September 26, 2008 Mad Science

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

August 27, 2008 Nanny State Nonsense

A new porn channel was approved by the CRTC, the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission, a body normally responsible for ensuring that no-body inadvertently sees a-body. Who these people are, is anyone’s guess, but like its FCC counterpart in the US they’re the ones responsible for ‘calling fellatio a trouser-friendly kiss’ (click here for the engaging Family Guy FCC-slamming sing-a-long) and generally looking out for our best interests, because as intelligent, capable human beings we are unable to do so. As such, their granting of a license to Northern Peaks (Twin Peaks an obvious copyright violation) is quite surprising and represents a slight easing of their normally clenched buttocks.

This development, not surprisingly, has run afoul of certain ‘old media‘, as hemorrhoid-courting bluenoses who haven’t gotten their laps wet since someone tipped over a coffee mug, are again sounding the alarm over this ‘abomination’.

Unlike old media, pornography has changed and adapted to new systems of delivery and getting one’s innards in a knot over some channel nobody will watch, is akin to the FAA focusing their efforts on hang-gliding, rather than passenger jets. In case they didn’t get the memo, a charmingly dated phrase that unfortunately isn’t as far as many of these people are concerned: the vast majority of people get their porn online.

So-called ‘direct correlations between crimes of rape’ and the proliferation of pornographic materials argument is an incredibly patronizing non-starter, as, just like horror films, pot, or violent video games, etc, the overwhelming majority consume them safely and without ill effects.

The Calgary Herald even used the phrase ‘virtual reality’, a term you won’t have heard anywhere if you missed the release of The Lawnmower Man onto DVD, and advocates ‘writing to your own cable provider’ [name and address available on your monthly bill (!)] in protest.

Anyone in our demographic, that is to say, anyone familiar with the Interweb, sends one piece of mail per year and it’s not even a letter: It’s a tax form, and even that has gone by the wayside the more people file online.

The only thing left for them to scream about (and this is the only time many of them will even get to use that tone of voice) is policing the internet, whenever they get around to discovering its existence–say, 12-15 years from now.

So, a round of applause (or the sound of one hand clapping) in welcoming Northern Peaks to Canadian television, and kudos for not using that semi-aquatic rodent in your application.