I’ve written about it before: Each new advance in communications technology is bolstered by pornography: Painting, printing, film, video, the Internet, and now . . . virtual reality.
Virtual reality is nothing new. It’s mentioned in the 1993 film, Jurassic Park. I remember playing with virtual reality way back in the 1980s, wearing the helmet and all that. The film Disclosure (also by Michael Crichton) features virtual reality, with Michael Douglas donning a funky looking helmet and walking through a virtual library called the “Corridor,” shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Michael Douglas experiments with virtual reality in 1994’s Disclosure.
And now there’s this headline from Australia’s news.com: Virtual reality is the new hope of the porn industry with headsets like Oculus Rift set to go mainstream
Ta-da!
Here’s the slug:
LET’S face it, we are a red-blooded, sex-obsessed species. Behind every new technology, pornography has been hot on its heels, and the brave new world of virtual reality is right now climbing its way to a hyper-real climax.
Yes, let’s face it! I mean, obviously virtual reality has no other purpose in high tech other than delivering steamy hot porn to millions of sex-obsessed males on planet Earth. Despite the predictions of technology guru Michael Crichton, future Jurassic Park scientists and hapless high tech executives won’t use virtual reality to recombine DNA or search for critical files. No, they’ll experience first hand all the action on the Bang Bus.
Really? Is this the pinnacle of man’s achievement?
Despite the context of video games — also a hot industry to which the same sex-obsessed males are attracted — and medicine and sports and education and all the safe-for-work noble notions for virtual reality, the industry is doubling-down on freshly-delivered porn.
Perhaps the most silly aspect of this prediction is that the zillions of prurient porn patrons will somehow actually pay for the virtual reality experience. You see, that’s the missing part of the whole porn equation: It’s free. And the porn industry misses out on lots of money because it basically gives away all the nekkid ladies and videos and live cams and so on. Only a small fraction of the consumer base ever pays for anything.
Perhaps Oculus Rift is on to something. Perhaps porn addicts in the future will actually plunk down good money for a helmet to enhance the experience. “It’s for research,” they’ll say bashfully as they exit Best Buy with the helmet safely tucked under their arm. “Hey! You get that new Call of Duty? Yeah, this helmet is for that game play. I can’t wait!” And the sales-geek will smile and nod, and perhaps even ask the customer if he’d like a box of kleenex as well because, uh, that ending in “Call of Duty” is pretty emotional.
