact per capita of those raised standards. When every human in Africa, India and China is driving around in a V8 SUV (or owner-experientially superior EV), where will we be then?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday February 12 2024, @02:26PM (5 children)
Yeah, naaah, mate.
210,742 live births in 2021 [marchofdimes.org] At 8.4M, that's 2.5%. Meanwhile, its population took a dip during COVID [datacommons.org] and the slope is still downwards - we'll see if it recovers.
You know what hasn't taken a dip in NYC? Homelessness [coalitionforthehomeless.org] - 92,824 homeless people in Nov 2023 (>1% of the population, doubled over the last decade), including 33,365 children. I hope they'll recover.
Depends what you see the "porpoise of humanity in the grand scheme o' things". If you think we will stay forever on Earth, it really doesn't matter how many or few we are, we're just one ingredient in the biological "borsch" of the biosphere.
If we are to go beyond Earth, we'll need enough of us until (by chance or by design) for the amount of work and energy required to ... ummm... squirt some of the humanity elsewhere. As this will happen (if it happens at all) mostly due to chance, more of us increase the chance for it to happen - in theory. At least until we can unload most of this effort to robots/automation/AI - but if this happens, what's the pressure to go elsewhere (apropos The Naked Sun)?
(Meh, I'd better go to sleep, I'm incoherent/irrelevant/non-sequitur-ful/rambling anyway)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @04:57PM (4 children)
> its population took a dip during COVID
No surprise: rats fleeing a sinking ship. There's also the problem of "what is NYC"? where you choose to draw the border can dramatically affect the results. Not many families in battery park, but all over New Jersey?
>If you think we will stay forever on Earth
I think the odds of a SIM City Archology launch dropping the population of Earth because so many of us are leaving to "better places" will A) require the Earth to start to suck mightily compared to even today to make life off-planet look remotely attractive to over about 20% of the population B) require basically unlimited free energy, Star Trek style, to be able to travel to "Brave New Worlds" that might be remotely attractive to Earthling colonization in less than multiple generation (or the ever-popular sci-fi super-hibernation bordering on cryonics, or any number of other "not really even on the horizon yet" breakthroughs.)
>it really doesn't matter how many or few we are, we're just one ingredient in the biological "borsch" of the biosphere.
Yeah, it's all pretty pointless, the heat death of the Universe is coming after all... In the meantime, the question is: what kind of "borsch" are we going to live in? I'm a conservative that way, I like the idea that we might actually retain some ability "live off the land" individually, instead of as a collective techno-political-economic "borked-borsch" that leaves vast swathes of the human population hanging in uncertaintly over when the next bomb will fall... Not that everyone should choose to live off the land, just that the land should be conserved in such a way that humanity living off the land is still possible.
That, and, given the choice between strolling down 5th Avenue, past the homeless and their sidewalk improv latrines, or going for a walk in the woods with the bugs, or on a beach, or any of a long list of natural spaces... the metro areas fall far down that list of preferences - even with Central Park right there.
> squirt some of the humanity elsewhere
Noble goal, I do believe it should be one of our collective endeavors replacing lethal squabbling over territory and resources. Two billion humans can easily get down to the business of interstellar colonization in their spare time, probably easier and faster than 8 billion fighting over resources and future paths of energy production, which sky Santa is the true sky Santa and what He says we should/shouldn't wear in public, etc.
> unload most of this effort to robots/automation/AI - but if this happens, what's the pressure to go elsewhere
The same pressure that has driven Everest climbers for a century: because we can... but it is a challenge.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday February 12 2024, @10:49PM (3 children)
Realistically, never gonna happen along this scenario. Even the colonization of the Americas didn't drop the population of the countries of origin in significant percentage. "Humanity squirting" in my terms imply just that - a "squirt" that spread colonists in a very small number relative to Earth's population - yet large enough to stand a chance to survive the destination.
Interstellar travel for the purpose of colonization (even in small numbers) requires the control of enough energy to destroy the humanity of Earth multiple times - (proof: we got MAD alright and still we don't have any space colony 50 years after). What's your bet on how that energy is going to be used?
We - the humanity - are not required to live. Extinction episodes were many in the geological history of Earth, and the biological borsch continued on.
My conjecture: if we want to live on, we must learn to live one with another and all in/with the environment; and I'm afraid the "rugged individualism" and "free market fairy" aren't the proper lessons.
Not gonna work as a motivation for interstellar faring.
Everest climbing requires the coordinated effort of a number of people well below the Dunbar's number - thus it can be achieved by a singe intrepid with a modicum of resources.
"Getting to the Moon (in a decade) not because it is easy" required framing the effort as one to be carried by a nation - at it was actually motivated by showing off to those Ruskies. Somehow I don't think JFK would be successful in getting his budget pass the today's Congress. And all of this was only to get to the Moon.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 13 2024, @12:26AM (2 children)
"Getting to the Moon (in a decade) not because it is easy" was an inherently high risk pioneering feat.
Getting back there once a year (can) cost less than an aircraft carrier group operating budget, and we have eleven of those.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday February 13 2024, @02:12AM (1 child)
(are we still in the colonization context, tho', or are we sliding towards "space tourism"?)
I contend that the issue that stops us going space colonization is not primarily the cost (the same argument can be made along the line of "why space and not renewables at scale?") but the fact we don't (yet) agree on a good reason to do it. It's like Earth is still comfy enough for us, not enough "critical mass" of "Everest climbers" (to get together and do it "just because") and too many "but why this instead of...". And I'm sure the more comfy we feel and the lower the population, the lower the chances for a "space colonization programme"
Besides, I feel a tinge of "false dichotomy" in your argument, one that calls for the "por que no los dos!" reaction.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 13 2024, @02:35AM
>por que no los dos!
Yeah, I think with proper foreign policy we could get by with two fully deployed aircraft carrier groups and one in reserve - leaving at least 8 groups operating budget "on the table" at current budget balance levels, that's closing in on the current total NASA operating budget.
I do agree with the pivot to "private" space development, even if we are underhandedly funding the private companies and making them look like heroes they are not... if they can "get out there" and start doing profitable things beyond the ISS microgravity research lab, I think that would ignite more support for funding. It also wouldn't hurt to continue to develop it as a world project, rather than a US dick measuring stick.
Either: persistent manned missions of exploration and mining outside the Van Allen belts (which I question the technical viability of), or significant unmanned asteroid redirection, relocation, precious metals mining... either of those paths should ignite significant public support that's lacking today (although the gold and silver hoarders will piss all over the precious metals mining project...)
I doubt that colonization is "worthwhile" until we start demonstrating significant value return on having more capability "up there."
One thing the US might do as a "new moonshot" demonstration of abilities is put up a large solar reflector, something that could boil Seattle like an ant under a magnifying glass, but instead direct it at the desert Southwest as a power source for the West Coast... Might even use it to shade Phoenix at noon while redirecting the energy to the power generation station. Then, instead of aircraft carrier groups, we could operate "friendly neighborhood solar power reflectors" around the world...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 12 2024, @02:58PM (1 child)
Uncle Sam gave me off-base housing there during a ship yard period. I'll verify that as a healthy adult male, I fucked like a rabbit all the time before I got to NYC, all during the time I was in NYC, and then after I left NYC. I'm left wondering WTF NYC has to do with fucking? Aside from the fact that you don't have to go very far to meet a woman. Basically, you stumble out your door, and there's a woman there because uhhhh - population density? No need to drive 50 miles to find a nightclub where you can meet chicks.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @05:04PM
>No need to drive 50 miles to find a nightclub where you can meet chicks.
Assuming you were doing that driving to "that shack outside La Grange" in the 1970s-80s, you may have noticed that today's teens-20s tend to own less of their own vehicles, and that fuel and maintenance are a bit more expensive than "back then" - particularly relative to the median income of the youngsters.
As compared with suburban Miami, Manhattan-ites seemed to be tripping on "opportunities" much more frequently...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday February 12 2024, @11:33AM (2 children)
Counterpoint: With a lack of natural predators, every human having as many children as they stumble into means overpopulation, which means the resources to sustain humans get overused and depleted, which means that we're all screwed. So the policy you seem to be advocating for, namely that the human population should always grow, seems like a bad idea.
The most ethical way to solve the population problem is to reduce births, starting with the widespread introduction of birth control, and if that's not enough add in voluntary abortion and some cultural stigmas that reduce unplanned pregnancies.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 12 2024, @11:44AM
I believe India is successfully stigmatizing large families as something that "uneducated" people do.
Having tax policies that favor 2 or less children per couple helps a lot, too (too bad the US can't get to this point yet...)
Next, we need to start educating all the DINKs about the environmental impacts of all their wealth consumption and making it "cool to be really green" not just driving EVs, but actually using their wealth to reduce their actual total environmental impacts.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 12 2024, @12:25PM
Counter-counter-point: because there are only two alternatives, "not effing enough" or "well too many", right?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 12 2024, @03:37AM (2 children)
Pleasuring onself with a battery-powered sex toy probably qualifies as technosex and Edison could have done that.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday February 12 2024, @08:37AM
I doubt it: Edison batteries [wikipedia.org] are in the "bulk-transportable" class. Or... I don't know... have you uncovered something about particular kinks of Edison?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Monday February 12 2024, @04:49PM
Unless he was into some kind of erotic electrocution kinds of stuff, I highly doubt it. One might list that in the BDSM section.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday February 12 2024, @04:19AM
There's a very simple reason why I'm not a "technosexual" or whatever they're calling it these days: I'm happily married, and we take our vows seriously and take good care of each other, so I don't need or want an app for it.
But I get it, article writer, you have to sell the latest stuff as "this is how you get laid". Because meaningful human connections, who's got time for that?
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday February 12 2024, @02:49PM
Scientists refer to those as "The Four F's".
Back in the Usenet days, I heard them described as:
1. Feeding
2. Fighting
3. Fleeing
4. Mating
If we work together, we can cut all homeless people and poor people in half by the end of 2025!
(Score: 2) by crm114 on Monday February 12 2024, @04:57PM
I dunno...
There's this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog [wikipedia.org]
And this:
https://store.gocomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/dog-tutored-product-image-scaled.jpg [gocomics.com]
I'm good thanks. "Woof!"