September 26, 2008
Those of you with basement apartment mailing addresses, stopping by TheSharkGuys mid-surf and holding a flashlight between your teeth take note: cybersex the stuff that fuels the Internet and the main reason you decided to turn on a computer (and soon regretting you did, after burning your retinas, left), is mainly the domain of depressed, stressed out and anxious males.
These after-shock rumblings were revealed at a recent psychology conference by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. [Recently we've blogged about equally tectonic plate-shifting findings that include, among other things, that racial bias exists online though we're not aware of any overlap with what we've uncovered here]
The common belief had up until this point been that only successful men with rich and deeply satisfying personal lives skulked around online at 3AM looking for dirty conversations with strangers who may or may not be violating the conditions of their parole by using the Net. The report in the Australian press said that the research, “…is shedding new light on the types of people who frequent online sex, fetish and swinging sites, revealing they are overwhelmingly male, well educated, and aged anywhere from 18 to 80.” 
For those of you blown away by this age range, which, after you take into account the margin of error includes absolutely everyone capable of tying their own shoelaces, we apologize, but we have some other numbers to lay on you. Apparently, about a third of the people who frequently go online for a bawdy Camfrog romp and similar shenanigans showed moderate to severe levels of depression, 30 percent had high anxiety, and 35 were moderately to severely stressed. There was no mention as to whether there was a correlation between low bandwidth and high stress levels due to network requirements of certain type of cybersex (threesomes, for example requiring a significant upgrade in RAM).
The more heavily engaged in online sexual activity, the higher the level of stress and also, the louder the knock on the basement door from the subject’s mother wondering what the hell he’s doing there and is he ever going to come up for breakfast
September 29th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Oh my… and to think I thought the Internet was simply for uploading stupid videos of cats playing the piano.