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: