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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Speaking & Teaching Sex Outside the Bubble

filed under: State of Sex Ed, We Are The Sex Media, Smart. Safe. Sex. by Melissa Gira | 5 Comments

The challenge with the democratization of media-making has been just that: you know, democratization, getting voices and stories from outside the social media saturated echo chamber (San Francisco, New York, hello) out into the Great World Beyond. Which might be why finding a show like The Midwest Teen Sex Show is still shocking:

Shocking?

Because, the phrase “teen sex” online still conjures up exploitative badness, even among the most sex-positive minded, and is here used in an actually context-appropriate fashion.

Because the opening (cute girl scantily clad) apes so many cliches of online video, and in so doing, shreds them, at the same time as resisting a desexualization of the discussion of sex — a discussion of sex amongst teens, no less, which is so often over-sanitized to the point of nonsense.

Because the sense of humor throughout is sharp, and real, and not from a place of pained hipster irony, or calculated self-mockery, or some bizarre disdain for sex itself.

(It happens.)

Because being able to laugh at sex from a smart place may be one of the only things keeping us sane these days.

And because giving girls a chance to write and make media? About sex? That doesn’t shame them? Oh my god, Nikol, adopt me ex post facto, please.

Monday, July 30, 2007

Bubble Hotties: There’s GIRLS Outside the Bubble!

filed under: Bubble Hotties by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Says Valleywag’s Megan McCarthy:

“…if [Star editor-at-large Julia Allison’s presence at TechCrunch9] is any indication, people outside of our little sphere are starting to pay attention, again, to the exuberance bubbling underneath Silicon Valley. The women who are about to invade the Valley are not the same gold-diggers as before, only out for that stock-option action. This time, they want the stock-option action and free sysadmin time.

Monday, July 30, 2007

Sex 2.-OH NOES!!1!!!

filed under: Web Sex Index, We Are The Sex Media, Pomoerotic by Melissa Gira | 3 Comments

Nobody’s famous!, is really all the headline ought to have read in the Times (UK)’s latest technology bit on internet celebrity. Of course, we know that the virtue in having total, always-on infamy available to everyone (oh, except those pesky people still living without highspeed web access or GPRS, or cameras, or computers, how dare they) is that if everyone’s famous, aren’t we all liberated by the flattening effect that nobody is?

Oh, that, and when there’s no bogeyman left to trot out, sex still brings the terror, old school style:

In Web 1.0, human nature expressed itself primarily through lust and greed. Everybody was trying – and failing – to find new ways of making money, and delivering pornography was the main purpose of the web. Both are still present in Web 2.0, but they have changed. Making money, through online gambling and advertising focused on individual users, for example, exploits the new levels of interactivity. Pornography is now delivered with streaming video and, frequently, high levels of interactivity. In addition, there are now porn social-networking sites. You can post your home-made porn on one site and join in the fun as a voyeur on another. And there are endless sites offering the full 2.0 sex experience.

Immaturity break: omg, wrong, wrong, wrong!

First, fuck web 1.0, remember 1994? If you want titty, you’re on Usenet, plain and simple. Want “interactive” sex? Learn to spell, pervert, and hang in the hottub at LambdaMoo. Web 1.0 just organized this activity, with the addition of hyperlinking directories of some relatively decontextualized nudie photos, behind payment screens — oh, and removed most of the flesh and blood “hey, this could be a real girl!” thrill from much of online sex. But what also came forth, between the birth of the “click-here” age verification and the ashes of VISA deigning to accept most porn dollars?

Well:

Two, there has always been an online porn community. Porn communities, in the form of blogs, forums, and personal profiles, were the glue that held together the earliest alt.porn sites (no, not the big pink & black kid on the block). Thanks in no small part, I say, to porn, an internet generation came up around the notion that content was one thing, but conversation (I know, I know, that word!) was another. We may not all have wanted to talk to one another, but we did want to more efficiently find what we liked, and so that leads to “users” unveiling desire to one another through the safety of a screen in an actually new way. It was this community & conversation that lent the context to online sex that makes it hot, makes it (dare I say) real, and makes it easy to sell.

It’s not sex, but the context of sex, that’s bought and sold online. (A few varieties of commercial sex notwithstanding.) And really, I like to think there may have never been a Facebook were it not for nakkidnerds (unfortunate misspelling aside).

Oh, three! Unless you’re still marveling at your shiny new Zip disc, streaming porn probably no longer bears the frisson of La Nouvelle.

Lastly, the “full 2.0 experience”? Sir, you wouldn’t know what that was like, even if every A-list blogger that ended up in your bed turned from your dick in the pale light of morning to their Blackberry, grabbed the latest sycophantic proclamations of THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET off of Twitter, and beat you about the balls with the baby blue screen.

Because for that sir, there’s a $5000 conference entrance fee, plus $1000 gratuity to the web-enabled domme of our sponsor’s choice.

(thx, and via, violet blue)

Friday, July 27, 2007

You Like Sex, You Really Like Sex: Sexerati Nails “Best Sex Hacker”

filed under: Erotic Elite by Melissa Gira | 4 Comments

Next week, we’ll be getting dolled up for our first awards ceremony as Sexerati, when I (tricky, eh, with the pronouns?) and my escort take to the de Young Museum to accept the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay Award for “Best Sex Hacker” — ! (The de Young, by the way, has a great, if not problematic, show up right now, of Deborah Oropallo’s prints combining military & fetish imagery).

Gracious glory is the best kind, though, so here we are, to send you into the weekend with our current favorite sex hacker blogs, bringing the technology of pleasure to its filthy little knees. The future of sex is now, and here’s why:

• Boinkology is the brainchild of onetime Sexerati contributor (and longtime sex nerd galpal) Lux Nightmare, far exceeding its promise to be “Cute. Dirty. Smart.” Lux has been with the internet sex revolution from nearly day fucking one, and it’s a pleasure to still have, after all these years, somewhere this hot to read her.

• Being Amber Rhea, being, Amber Rhea’s chronicle of where sex culture and web culture do meet. She’s throwing the must-do sex & the internet event of the next 12 months, Sex 2.0, the first unconference devoted to sex, all with her super-smart, joyful, feminist & geeky approach.

• Shake Well Before Use, where Ariel Waldman, Twitterati & contributor to Suicide Girls’ newswire (which is actually really quite good, despite their sad approach to no-it’s-not-porn, yeah-right) blogs straddling sex, tech, and advertising. We hear both coasts may be competing for this girl right now; look out (and may the Left one win)!