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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Unpersonals: My Dating Life is NSFW

filed under: Web Sex Index, Unpersonals by Lux Nightmare | 4 Comments

Unpersonals. You know them. You probably even have an account on one of them, complete with sassy photos, lots of comments, and a multipage friends list. And of course, you’d never, ever use that kind of site to meet someone. Or stalk someone. Right?

Of course right.

I’ve written before about the shitty filtering software we have at (one of my) office(s). What I neglected to mention, in my previous post, is that, in addition to filtering porn, sex education information, and really anything with the sheer mention of the word “sex” in it, my office also blocks MySpace. And Consumating. And any dating and/or personals site.

Yeah, apparently dating (even Unpersonals style dating) is NSFW.

The bored, lovelorn side of me is outraged: clearly, I should be allowed to Consumate all I want at work. Isn’t work about fucking around on the Internet and pretending to look busy?

The more pragmatic, rational side of me sees things differently: I’m at work, I’m getting paid to be, uh, at work. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t be spending the company time trying to get laid.

Which brings us to the real question at hand: what on earth do we really mean by not safe for work?

We all know that NSFW is really just code for tits, cocks, pussy, and fucking: after all, that video of the cat in the hamster wheel would never be labeled NSFW. But what makes watching funny cats a more valid at-work past time than looking at porn? Neither activity’s likely to pop up in your job description (unless, perhaps, you work at Fleshbot or in the adult industry. Or for some funny cat website.).

Can we be more honest and upfront about what mean when we say NSFW? Can we say, “Hey, this has breasts,” or “Warning: Explicit, intelligent discussion of sex and culture.” Can we abolish NSFW, or at least recognize that just about anything mildly interesting you might be doing at your shitty desk job isn’t something you should be doing?

Because, sure, my personal life is NSFW. But that’s because, you know, it’s my personal life, and not my job.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

The Future of Sex, Special Report: Off to Southeast Asia

filed under: Podcast: Future of Sex by Melissa Gira | 2 Comments

Reporting this update from the San Francisco International Airport as I wait for my flight to board, I hope you’ll all be well and keep sex smart in my absence. I’ll be videoblogging as I go. Stay here for all the latest. Good night, good flight, and good fuck.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Lazysexweb: What Is The History of NSFW?

filed under: Strange Bedfellows, Retrosexual, Lazysexweb by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Apropos of Susie Bright’s questioning of the overuse of NSFW…

NSFW is unmandated, unlegislated censorship — there’s no ballot to punch, no senator to harangue.

The great majority of NSFW warnings are the result of unconscious class bias, with the conceit of American ethnocentrism. It’s made a mockery of out of journalism and the First Amendment.

NSFW and its slippery slope of “assumptions” leads to stories and ideas of all kinds being banned, firewalled, off the grid in places from universities to major wire services.

… and doing a bit of research…

I have searched for a history of this term but can find nothing. Interestingly enough though it seems as though every page on the web, that I have encountered, which purports to explain the history of NSFW is actually search engine SPAM designed to raise the Google juice for gambling and viagra sites.

… and of course, consulting the usual suspects, I’m still not any more clear on the origins of NSFW. Tips, pointers, remedy for our gaps in web history? Lux and I were reminiscing just this morning on our days online back when nary a banner ad had popped, but for the life of us, we can’t put a finger[1] on when NSFW was first deployed.

[1] Jokes for old sex nerds.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

We Are The Sex Media: Digital Intimacy and Teens

filed under: Dating 2.0, We Are The Sex Media by Lux Nightmare | 3 Comments

If you read this blog regularly, you’re probably well aware that we at Sexerati are pretty big fans of digital intimacy; of using all the latest tech and hacks to work your way into someone’s heart (or bed). But we’re consenting adults, (theoretically) able to make educated, informed choices about who we do (and don’t) want to fuck, about whether our online excursions accurately reflect our IRL feelings about the people we interact with.

I often wonder how I would have ended up if I’d been born a few years later — five, or even ten years — if the Unpersonals and text messages and IMs I now view as a boon to my dating life would have caused me to develop into a fundamentally different person if I’d had ready and immediate access to them at the age of twelve, or thirteen or fourteen.

And maybe I would have: a recent article in The Age suggests that digital intimacy — texts and IMs and, yes, MySpace — leads teenagers down a path of accelerated physical intimacy, that the rapid formation of relationships online (combined with media messages proclaiming that, yes, everyone is having sex and if you aren’t you’re a loser) can lead to risky decision making.

I’m split on the issue of teens and the Internet, particularly when it comes to sex. The Internet is wonderful because it offers so much opportunity, so much information, so much access. The Internet is terrible because it offers so much unfiltered information, so much access to harmful influences, so much opportunity for disaster.

So where do we go from here? How do we manage our changing social sphere, the changing social lives of teenagers? Do we banish teenagers from digital life, declaring them emotionally unready for the world of online intimacy (unlike, you know, all those adults who are so emotionally mature and ready to take on the world)? Or do we work to build a framework to manage this new world, these new intimacies — do we sit the teenagers in our lives down and try to have a talk with them, try to educate them about the world around them, give them the tools to filter through the available information and make their own decisions?

I am, not surprisingly, for the latter: though I fully admit I’m not one hundred percent sure what that conversation, what that dialogue, looks like. But maybe the most important thing is just opening the door: maybe that’s enough to set us on the path, to put us on the road to figuring out how to help teenagers manage digital intimacy as they navigate themselves towards adulthood.