Love, lies and cyberspace
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In Woody Allen’s sci-fi comedy Sleeper, sex in the 22nd century happens in bliss-inducing closets called orgasmatrons. In Demolition Man, Sly Stallone and Sandra Bullock get it on via “Vir-Sex” helmets that work on thought alone. And in the ’60s camp classic Barbarella, sex can be had in the form of a simple pill. Pleasure so powerful it literally curls Jane Fonda’s hair.
But for most Canadians, the future of sex lies much more in the near term. Whether scoping out a potential partner on Facebook, using an iPhone app to find quick hookups or investing in high-tech toys that make cybersex a physical reality, we’re interested in the melding of technology and sex. Even if not all of us are quite ready to accept it with wide open, um, arms.
To wrap up our series on sex in the online age, we asked Canadians about how they might incorporate technology in their sex and dating lives over the months and years to come, beginning with the increasingly common practice of using online dating sites to find romantic partners. Of the 76% of Canadians in the Leger Marketing survey for QMI Agency who said they never visit dating sites, more than a third (37%) said they’d at least consider giving it a shot at some point in the future.
Sex researcher Jocelyn Wentland, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and author of the Sex Research and the City blog, says age plays a factor in our attitudes about online dating. Older people might still find the concept foreign, or subscribe to the outdated notion that people routinely misrepresent themselves on dating sites.
And with high school students and university undergrads, “you bring up online dating and they think only the most giant, hugest losers in the world online date,” says Wentland. “And it’s because they are surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of viable dating partners.” Give it time, you lucky whippersnappers. Give it time.
After they meet that special someone but end up finding jobs in different cities, technology can help ease the burden of distance. Of those Canadians who haven’t used online dating sites, 42% said they’d consider a long-distance relationship in the future, thanks to the plethora of high-tech tools available to make the kilometres seem shorter.
Where lovebirds once had to coo their goodnights over the phone, now they’re just as likely to send text messages or use Facebook chat to say their I-miss-yous. But the sound of a lover’s voice is still an important part of the long distance equation, whether it’s over the video chat service Skype or something as old-school as a phone call.
“It still seems like there’s a hierarchy of technology in terms of what’s seen as more intimate,” says University of Toronto sex researcher Amy Muise, who holds a PhD in applied social psychology and, along with Wentland, has researched sexual attitudes and behaviour among university undergrads.
“Even though technology has become so widespread and so accepted, we still see face-to-face communication and telephone communication as more intimate,” Muise says.
As romance and the Internet become ever more entwined, some Canadians believe honesty will be in shorter supply. While 56% of Canadians feel truthfulness in online dating will remain the same in the future, 26% think we’ll be less honest, and only 18% feel we’ll be more forthcoming than before.
Maybe the naysayers are forgetting that in the age of Facebook, Twitter, Google and a host of other social media sites, it’s only going to get more difficult to pretend you’re a six-foot-two male model who drives Formula One racecars for a living.
“Most people are searchable,” says Wentland. “It becomes harder and harder for people to lie than to just be honest.” And besides, if you intend to meet your cyber-partner in real life at some point, she’s quickly going to notice that beer belly and Hello Kitty tattoo.
But some adventurous souls are skipping dating sites entirely and moving to geolocation services – that is, websites and mobile apps that not only tell people who you are, but where you are at any given moment.
The Canadians we surveyed seem leery to use popular mobile apps such as Skout and Grindr (the latter aimed exclusively at gay and bisexual men) to find nearby partners for quick sex or even just a casual drink. Only 16% said they might try geolocation for romantic purposes in the future, while 58% said they were not at all likely to broadcast their whereabouts for hookups.
Getting it on on-screen
While “there’s an app for that” might apply to casual encounters, we really start to envision the future of online sex when we talk about teledildonics. Yes, it’s a real word, and it applies to the very real practice of using computer-connected sex toys to stimulate, and be stimulated by, an online partner from afar.
Alas, teledildonics might still be the stuff of sci-fi movies for the time being. A whopping 84% of Canadians said they’re not likely to use computerized gizmos for virtual sex, and the roughly one-in-10 who might give it a go in the future could have some trouble finding satisfaction.
“There’s been remote sex hardware around since the mid-’90s, but no product lasts more than a few years,” says engineer and teledildonics expert Kyle Machulis, creator of the Slashdong.org blog. “You have to maintain hardware, and a network to connect the hardware, in order to charge for the service,” says Machulis. “And that’s just not an area of expertise in a lot of the adult industry.
“That’s why Skype is still the most popular teledildonics interface: it just provides the visual layer and lets you do everything else manually.” So for the time being, the future of online sex is still in our hands. Literally.
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