How CGI Porn is changing the way we think about Sex

As we move towards an ever more digitized world, it was really only a matter of time before the first digital pornstar was created. The adult site YouPorn has now introduced the world to it's new, completely computer generated, spokesperson and star, Jedy Vales. A partnership with porn tech company Camasutra VR, Vales will start with having her own Twitter and Instagram profile where fans can interact with her in less explicit capacities, but she will also have a Modelhub account for more NSFW material. The CGI porn star will also be rendered in real-time through the video game software Unreal Engine, enabling her to film custom made videos that can then be experienced virtually first hand by fans.

  

Digital Desires

The announcement has naturally stirred up a rather large number of questions. Among them, who would find this arousing? And if an industry that is already over objectifying women really needs to be taking things further by creating a completely soulless digital render of men’s desires? The angles are many - in the same way that previous generations weren’t bombarded as much by directly pornographic, or inspired thereby, images. A new generation is growing up with a much greater exposure to CGI pornography and the possibilities that lay therein. Disregarding for a moment Asia's infatuation with Hentai, which owes a  large part of its popularity to the fact that "regular" porn is heavily censored in the east. One need only go to any basic streaming site to be exposed to ads for internet porn games where various fantastic beings, with equally fantastic genitalia, perform sexual acts that are literally impossible to see in the physical world we inhabit. 

It’s safe to say that your average teen will be much more accustomed to seeing computer-generated pornographic imagery then someone just a few years older, but where did this come from? Beauty standards have for some time now moved further and further away from what one could call any sort of natural state of being. For numerous people perfection is now something that actually doesn't naturally exist, it's fake, it's plastic, and becoming CGI fantastic. Add to that influencers like Kim Kardashian who are setting presidents for a literally unreal standard of beauty, that can only be achieved through surgical alterations. And the leap to a purely digital world where busts and butts are expanded even further into the realm of pure fantasy doesn’t become that far.

Economic Theory

To see another example of why this might be the wave of the future we need to engage in some financial economic theory. Studies have shown that there’s an increasingly long list of things that millennials are doing less of. Fewer are owning a house, buying cars, using drugs and drinking excessively, and most strikingly millennials are having less sex. Many theories as to the reasons behind this exist but a fundamental factor seems to be the simple financial theory that tries to explain the drive behind all the decisions we make in the form of risk. Financial economics is the study of risk, which risks are worth taking vs. the reward of each. It’s founded on the idea that within these decisions is a concept called the risk-free asset. In other words, attaining the desired result, in this case, to achieve sexual stimulation with as little risk as possible. With our world becoming more and more interlinked and fast moving, relationships, dating, hookups all carry an inherent amount of risk - the danger of rejection, emotional pain, drama's spilling into both real and digital lives, and of course STI’s are seeing millennials dating less, despite technology seemingly providing more opportunities to do so. They are slower to marry or be in long-term relationships and all these factors are resulting in less sex.

Netflix and chill

Another risk vs. return factor that’s unique for today's youth is the high risk-free positive return from not leaving the house. Before there was TV’s, video games, and the internet, or even in their infancy when they were far more rudimentary and boring. You really had to leave the house and enter into the real world to be stimulated and entertained, in both good and bad ways. Nowadays it’s far easier to plug yourself into a sea of well-produced shows and binge watch them it into oblivion, offering a far higher success rate of pleasantness compared to what most experience on a random tinder date. Netflix and chill isn’t just an excuse, it's becoming a lifestyle. The art of the courtship is also in decline. A generation of Tinder of Instagram daters has meant the loss of the wow when the maximum amount of effort seems to end at, "Hi, you down..?" Creating a mass of emotional dyslexics that can't express themselves properly and end up venting their frustrations on various comment threads. For them, it will be much easier to pull up a digital partner, slip on the VR goggles, and program in anything your fantasies may desire without effort or discretion. Fuelled by fake beauty standards that you can now program to be exactly as real or unreal as you wish.

Do humans dream of electric treats?

The formula then becomes rather simple. Trying to actually meet, let alone get women that already barely exist in the outside world requires far more risk with a much lower rate of successful reward compared to simply booting up your own digital pornstar. It’s been argued that in the same way that ever more hardcore porn is desensitizing and creating unreal expectations for sexual relationships. CGI porn takes this even further by completely cutting out the human element to a degree where the perspective becomes totally one-sided when you can literally program a partner to do exactly what you want. It’s easy to look at this first version with its relatively crude graphics and have a bit of a laugh, but have no doubt, technology will arrive at a point soon where the difference visually between the real and the unreal will be but a subtle shade, and the questions then becomes - If humans will still choose the risk and hardships of real-life dating's imperfections or opt for the perfectly fake bliss of the digital?