Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Bubble Hotties: Dating In Public


filed under: Web Sex Index, Bubble Hotties by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

Like many of the great sex and romance axioms of our time, this one was born out of Instant Messenger.

Goes a little something like this: once, there were clearer markers of what was public and what was private, who has celebrity and who’s just climbing a ladder to the stars, and what to expect of the man (or woman) with the camera who might pop up to document a kiss, where those pictures might end up, and what everyone will think of you in the morning. Rising to cultural notoriety required a bit of strategy, and the people one appeared in public with were central to this ascendance. Fame was communicated like a social disease, transmitted through the friction of proximity.

The future and the Internet, we hear, have made micro-icons of us all, famous to fifteen people at a time (thanks, Dr. Senft, for turning us onto that, and into that, concept). Anyone who has a web presence makes choices, then, on how revealing they wish to be about who, how, and how often they’re doing it, in public or no. Dating, then, becomes an even more social activity, straddling the rapidly deteriorating public/private divide. As we date in public, we’re negotiating not just who to bring in nearer, but how near to appear to them to others.

But many assume that to bring dating and sex into their online life would somehow dilute or degrade their otherwise “professional” presence, and whether this is more a symptom of their propriety or a result of the culture’s sexual hypocrisy is hard to tease out exactly. No matter — for some, to hint that they, full grown adults, get laid is not ever going to be in the cards so long as X Company or Y Spouse or Z reporter can track them on the internet. To be revealed as a sexual being for this “sex generation” would be to risk being perceived as immature, effeminate (for better of for ill, women’s sexuality is very public), or desperate for attention.

But what of the flip side, the new wave of bubble hotties who have never fucked in a world without a publicly-traded Netscape? Whose first porn of themselves was made with a cellphone? Who never thought not to treat MySpace like an opportunity for personal branding and bootycalls?

What, then, changes in dating when every “private” act creates an opportunity for documentation and spectacle? When sex isn’t “just” a physical expression, but an opportunity to better position oneself in the public eye? What this illumines for the sex culture of the bubble hottie is that no sex is ever completely contained by the motions of bodies. No sex lives entirely behind closed doors. For the bubble hottie, being “admittedly” sexual in public isn’t about begging for voyeurs. Sex itself is a meaningful social act with which we mark ourselves, our histories, our communities.

As the reign of the bubble hottie takes hold, it will be exhibitionism, not privacy, that lays dying — and with luck, we’ll be here making out something fierce over its body, for the whole world to see.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Bubble Hotties Roundup


filed under: Web Sex Index, Bubble Hotties by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

Oh no they didn’t. Valleywag gives aspiring bubble hotties a HOWTO for faking your own hotness, should it have failed to kick in with your series B funding. They’ve got a case study and everything. Amazing. Trashy, yes, and amazing.

A surefire way to score with bubble hottie-chasing scenesters is to gently mock your own bubble hottiness. Pick a blog title that shows how vulnerable yet tragically brilliant you are — “Awkward Things I Say To Girls” is already taken, and has also already beaten you to the “why geeks make good lovers” VDAY post punch, but keep on brainstorming — you know you’re on the right track if what you come up with sounds like it could run in a McSweeney’s list.

The Queen of all Sex Nerds, Carol Queen, blogs this Valentine to Anna Nicole Smith, who I’m tempted to claim as a sainted sex nerd and tragic proto-bubble hottie. It’s true, Anna Nicole had an inner geek, too: of her first Playboy pictorial she said, “The people in [Texas] won’t believe it when these pictures of me hit the newsstands, because I was considered a goody-two-shoes nerd back in high school.” Says Dr. Queen:

“…her death, her details, the great attention paid to her passing isn’t just because she’s America’s Rose (huh?) or our next incarnation of Marilyn Monroe or even America’s Diana. It’s because she’s the girl next door who rose to unexpected (and in one sense unexplained) heights. *She’s* the proof that in America, anyone can make it really big… and that fantasy helps so many people wake up in the morning, it’s no wonder folks are fixated on Anna Nicole.”

Here’s a big-cup-of-trendy-Mission-coffee toast, then, raised up in hope of smarter sex fantasies for all of our tomorrows.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Bubble Hotties: The Problem With Open Source Love


filed under: Web Sex Index, Bubble Hotties by Lux Nightmare | Leave a Comment

The bubble — (blogging about) it’s so hot right now. As the bubble (or, hopefully, not-a-bubble) grows, so too, does the collective hotness of the web and its makers. Here Sexerati tracks the ways web development and erotic development complement and complicate one another for those profiting from the web, and for those who fuck them.

The open source movement has revolutionized the way we think about life. It’s a simple idea, really: the more we know about the software around us, the more we’re allowed to look at its code and explore how it works, the better able we are to detect and fix bugs, to improve and enhance said software. An increased exchange of information benefits us all.

The open source ethic began with software, but the concept is fairly applicable to all areas of life – and given the high priority our culture gives to things like honesty and communication, it would seem only natural to apply open source philosophy to our relationships as well: but have we really gotten to the point where it’s possible?

I want, very much, to live an open source life. I want to show you my source code, I want to publicize my dev log, I want you to be aware of all the queries I’m running, of all the information that’s being posted to my database.

I want to be upfront, open, and honest within my relationships: and we all give lip service to the idea that this is what we want, too. But at the end of the day, it’s not. At the end of the day, in spite of all our clamoring for the free exchange of knowledge, in our intimate relationships, there seems to be such a thing as too much information.

The problem with trying to open source our hearts is that – unlike with our favorite applications – there is so much weight, so many value judgments, associated with the experiences, with the information, that lies within. Learning a program’s source code doesn’t carry the same apprehension as learning how someone feels about you; it doesn’t inspire the same insecurity that comes with learning that a partner has had a threesome/is more sexually experienced than you/has been with someone better in bed.

We want the free exchange of information between our partners and ourselves: but we’re not stable, not secure enough to really handle it. We’re too afraid that an open exchange of information will lead to the exploitation of our flaws, a devastating awareness of our bugs and insecurities and problems. And rather than giving in to the open source ethos, rather than buying the philosophy that an open acknowledgement of our issues allows us to repair them; we hide away, shielding ourselves from the potential pain of being rejected for being too honest.

So where do we go from here? It’s so easy to give up, to abandon hope of living up to our ideals. But before we do that, maybe we should take some time to open source ourselves – to run support applications to repair our damage, to heal the corrupted data within our hearts and make ourselves okay again. It’s not the open source model that’s damaged: it’s us. And if we want to live up to our ideals, to forge our way to a more perfect society, we have to confront the damage at the root and work to rebuild and repair and move on.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Bubble Hotties: Sexual Hubs


filed under: Dating 2.0, Web Sex Index, Bubble Hotties by Lux Nightmare | 3 Comments

The bubble — (blogging about) it’s so hot right now. As the bubble (or, hopefully, not-a-bubble) grows, so too, does the collective hotness of the web and its makers. Here Sexerati tracks the ways web development and erotic development complement and complicate one another for those profiting from the web, and for those who fuck them.

A few months ago, I was out in Park Slope picking up some candy from a friend’s house. My friend was out running errands, but standing in her kitchen was a cute, vaguely familiar looking girl.

We introduced ourselves. “You look familiar,” she said. I admitted to having a LiveJournal, and we exchanged screennames.

Her name struck a chord: I felt fairly certain I’d seen it somewhere, perhaps commenting on a friend’s post. I asked if she knew one of my friends, one who tends to know a lot of people.

“Oh yes,” she said, and from the tone of her voice I could tell there was a certain subtext to her reply.

“Oh, I know him too,” I said.

Social network theory categorizes some people as hubs: the kind of people who seem to know everyone, who are able to connect seemingly disparate groups, making new connections everywhere they come and go. Hubs are the glue that binds social circles, hubs make the wheels of social networking turn.

Hubs exist in all different social spheres: your professional life, your social life, and, yes, even your sex life. During my time out in the field, so to speak, I’ve known (and known) more than a few hubs: Audacia Ray and I became acquainted because of a mutual ex-boyfriend — the same ex-boyfriend whose interest in the ladies introduced to me to a prominent sex columnist, one of New York City’s finest burlesque stars, and more than a handful of other women I now consider close friends.

The idea of sex as a social networking force may seem counterintuitive to some: how can sex — a private act — be the basis of something as public as a social network? But sex is, fundamentally, about making social connections (seriously: just look at the bonobos) — and what are social networks, if not a web of social connections?

I rode the subway home with the cute girl from my friend’s kitchen. We Internet-friended each other, and later went out for brunch. The hub that linked us may not have been the reason for our ultimate friendship, but our shared carnal knowledge certainly provided enough material for the initial conversation that led us there. And really: isn’t that what hubs are for? At the end of the day, they’re all about providing the tenuous connection between person A and person B. And whether that connection exists because of job experience, a common alma mater, or a shared fuck, the end result is usually the same. Whether it’s Friendster or Fuckster, LinkedIn or LovedOn: a sexual connection is a social connection, as legitimate a part of your social network as any other.

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