December 3, 2021

Are young people averse to hookups, or only their IRL form, preserving them online?

Getting back to the topic of the de-sexualization of youth culture over the past 30 years, here again is the discussion from the Red Scare subreddit wherein young people from the liberal / hip demographic largely agree with the title of the post, that casual sex kinda sucks. The whole wam, bam, thank you ma'am approach leaves you empty inside, it's psychologically damaging to separate sex from emotional intimacy, and so on and so forth.

As awareness spread of the new abstinence among young people, thanks largely to my extensive coverage of the topic in the late 2000s and early 2010s, some social conservatives hailed this as a victory. In some ways, it was, but I warned that in others, it was not. It was not a moral change, like living by the value of chastity, but simply part of a broader cocooning phenomenon that was having all sorts of other negative effects. And the moment the cocooning trend reversed, so would the trend of de-sexualization, and we'd get the '60s, '70s, and '80s all over again.

Ten years later, and observing the rise of parasocial media, we can see just how little of a moral or psychological change this has been. These days, young people exist primarily online rather than IRL, which itself is part of cocooning. They have pseudo-sexual relations, as well as pseudo-social relationships, mediated by online platforms and apps.

If the "not having sex" trend reflected a change in core values, then this new set of chaste values would be apparent in their online behavior as well, not only in the absence of IRL promiscuity.

Pseudo-sexual relations take place on porn sites, where the person watches porn videos while masturbating. Strange as it may seem to Millennials and Zoomers, masturbation did not always take place while watching porn -- you could always use your own imagination. And when that was the norm among young people, they tended to imagine someone from their IRL social world, like the cute girls or guys from their high school or college. There was a small number of people they imagined having sex with, and their imaginary affairs happened with the same small number of people, time and again. This kept it from being a faceless, anonymous, never-to-be-seen-again series of trysts.

If young people were so averse to one-night-stands, then their porn habits should reflect that -- they should watch the same performer, or maybe a small number of them, each time they go on the site. But in reality, they have a simulated one-night-stand with whoever strikes their fancy during each visit to the site. Sure, they may have a fave they go back to every once in awhile, but the vast majority of their imaginary relations are one-off hookups, not a recurring relationship.

And if young people were so averse to decoupling sexuality from emotional intimacy, that happens even in an ongoing relationship that is not emotional (like a fuck buddy / fwb situation). So even if they came back to the same porn performer time after time, if the extent of their pseudo-relationship is strictly sexual (jerking off), then they are engaged in nothing more than a pseudo-fuck-buddy situation -- not a pseudo-romantic relationship.

With their pseudo-fwb on a porn site, there's no conversation, humor, non-sexual contact like hugging on the couch, post-climax cuddling / pillow talk / petting her hair while she rests her head on your chest, etc. The porn sites do not simulate waking up and making breakfast to enjoy together the morning after.

So, their sexual desires are still in the direction of promiscuity rather than monogamy, and no-strings-attached rather than emotional intimacy. You just have to look at their online behavior since they are such cocooners that they leave little evidence of their desires IRL.

But the evidence goes further than that -- it's not as if they don't want regular, recurring social partners of the opposite sex, with whom they have an emotionally intense bond. It's just that these pseudo-relationships take place on entirely different sites, with a cast of characters that does not overlap at all with those of the porn sites. Namely, the parasocial relationships that young people form with podcasters, YouTubers, Twitch streamers, TikTokers, and posters on Tumblr or Twitter.

Although there's a minority of real degenerates who tune in to Pokimane's Twitch streams in order to fantasize about her sexually, most everyone is watching in order to form and renew a parasocial relationship with her. It's as though she were their friend, albeit a cute friend who they just might have a chance with under the right circumstances -- but that's just an option or potentiality, and she is primarily their substitute friend.

Unlike their porn-site behavior, young people go back to the same personas on parasocial media platforms time and again. They are loyal fans, ride-or-die BFFs. They don't feel an itch they need to scratch by listening to a podcast, then pull up any ol' podcast and just listen away for two hours to whatever-their-names-are as they discuss whatever-it-may-be. There is little akin to channel-surfing or mindless scrolling through infinite options to whet their appetite. In contrast to their porn behavior, they are mostly monogamous, and crave enduring emotional bonds, in their parasocial media behavior.

And that is reflected in the relative *absence* of anhedonia on parasocial media. Sure, they may grow bored of a podcast or streamer after a long while, but they mostly feel good each time they listen to the podcast, tune into the livestream, follow their posts, and so on and so forth. They burn out on a particular porn performer looong before they burn out on a particular podcaster or poster.

Yet these pseudo-friendships never really develop further into dating your friend, and maybe becoming steady bf / gf, getting married, having kids, moving in together, etc. The parasocial persona is someone you're probably attracted to, and wouldn't mind pseudo-dating them or pseudo-fucking them (wacking off to their nudes, or maybe just when they're wearing shorts on stream). But there's a fairly strong self-imposed barrier between the pornographic and the parasocial, among the userbase.

That goes into second-order policing as well -- the other users will shame you if you get horny for a parasocial persona on a parasocial platform. (Hope she sees this bro, she's not gonna fuck you, *bonk*, go to horny jail, etc.) If it's bad enough, the persona's mods could time you out or ban you, or she herself could call you out for being a creepy weirdo before the rest of the audience.

Getting back in their good graces is a whole 'nother social ritual, i.e. the highly popular genre of "unban requests" among big-time streamers. The users who transgressed the parasocial code by porno-fying it with their lewd comments about the streamer, must apologize or do penance, in order to prove they're rehabilitated and will no longer contaminate the two online domains together.

All of this goes to show how the Millennial and Zoomer generations desire a strict separation of the sexual / physical from the social / emotional. You just have to look at their online behavior, since they scarcely exist IRL. Don't believe anything they say about "I just feel like sex without love is meaningless," when their pseudo-sexual relations are masturbating to simulated one-night-stands, and when they are commitment-phobic about ever allowing a pseudo-friendship to mature into a pseudo-romance.

When the social mood changes back to outgoing-ness, which was under way during 2019 before the artificial hit to it by the COVID-19 hysteria, perhaps Gen Alpha or the one after them will revive the interest in one-night-stands as an emotionally fulfilling encounter, and not merely a physical release. That's how Silents and Boomers treated them back in the '70s and '80s. There was a romantic appeal to "ships passing in the night". So much so that even soft-rock hits employed the trope, as opposed to now when only those with degenerate or hardcore branding discuss, let alone validate, one-night-stands.

To end on, here's a reminder of that bygone social climate, "Sharing the Night Together" by Dr. Hook from 1978:



9 comments:

  1. Today's catcalling report: not even 30-something weather can chill the hot blood of young babes out on the town. Mmmmmm...

    I wasn't actually planning to catcall, since it was dark and nighttime, so they can't easily see your face and realize, oh hey, he's ha-ha-hotttt. But everything just aligned perfectly in a moment, and I had to let it happen.

    Blasting out the windows was "Billboard Top Hits 1978," easily the best single year from the Seventies. At the time, "Hot Child in the City" was playing, and as luck would have it, two hot little things were heading my way on the same side of the street, while the traffic was slowing to a halt.

    Plenty of time to check them out. There must've been lots of street lights on, since I caught them clearly checking me out too. Then they started picking up speed in their gait, like excited children skipping, but at this stage of life, now also looking to get their blood pumping and attract maximum attention.

    It was near the end of the song, when the title keeps repeating, and one of them started to mouth or sing along. Ah, such a sweet ripe honey bunny singing along to, of all songs, "Hot Child in the City"...

    As they got even with my car, I turned straight toward the passenger side and let out an OWW OWW OWWWWWWW!!! with my hand next to my mouth like an amplifier.

    The one I'm calling to had locked eyes the whole time, and called back with an OW OW OWWW of her own -- then adding yeeeeeeah, BABY!!!! Mmmmm, always love it when they see your bet and raise you, letting you know they've got a craving for risk-taking, dopamine receptors all going haywire.

    She had a bubble butt you could see from a block away, and thicc thighs too, god damn. Wearing high-waisted black biker shorts, or maybe a black mini-dress, either way a "stranger dressed in black" just like in the song. With some kind of top that I couldn't notice because you don't see that much voluptuous flesh in public in December, and it's distracting. She knew -- she was banking on being one of the only girls like that, and she was correct. And I rewarded her for her service.

    The restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle is still in full swing, notwithstanding the COVID hysteria. This did not happen -- either me or her -- just a few years ago, during the vulnerable phase and it's #MeToo paranoia. Social climate change...

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  2. This episode underscores the importance of the girls noticing you before you catcall, instead of having to react after being caught by surprise.

    Not that they won't get excited, and even catcall back, when they're not expecting it. But it flows so much more naturally, and they get way more worked up, when they have a little time for their horny juices to start flooding their bloodstream.

    That's not always possible, but tonight the traffic was pretty slow at that moment, we were facing each other, on the same side of the street, with decent illumination.

    And that one was definitely ovulating and craving hot-guy genes to fertilize her ripe belly. She mirrored my hand-at-the-mouth gesture, when she called back, and waved too.

    And the song being impossible to ignore for hot girls strolling or strutting down the main drag through the city.

    Yeahhhhh.... everything just lined up perfectly. Afterwards I feel like Patient Zero for a public horniness epidemic that this world hasn't seen since the '80s. God damn. Well, and she being Co-Patient Zero, it takes two to tango.

    I don't know how else to express it. Something big changed in the atmosphere tonight. It's not like there will be a 100% change in the climate by tomorrow, but I mean reversing a long-term trend, back in the publicly horny direction. It can't be undone, and although the pace will be gradual, in 5 to 10 years no one will recognize the puritanical late 2010s or the broader cocooning era that it was part of.

    Sometimes you get called on by fate, and you can only fulfill your destiny.

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  3. That bitter moment when you find a vintage red turtleneck Made in Italy at a thrift store for $2, but it's 100% acrylic...

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  4. Betsy from Taxi Driver is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Iris is not. That's why you don't rely on superficial appearances or quirky personalities, but the roles they play in relation to the other characters and their arcs. Plus it's not like Betsy is dressed like a square anyway.

    Will elaborate later, just putting out random observations after having a nice cozy mug of Irish coffee (Starbucks black cold brew, spiked with Carolans Irish cream).

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  5. Haters hate the Seventies because it was the most mature, adult-focused zeitgeist in recorded history. No children and no parenting in popular culture, and not much pop culture for children themselves. This was totally reversed during the '80s and '90s, and that reversal is still going.

    The lack of family-focus in the '70s is not due to the Baby Bust, since that bust has remained for every year after 1964, and yet the '80s and '90s could not have been more family-focused and overflowing with pop culture for kids themselves.

    It doesn't go back indefinitely into the past, however, since the '50s had plenty of kid-focused culture, and adults were expected to consume kid-like entertainment too (the Golden Age of Disney, and mega-hit novelty songs like "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?"). Even the '60s still had heavy traces of '50s bubblegummy-ness (beach party movies, "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies being the #1 song of 1969).

    And contrary to today's culture that is not kid-oriented, the adults were not overgrown children themselves. They did not think, feel, act, or look like kids. ("Wow, 20 year-olds in 1978 looked like they were in their late 30s!")

    What pop songs were *not* adult contempo-friendly? Punk and heavy metal were subversive because the norm was so far in the mature soft-rock / adult night life direction.

    No decade has been as autumnal and winterly, as mature or even past-one's-prime, as the Seventies.

    This really threatens today's libtard culture vultures, who feel bound by gatekeeping tradition to honor that decade's artistic achievements, and yet who cannot accept its demands for people to grow up and live a mature life -- even if you aren't going to get married and raise children, even if you aren't going to be a careerist striver. No gripes about adulting in the Seventies.

    I was pleased to see cozy-left twitter's resident MPDG refuse joining the dirtbag pile-on to a picture of 7-Eleven in 1973, instead saying "omg, she's just like me!" One of the best discoveries I've made scrolling the hellsite.

    https://twitter.com/shamshi_adad/status/1466957336996724739

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  6. 1978 wasn't only about one-night-stands, though. The soft-rock / adult contempo genre also produced songs for steadies and spouses, like "Kiss You All Over" by Exile (#5 for the year, now basically unknown).

    Or the reggae-inflected "Right Down the Line" by Gerry Rafferty. Monogamy never felt so funky.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnc2ljZA3bk

    He's still known for "Baker Street" due to the sax riff, but also basically unknown by now, although his previous band Stealer's Wheel is still known for "that song from Reservoir Dogs".

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  7. Klute (1971) is the darkest-lit mainstream movie ever, following up on an older post when the best example I had found was Flashdance (1983).

    https://akinokure.blogspot.com/2015/03/flashdance-darkest-lit-mainstream-movie.html

    Gordon Willis FTW yet again.

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  8. Bought Aramis at TJ Maxx tonight for only $20 (2 oz). Like I said, they've suddenly gotten a bunch of good stuff in their men's and women's fragrance sections (spotted Angel in the women's).

    Sprayed it on in the store, and already like it. Has kind of a Kouros vibe, just not quite as animalistically Eighties. But getting in that direction (it came out in '66). Very pleased to see artemisia in the top notes -- that became a standard for the '80s powerhouses. Something pungent and bitter to enrich the mix.

    Annnnd.... it has a gardenia note in it -- so I know my special fren would love to smell this one, that's her favorite floral note (not rose, yuck). She can never un-see that flower's anagram name -- derangia -- after I pointed it out to her over the summer. It does have a very heady, mind-boggling scent, doesn't it?

    I hear she's setting up a collab with Diptyque to release a line of candles that add to the simulation of a podcaster being in the same room as you, to enhance the parasocial experience. Listening to her conversation, while the aroma of Red Bull, cigarettes, and discarded ADHD meds wafts through the air -- podcasting is about to get *really* real...

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  9. Manic Pixie Dream Girl from the Cajun right (hat-tip to special fren for retweeting her into the timeline):

    https://twitter.com/LibertyAnders/status/1468072328433180675

    Having her curiosity, tenderness, and empathy piqued by sad sacks at a bar where she nurses them back to social-emotional health, capable of being their earthly guardian angel. Free-spirited, open, eschewing pretense and dissimulation. Vaguely gypsy / boho aesthetic, to boot. Pure honest smile (not a devilish grin like the wild childs, not a bittersweet one like the sad girls).

    I knew she would fit the MPDG profile in the most crucial way -- she has to be born during the manic phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, and sure enough she's born in the late '90s. Not gonna lie, I did check her instagram and she fits the MPDG profile physically as well (butt girl rather than boob girl).

    Very rare to see late '90s people on Twitter, which has always been dominated by Millennials, rather than YouTube / Twitch / TikTok. Worth pointing them out when they are spotted. No matter who they are, they always remind me of my fellow early '80s births (another manic phase of the excitement cycle).

    The wild-child type, born in a restless phase of the cycle (e.g. early '90s), would react to the sad sacks at a bar by trying to scandalize them, be provocative, tease, and draw them onto a feminine chaos rollercoaster ride.

    The sad-girl type, born in a vulnerable phase of the cycle (e.g. late '80s or early 2000s), would react by largely keeping to themselves and waiting for the guys to make the first move.

    Only manic-phase births can coax people out of their shells in a wholesome, trusting way. They need to be comfortable making the first move (which the spirit of invincibility during a manic phase imprints on their minds at birth, and during their second birth in adolescence at age 15). But not for thrill-seeking or taboo-bending per se, which is what the wild childs do when they make the first move (having imprinted on the spirit of restlessness during their birth and adolescent phase).

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