Virtual adultery: part of modern-day romance?
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Candy Hudson15 August 2008, 9:15 AM (13 days ago.)
HD Sex Online "love" and cybersex may not always translate into real life, but serious relationships and broken marriages can result from virtual hanky panky.
Those of us with computers (currently everyone in the Western world except my nan and a couple of her bingo buddies) are regularly briefed on the ins and outs of cybersex.
But how much do we know about cyberlove? Is on-line amore limited to one-handed rumpy pumpy and the exchange of virtual bodily fluids or is it possible to form deeper connections?
A fascinating new doco which screened on SBS last week – Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love – provides some of the answers.
First up on the show is poor old Lee – a self-described Forrest Gump type who suspects his better half may be up to something because she's spending 14 hours a day on the computer and no longer lets him into the bedroom (a bit of a giveaway in a marriage, I would have thought).
Lee's 37-year-old wife, Carolyn, is engaged in a dangerous liaison in Second Life with a cyberdude called Elliot who gets about in a pair of jeans teamed with a sword and a twin-set of Uzis (though his only enemies appear to be items of clothing that threaten to cover his bulgerific torso).
In SL, Carolyn is no longer a frumpy housewife hunched over a computer in a dark bedroom with sheets taped to the windows and paint flaking from the walls. She's a svelte, raven-haired goddess who wears fetish bikinis and makes passionate, pixilated love with Elliot and his weaponry beside a sparkling pool filled with frolicking dolphins.
Confronted by her four, understandably chagrined kids, Carolyn says SL is simply a grown-up version of playing with Barbie and Ken dolls. But the truth is she's so sure this is genuine love that she flies from America to London to meet Elliot for real.
The footage of these two e-lovers embracing clunkily at the airport then sharing sexless picnics ("Those are Welsh olives" is one of Elliot's attempts to avoid intimate conversation) is excruciating. Whatever they had on-line fails to translate to dolphin-less London, and Carolyn returns home heartbroken, deflated and still married to the cybercuckolded Gump.
It's tempting to write Carolyn and Elliot off as just another pair of SL losers, but the problem with their relationship stems not so much from its cyberness as its realness. Two unhappy people meet and think they've found salvation from the grotty grind of a long-term love gone wrong. Then, once the glow-in-the-dark factor wears off, all they find is more grotty grind.
It happens every day.
The good news is that the second couple featured in Virtual Adultery prove that not all SL flings reek of doom and suburban gloom. Kristen (aka Kira) and Steve (aka Nik) also embrace avatarism to avoid oppressive relationships.
But their on-line affair brings out the best in them and – despite the startling differences between their on-line and real world appearances – they discharge themselves honourably from their existing situations and effortlessly move their relationship into the non-digital realm.
After a surprisingly emotional SL wedding (attended by the avatars of weeping relos), this delightful couple eventually get hitched and up the duff for real. Cutely enough, they still hang out together in their seaside SL mansion, though these days their laptops snuggle side by side on their kitchen table.
Now that's a vision of successful 21st century romance.
* Google "Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love" and you'll find plenty of unauthorised on-line viewing opportunities, such as
http://thegridlive.com/2008/02/07/wonderland-virtual-adultery-and-cyberspace-love
Commentary
For today's commentary, I was about to make opinions about the rapid progress of technology, and the advantages and detriments of scientific development. Usually one would think of clunky machines taking over the world, and the alienation of human emotions as people succumb to a world devoid of creativity and filled with mindless calculation.
Well, fret not, people. Due to technological advancements, developers of internet programmes have successfully created a platform for people to express their innermost passions and desires without direct influence upon their lives in reality. A virtual world where people can effectively explore their creativity and emotions unhindered - Just the fun and healthy lifestyle choice for everyone who uses the internet.
Presenting, cybersex. "A vision of successful 21st century romance."
The internet media has already acquired a growing population of normal, human people who expose their own bodies in desperate need for cash, willingly succumbing themselves to the increasing wrath of horndogs who surf the net while sharing the pleasures of fondling their own genitals. As if that wasn't enough – now we have this whole virtual simulation of a person's very image and identity, as well as the romance and physical love people usually experience in a tangible plane. Perhaps we could say that it is the laws of demand and supply practiced in the most monstrous level possible.
Coming across this article was the shock of my life for me. I had no idea how far people went to give themselves pleasure while using the internet. What is worse is that the author is actually portraying cybersex as a good thing, attempting to blur the boundaries between a person's real and virtual identity. I really wish that the issue we are dealing with has two sides to the coin, just like any history essay, but this issue is utterly preposterous.
The writer speaks of cybersex being able to build relationships in reality. Using just that one example of a couple that got happily married through virtual adultery and cyberspace love, they portray how this programme actually develops true relationships and allows people to break free of emotional and psychological barriers they face in reality, just like for telephone conversations or instant messaging. Though there are many negative signals portrayed in this article, it ultimately ends up with them being happily married to one another. Even if it is meant to be satirical, I have a strong feeling that the meaning of this article may be greatly misconstrued by readers.
So if what they are saying is that the virtual development of cybersex is beneficial, I plead to differ. With just a few exceptional examples of people having a relationship following, but not necessarily caused by, cybersex and virtual adultery, how can they possibly outweigh the proven damages to the emotional and psychological health of users? Internet and phone sex was already bad enough in ridiculing our simple human instincts of sexual intercourse, where people tried having sex miles away from each other. Making a whole graphic platform publicly dedicated to people who want to remain anonymous within multiple conjugal relations could either be termed as player-controlled cartoon porn, or a big fat joke to mankind.
These inserted visual effects add greater incentive towards being addicted to the fun of cybersex. In this day and age half of our lives awake are already spent in front of the computer screens, and the other half has been salvaged through our meager outdoor lifestyles. If we really wanted a world with pixels glued to our eyeballs, then yes this would be the solution.
Emotions are the very things that define humanity, and even with this in mind it is still put into the stakes of internet soliciting. What ever happened to the good old times when people could actually meet each other face to face to go out on a date? Or even make love together? All this is gone with this very step towards a "holistic virtual lifestyle." In fact you can do just about everything on the computer. Anything. And get away with it without worries. It is a new culture spreading on the internet – an alienation from reality towards the shadowed bliss of anonymity in the virtual sphere, where you have all the space and freedom to upload, download and explore.
Technology has now taken yet another stride in blurring the gap between the real and the digital, and if this goes on, god knows what the world would come to in the supposedly foreseeable future. Oh please, with respect to humanity, with respect to Mother Nature, give it up!
