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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Bubble Hotties: Scheduling Life and Love While Holding a Blackberry

filed under: Dating 2.0, 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.

I’m a busy person.

Most days I wake up, go to my computer, check my email, write or code or fix something that has broken, go to my real job (where I sometimes do work on other projects, in my downtime or on my lunch break), then go home and do more work.

My “free time” is often devoted to whatever work I can squeeze in. Or going to networking events, or (occasionally) attempting to have a social life.

I’m a busy person, and I’m attracted to busy people. It’s only natural. Unfortunately, busy + busy doesn’t always make for the easiest of scheduling — and it can sometimes get in the way of getting to know someone (even someone you really like).

The whole dot-com revolution, the whole tech age, is built on the back of things like email, cell phones, laptops: things that allow us to do to be in touch anywhere, at any time. Things that heighten our productivity by increasing our availability, by making so many things a wherever, whenever, activity.

And of course, there are many ways in which is this is a boon to a budding relationship. The ability to IM, to text, to cam chat — to be together even when you’re not — can provide a much needed sense of closeness.

But on the other hand, an increasing ability to do work whenever, wherever, leads to an increasing expectation that we’ll be working all the time. The end of “office hours” is partly a freeing thing (we can work whenever we want!) but also a new kind of prison (we have to work all the time!).

I’ve had dates end prematurely because someone’s Blackberry alerted them to a crisis that needed to be addressed right that minute. I’ve had boyfriends pull out their laptops while lying in my bed, because a pager alerted them that a server was having issues. And on the one hand, I love this: love that I get access to people who are this driven, this needed; that these people are willing to give me their time.

But on the other hand, there’s a small part of me that knows that this is how it is, that this is how it will always be: that the price we pay for success in a world of instant, constant access is the sacrifice of some privacy, some time for ourselves, some intimacy.

And I love my techonology: but every step forward necessitates some kind of loss, and sometimes I pine a little for the things we ultimately give up.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The (Supposed) MySpace-ification of the Bubble Hottie

filed under: Bubble Hotties by Melissa Gira | 2 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.

The bubble hottie is an adaptable creature. Brains and boobs both, she’s not afraid to use them, whether on a conference call or a bootycall. She knows she can escort her date from a crazy art bar to a divey little hole-in-the-wall to a full-on yuppie prowlfest and still talk a wild west web streak about which social networking service best represents each all the way.

Which is how, between pours and pawing makeouts, I was fed this bit of internets drama, or, if academia’s more your bent, autoethnographic stimulation.

Previous Sexerati Unpersonals target Consumating defied its stereotype and yielded an actual date, a true deep throat operative, so throughly in the belly of the beast I thought he might have even been a mole, sent to infiltrate. No matter, we carry on in the name of the future, and a soft mouth to kiss it with once we get there.

Now we were a bit too lush to think to note the thread at hand, but we did recieve a tip that certain elements on Consumating are raising both the ire and eyebrows of other users, perhaps earlier adopters, or perhaps just reluctant show-offs. For what is Consumating but a place to pose and flirt, and get some innocent attention for yourself with a few sweet keystrokes?

Apparently, there’s a too-far you can go, as evidenced by the outcry over the winner of last week’s “Show us your favorite teeshirt” photo contest, morgan, now the bearer of the most excellent “controversial_boobs” tag. Our inside man reports that after posting her photo, conversations began to swirl around the supposed “MySpace”-ificiation of Consumating. Smart, sexy Consumating users — or at least, some of them — had thought of themselves as that much sexier and smarter than the average MySpace user, and here were some boobs and in addition, scores of slutty thin little indie rock teeshirts, all throwing their identities, as based on a social networking site, out of well-marketed-to whack.

What to do, then, but to call the posessor of said boobs in question a ho?

“So what about MySpace is so slutty?” I asked my inside man, and, more importantly, “Is there some slut code of conduct I’ve now broken at Consumating by kissing you?”

The suspicion continues, that though Consumating users may be hooking up just as much as MySpace users — even, maybe, meeting new people to suck — that they just aren’t posting accounts of these Consumeetings back on the site. The autofeedback loop of a post-weekend bender blog post on MySpace seems to support a sort of sexual candidness that Consumating has yet to support, either as a built-in feature, or as the kind of conversation the community there can handle, fake handles aside.

The question lingers, then, on the level of UI, in the flesh and on the screen, why is it that, as hotties of the bubble age, powered by tools supposedly put there to push pleasure as never before, we’re still being asked to choose between relative and fixed widths, rounded corners and scary tables, pale blue and… pale blue? It’s not as if we’re limited by interface to just two checkboxes on our profiles these days, either “smartypants” or “whoneedspants”?

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Introducing the Bubble Hotties: Boys & Girls Hot Beyond Their Means

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

The bubble — (blogging about) it’s so hot right now.

We don’t judge if you haven’t been paying attention to the bubble, but you’ve been reaping its benefits. It’s okay, users. No, I’m sorry, content makers. We’ll still respect you even if the thing ends up bursting its unseemly tech juices in the morning. We’ll even bring you a warm towel with which to wipe up and hand you our Blackberry across the pillow so you can see if your stock is still worth a damn.

But we’re not bitter.

As the bubble (or, hopefully, not-a-bubble) grows, so too, does the collective hotness of the web and its makers. As we chart it, hotness is well and truly booming now, but for a few dips that correspond, as one might assume, to related market forces:

Yes, numbers not even Dave Winer would argue with. (This sort of crack research is, of course, why you’re here, and not reading TechCrunch, either, though you could more likely get away with invoicing those hours than the time you spend at Sexerati. So let’s change that with some punditry.)

If one is judging the health of the web by the health of Google stock, what does that mean for the growth of hotness? As our inner entrepreneurs are stroked by the media, and cash comes rushing in to support our newly developed dream-apps, are we also taking care to develop broad-based internal systems to support this sudden surge in all areas of our newfound popularity?

We might make fancy money now, and act and eat and dress to match, but can we fuck, love, and relate at the same speed?

Not likely. Not immediately.

For hotness, and one’s ability to work it to make the most of it, must be cultivated, like any other form of weatlh, if it’s going to stay with us in the long-term.

Read more

Friday, February 3, 2006

San Francisco’s Sex Geeks Welcome Darling Nicky

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

Meanwhile, at Valleywag’s launch party… you know us San Francisco sex nerds: just get us South of Market, put a complimentary pink Sojutini in our little fingers, and our valley tongues will start a-wagging.

Violet Blue beat me to the story, but good thing she did, as now the scandalizing can be a co-operative effort:

Annalee Newitz: Charlie Girl and I have to go — let’s go *get* Little Nicky.
(I make introductions.)
me (V.B.), to Little Nicky: So, do you live here yet?
Little Nicky: Yes, I live in a commune in [SF neighborhood].
me: You’re in a cult!

Annalee Newitz: A sex cult!
Melissa Gira: Oh, I’ve heard of that cult!
Little Nicky: I don’t think it’s a cult.
me: Oh, you just haven’t been through auditing yet.
Melissa Gira: That cult is all about extending the pleasure of the female orgasm, they’re Tantrikas.

Little Nicky: I haven’t seen anything like that going on.
me: So what’s the big gossip you’re launching with tomorrow?
Little Nicky: I can’t tell you that.
me: That’s because you’re in a cult!
Annalee Newitz: That’s the gossip!

Little Nicky: I don’t think it’s a cult.

Which San Francisco sex cult? Come, that would be telling. Though from our turn around the spiritually-bent, ungodly-kinky underground of SF sex, we wouldn’t be surprised at all if some prime tech gossip surfaces from the communal custom cedar hot tub.

And, oh, to be able to sweetly question one of those Google masseuses — because nothing says “bubble” like men in logo-print polos trolling craiglist -> erotic services for companions (think Firefly) for sacred weekend handjob retreats.

Photos: Scott Beale (top, bottom [no, not like that]: Pappa Nick, Little Nicky, your editor, Violet Blue)

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