It is improbable in the extreme that I will ever feel required to sext as a social obligation, unlike today’s youth, per NYMag:
… Sexting must have arrived simultaneously with texting—it’s a safe bet that any new media not invented by lust makes room for it immediately. But we first heard about sexts, close to a decade ago, only in the context of misbehaving teens. Who else could be desperately horny enough to channel sexual energy into a medium so glib, a sexual behavior so pathetically chaste as to fall in the hierarchy of sex acts somewhere below dry humping? Most of us, it turns out: In a study from McAfee, more than half of those surveyed—and 70 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds—have received sexually explicit texts, videos, or pictures. But even as sexting colonizes our phones, the activity hasn’t exactly taken over our libidos: A study of American college students recently found that 55 percent of women and 48 percent of men have engaged in “consensual but unwanted sexting,” i.e., sexting when they’re not that into it. That sounds pretty bleak: Why contort yourself posing butt selfies in the bathroom if it doesn’t turn you on?…
My first thought was, okay: McAfee, they want to sell their ‘privacy protection’ products to people who just realized they aren’t the first individuals in the world to invent the pr0n selfie. But that doesn’t explain the college-student study (or the expressed experience of the NYMag writer, for that matter). I mean, yes, Rule 34 and the limitless human imagination, but… faking non-contact sexual activity as a social obligation?!? Wouldn’t that give anyone a headache?
Little Boots
yeah, you reach that point where the whole thing just seems so stupid.
Little Boots
seriously, anne, one good discussion on this or any site is worth about ten orgasms, at this age. I honestly can’t imagine anything more boring than sexting. but that is probably just age.
srv
If only WordPress supported snapchat. Imagine the lulz here.
ruemara
Jeez. Pass.
ruemara
Jeez. Pass.
ruemara
FYWP, I hit the button once.
Little Boots
it’s getting sleepy here.
NotMax
Hmm.
I still bring a bottle of wine as a “social obligation.” Or a cake.
Gottadon’t wanna catch up with the times.Little Boots
@NotMax:
well you’re a gent.
wait, what vintage?
NotMax
@Little Boots
Tuesday.
(rimshot)
Little Boots
@NotMax:
mmmm
Starfish
Sexting did not arrive at the same time as texting. It arrived when we were able to send messages that included photos and videos.
Starfish
Sexting did not arrive at the same time as texting. It arrived when we were able to send messages that included photos and videos.
Starfish
Sexting did not arrive at the same time as texting. It arrived when we were able to send messages that included photos and videos.
Starfish
Clearly, I feel very strongly about this issue.
MikeJ
@Starfish: People sent sexually explicit texts long before we had photo and video. SMS was a big deal in Europe long before it was even available in the US.
Starfish
Did they get more characters in Europe? There are few things more unsexy than the word “u.”
The Raven on the Hill
Meantime, Russia’s gone and taken over Crimea. If I were Turkey, I’d be scared. Come to that, if I were Ukrainian I’d be absolutely terrified. So far as I can see Russia wants two things: control of the Black Sea and its warm-water port and control of the nexus of natural gas lines located in Ukraine and there isn’t going to be much left of Ukraine if Russia gets them.
There’s dispute over whether Russia or Ukraine is fascist, but I’d say probably Russia; it’s Russia that’s killing gays and using the Olympics to whitewash tyrannical behavior. The Russian disinformation campaign is pretty effective, however: Putin was after all 16 years with the KGB.
Links:
DaBlogFodder, Canadian blogger in Ukraine:
http://dablogfodder.blogspot.com/
Gas pipelines in and through Ukraine:
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2005/12/30/173336/17
oldster
By a strange coincidence, today’s entry from the blog “WW2 today” covers an earlier era’s version of sexting: sending naked pics off with the boys to war.
A U.S. intelligence officer at Anzio Beach describes going through the documents captured from German POWs or found on the bodies of German dead. Mostly they want actionable intelligence, but they find other things as well:
“Some carried nude pictures of their wives or sweethearts, stimulating reminders of the joys awaiting their return. One PW had half a dozen seductively posed shots that, according to the letter found with them, had been taken by the woman’s father. Such photos, triggering salivating appraisals, lightened the day’s chores and were gleefully passed around, getting as much critical inspection as a captured map.”
http://ww2today.com/27-february-1944-anzio-searching-through-the-pockets-of-the-dead
Frankensteinbeck
Lust is an intoxicant, and it makes people do stupid things. It always has. More experience better arms you to resist doing stupid things – usually. Using text messages to do something stupid and lust-based happens so fast it’s particularly hard to resist, but really doing stupid things because of lust is a time-honored human tradition.
Omnes Omnibus
Consensual but unwanted? I went to see “Beyond Borders” in exactly that frame of mind. I assume the thought process is basically the same here.
Also, I wonder if the study actually shows that these people don’t ever like it or if it shows that they have done it on occasion when they themselves were not really in the mood but also when they were.
ThresherK
I am also in that age quadrant where I imagine networks asking me not to destroy the demographics on their young, hip shows.
As the default tech geek in my household, if I were to send a racy pic to my spouse I’d likely be asked to help spouse sign in to the account, open up, and view the file.
JustRuss
@ThresherK: Jeez, talk about a mood-killer!
The Raven on the Hill
This one is on-topic for an off-topic thread: Charlie Stross weighs in with Rule 34, meet Kafka. It seems that perhaps 8% of the Yahoo video traffic that the British spooks have been intercepting is…porn, porn, porn. He writes:
ThresherK
@JustRuss: Well, I know who I’m dealing with, so the modern digital version of that gambit is not used. But the I will say that the analog version of that process is still surprisingly effective.