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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: One More Reason to Be Glad I’m An Old

Late Night Open Thread: One More Reason to Be Glad I’m An Old

by Anne Laurie|  February 27, 20142:06 am| 25 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement

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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?

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Reader Interactions

25Comments

  1. 1.

    Little Boots

    February 27, 2014 at 2:09 am

    yeah, you reach that point where the whole thing just seems so stupid.

  2. 2.

    Little Boots

    February 27, 2014 at 2:13 am

    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.

  3. 3.

    srv

    February 27, 2014 at 2:16 am

    If only WordPress supported snapchat. Imagine the lulz here.

  4. 4.

    ruemara

    February 27, 2014 at 2:24 am

    Jeez. Pass.

  5. 5.

    ruemara

    February 27, 2014 at 2:24 am

    Jeez. Pass.

  6. 6.

    ruemara

    February 27, 2014 at 2:25 am

    FYWP, I hit the button once.

  7. 7.

    Little Boots

    February 27, 2014 at 2:31 am

    it’s getting sleepy here.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    February 27, 2014 at 2:39 am

    Hmm.

    I still bring a bottle of wine as a “social obligation.” Or a cake.

    Gotta don’t wanna catch up with the times.

  9. 9.

    Little Boots

    February 27, 2014 at 2:40 am

    @NotMax:

    well you’re a gent.

    wait, what vintage?

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    February 27, 2014 at 2:44 am

    @Little Boots

    wait, what vintage?

    Tuesday.

    (rimshot)

  11. 11.

    Little Boots

    February 27, 2014 at 2:44 am

    @NotMax:

    mmmm

  12. 12.

    Starfish

    February 27, 2014 at 4:12 am

    Sexting did not arrive at the same time as texting. It arrived when we were able to send messages that included photos and videos.

  13. 13.

    Starfish

    February 27, 2014 at 4:12 am

    Sexting did not arrive at the same time as texting. It arrived when we were able to send messages that included photos and videos.

  14. 14.

    Starfish

    February 27, 2014 at 4:12 am

    Sexting did not arrive at the same time as texting. It arrived when we were able to send messages that included photos and videos.

  15. 15.

    Starfish

    February 27, 2014 at 4:13 am

    Clearly, I feel very strongly about this issue.

  16. 16.

    MikeJ

    February 27, 2014 at 4:42 am

    @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.

  17. 17.

    Starfish

    February 27, 2014 at 5:24 am

    Did they get more characters in Europe? There are few things more unsexy than the word “u.”

  18. 18.

    The Raven on the Hill

    February 27, 2014 at 5:42 am

    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

  19. 19.

    oldster

    February 27, 2014 at 6:37 am

    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

  20. 20.

    Frankensteinbeck

    February 27, 2014 at 7:00 am

    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.

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 27, 2014 at 8:45 am

    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?…

    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.

  22. 22.

    ThresherK

    February 27, 2014 at 10:09 am

    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.

  23. 23.

    JustRuss

    February 27, 2014 at 12:51 pm

    @ThresherK: Jeez, talk about a mood-killer!

  24. 24.

    The Raven on the Hill

    February 27, 2014 at 1:06 pm

    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:

    I am still trying to get my head around the implications that the British government’s equivalent of the NSA probably holds the world’s largest collection of pornographic videos, that the stash is probably contaminated with seriously illegal material, and their own personnel can in principle be charged and convicted of a strict liability offence if they try to do their job.

  25. 25.

    ThresherK

    February 27, 2014 at 4:25 pm

    @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.

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