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Virtual Reality Porn: The next step in porn consumption? By LaMorie Marsh
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Not too long ago, I received a frantic phone call from my aunt. She recently discovered my younger cousin in his room masturbating with what she called “weird goggles” on his head. As I tried to calm my aunt down by explaining to her that my 13-year-old cousin is in the age of sexual discovery and exploration, I couldn’t help but wonder what these “weird goggles” were. It took me a second to realize that my cousin was wearing a Virtual Reality attachment that was compatible with his phone. Now, I didn’t share this story for the purpose of embarrassing my little cousin (although that is my favorite past time) but rather as an example of how the pornography viewing experience has changed for the next generation. When I was 13, I couldn’t have imagined watching porn in a virtual space, let alone watching any form of entertainment in a virtual space and that was less than 10 years ago! If my cousin serves as an example of what is now mainstream, I have to ask myself: is virtual reality slowly becoming the next step in porn consumption? And, in the next 5-10 years, will VR pornography become the standard form of consumption for mainstreamed pornography? A Brief History of Virtual Reality Contrary to popular belief, the idea of virtual reality has existed in some form since the late 1880s. If we focus on the general optical illusion found in virtual reality, I would argue that panoramic paintings were the first forms of virtual reality entertainment. Panoramic paintings are meant to fill a viewer's entire field of vision to give the impression of being present in an historical scene of battle. The painting Panorama of the Garden and Palace of Versailles is an example of these kinds of panoramic paintings and can be found below.
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John Vanderlyn, panorama of the Garden and Palace of Versailles
However, it wasn’t until 1962 that the first breakthrough in virtual technology was made. The technology was called Sensorama and it was created by engineer Morton Heilig, who is now hailed as the father of virtual reality. The Sensorama was created as a projection booth that stimulated most of the senses. The machine would create noises, flash lights, and even dispense different smells to stimulate all of the viewer’s senses to create a complete immersive experience. As the years went on, VR technology began to develop and become more sophisticated. In 1965, inventor Ivan Sutherland created The Sword of Damocles, widely considered to be the first virtual reality headset created. In 1988, inventor Myron Krueger created the Videoplace, considered the first interactive virtual reality platform. (A virtual reality platform surrounds the user and responds to their movements without any use of any technological devices such as gloves or headsets.) Throughout the 1990s, virtual technology became the focus of video game companies such as Nintendo and Sega. While multiple iterations of VR video game technologies were created, only the Nintendo Virtual Boy had gathered a cult following despite its commercial failure. After the commercial VR video game boom of the early to mid90s, not many other mentionable VR technologies were created for the market, until about 12 years later when Palmer Luckey created the first prototype of the Oculus Rift. The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Facebook Inc., released on March 28, 2016. Ever since the debut of the Oculus Rift, there has been development in VR technology every year since 2011. Today, Virtual Reality technology has become a prevalent feature of modern technology. Media companies such as Google, Sony, Sega, and Microsoft have capitalized on the growing virtual reality field and have developed cheaper and more accessible versions VR headsets.
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The Nintendo Virtual Boy
The Demand and Appeal of VR Pornography While VR technology has existed since the early 1960s, pornography had not been in the VR spotlight until the development of the Oculus Rift. Unlike the VR technologies of the past that were solely focused on video games, the Oculus catered to several branches of the entertainment industry from movies to video games. Porn actor Ela Darling was quoted in a Wired article saying, “The first thing I think of when I hear of new technology is ‘How can I fuck with it?’ or ‘How can I let people watch me fucking on it?” (“Virtual Reality Porn is Coming” 2015). Less than 3 years after being quoted, Darling became a creative director and star performer of the website VRtube, a virtual reality porn site that boasts the superiority of VR porn with taglines like, “No longer will he have to watch porn on a SCREEN, like a goddamn CAVEMAN” and “NO LONGER MUST MAN SUFFER FOR HIS SEXUAL DEVIANCE.” VRtube is just one of many VR porn websites on the web today. By simply Googling the phrase “VR porn” the average internet user is exposed to thousands of free VR pornography ranging from small amateur companies like pornfoxvr.com and vrbangers.com to giant pornography conglomerates such as Pornhub, xvideos, and Naughty America. In the six short years since the Oculus Rift has existed, pornography has found its way into the entertainment spotlight. With the huge companies beginning to focus their efforts to become more VR friendly, one has to ask where this sudden demand for VR pornography began. And what is the appeal of VR porn videos?
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I believe that the demand for VR pornography began as soon as the Oculus Rift was unveiled for public use. Featured in the same Wired article that quoted Ela Darling, the author Stephen Doyle compared VR pornography to the infamous Rule 34 of the internet. Rule 34is known as “The proposition that there is at least one pornographic depiction of anything and everything; and, especially, that the resulting pornography is accessible through the Internet” (“Virtual Reality Porn is Coming” 2015). Doyle says, “Call it Rule 34a: Whenever a new media technology appears on the horizon, someone pops into a comment thread to say, “I can’t wait to see what the porn industry is gonna do with this.” (“Virtual Reality Porn is Coming” 2015). Porn has always been a key factor in the growth of technology; some would say that high speed internet is the direct result of the internet pornography boom of the late 90s and early 2000s. Virtual reality is no exception. I would argue that the appeal of VR porn exceeds the appeal of standard porn in two ways. VR pornography excels in privacy and immersion, and the combination of these two aspects creates a porn viewing experience that stands unrivaled by its standard counterpart. Privacy is one of the key factors of porn consumption. It is yet to be socially acceptable to watch a pornographic film in a public space. While I do acknowledge the existence of pornographic theaters and adult shops, the stigma around watching porn is still extremely prevalent. When it comes to VR porn, unless the device you are watching the porn on is connected to an external device, it is next to impossible to see what someone is watching while they wear a VR headset. For example, consumer VR headsets such as the Samsung Gear Vr, Google Cardboard, and the Google Daydream View are connectable to most iOS and Android mobile devices. This allows for a porn consumer to connect their headphones into their device and have a full porn experience. To quote another tagline from the website VRtube.xxx, “Now, he can be part of the
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porn.” If a person is in the privacy of their own room, they don’t have to constantly look over their shoulder when viewing pornography. The second way that VR porn excels beyond standard pornography is the sense of immersion found in VR porn. Mashable journalist Raymond Wong described his experience as feeling closer to the “action.” Wong was invited by mainstream porn conglomerate Naughty America to try their Naughty America VR experience during the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Instead of projecting himself onto a Pornstar, he felt like he was a Pornstar. The Naughty America VR experience locks the viewer into a 180-degree view, unlike the 360-degree view of other VR experiences. A representative from Naughty America explained in the same article that all of their porn videos are 180-degree view because they represent the already popular POV genre of porn. Raymond Wong goes on to describe his experience as one of the most immersive VR experiences he has ever had. While he realized that the torso he saw in the video wasn’t his, he still felt like he was in the video having sexual acts performed on him. Immersion is not only an aspect where VR porn surpasses standard porn, it is also a key selling point. Raymond Wong’s experience is similar to many others who tried out VR porn. Will Fulton, a journalist for the website Digital Trends, was also invited to try the Naughty America VR porn experience. His description of the experience mirrored that of Raymond Wong. Both men were aware that they were not truly in the videos that they were watching, but they still felt like it was their bodies on which the sexual acts were being performed. The line between fantasy and reality is blurred due to the overall scale of realism found in VR porn. Fulton described VR porn as a “different beast all its own,” separating it from simple POV pornography. Unlike Wong’s description of his VR porn experience, Fulton describes his experience with the female perspective of the VR porn demo reel as the most interesting. According to Fulton, the female
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perspective gave him an out of body experience that he never had before. He states in his article, “The ability to open up whole new avenues of kink, the ability to viscerally inhabit bodies unlike our own has compelling implications for how VR experiences could be used to cultivate empathy.” (I Tried VR Porn in a CES Hotel Suite, 2016). VR porn offers an unforgettable and never before seen experience to mainstream porn consumers. While porn is already a billion dollar industry, Naughty America’s CEO Ian Paul sees VR porn as the next big development in the industry. He claims that VR porn is the leap forward to create the perfect viewing experience that consumers have been searching for all these years. The Economics and Accessibility of VR Porn Social media influencer Gus Sorola once made a comment during an appearance on a podcast linking the connection between the growth of cell phones and pornography. Sorola makes the statement that when he was growing up, cell phones were marketed to be smaller and smaller until the introduction of mobile pornography then cell phone screens were made to be bigger and bigger. While Sorola's statement was meant to be humorous, there is no doubt that there is a huge correlation between pornography and the advancement of technology. As I've stated, it wasn't until the development of the Oculus Rift that there has been constant development in VR technology. The website Tractica created a bar graph of the projected annual VR hardware and Content Revenue by segments according to the world markets.
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Figure 1
There has been a steady increase in VR technologies and it is expected to grow significantly in the next three years. What I find most fascinating about this chart is the speed at which VR content has grown between the unveiling of the Oculus Rift in 2014 and today. I would argue that the majority of this VR content was in fact pornography. The growth in VR content coincides with the reveal of the Naughty America VR experience. Along with the VR experience, multiple VR porn websites such as VRtube grew in that same year. In my research, I found that the term “VR porn� spiked significantly in Google searches in 2016.
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Figure 2
The correlates in figure 2 almost perfectly align with the growth in revenue found in VR technologies in figure 1. Along with this growth in interest of VR porn, there has been a growth in the variety of VR headsets available to the general public. The once popular Oculus Rift had sold 1.4 million units less than its younger counterpart, the Samsung Gear Vr, as of 2016. The Gear VR became more popular due to its lightweight design, cell phone compatibility, and its modest price tag of $130, far cheaper than the Oculus price tag of $599. The Oculus also requires a PC connection, which takes away the privacy appeal of VR pornography as whatever pornographic content that is being consumed is still apparent on the computer's monitor. The Gear VR however is mobile accessible. Watching pornography in the Gear VR allows for the user to simply use their phones as the screen, allowing for a completely private porn viewing experience. While the Samsung Gear VR stands ahead of its Oculus counterpart, neither comes close to the sales of the Google Cardboard, with its extremely simple design and low price tag of $15. It is no surprise that with the growth of free VR porn, the Cardboard has sold more than 88
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million units in the short span between the end of 2016 and early 2017. These sales do not even include people who created their own version of the Google Cardboard and downloaded its free application which boasts another 10 million in downloads. With a cheap VR headset like the Cardboard and companies such as Pornhub and VRporn.com, it comes as no surprise that by the year 2020, the revenue from VR content will quintuple. With porn being a 3.3 billion dollar industry, the expansion into VR technology comes as no surprise. In fact, the expansion of the entire adult entertainment industry will expand into VR. Companies like Fleshlight and Kiiroo have created multiple wifi-enabled and VR compatible sex toys. Some of their most famous are their Pearl dildo and their Onyx Fleshlight. Both of these toys have a mode that allows them to connect VR porn videos and replicate the possible physical feeling of the video to the user. The Social Effects of VR Porn What I personally find to be frightening is that a social diminishment of interest in any type of physical relationship is not the stuff of fiction. Japan has reported that intimate relationships have dropped in popularity, so much so that the Japanese press has named the epidemic sekkusu shinai shokogun, or celibacy syndrome. The reasons for the sudden celibacy are broad, ranging from being too tired from work to having little to no interest in actual sex. While this may not be a direct result of VR porn, the idea of being an Otaku is rapidly gaining popularity in Japan. The Oxford Dictionary defines an Otaku as an “a young person who is obsessed with computers or particular aspects of popular culture to the detriment of their social skills�. One could make the connection between being an Otaku and being addicted to VR porn. Both have to deal with escaping your current reality in favor for another reality. VR porn blurs the line between what is real and what is not. With the introduction of smells, sounds, and
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feeling, it is easy to trick the body into thinking that you are actually having sex in the porn you are watching. While I do acknowledge the possible negative effects of VR porn and I am fully aware that the development of VR porn could lead to a more pornified society and culture, I see its positive effects as well. From a purely technological perspective, I find VR porn to be absolutely fascinating. The ability to trick the body into almost believing that you are having sex but you're physically not opens up so many possible avenues that VR could take. VR pornography could be used to allow those who are disabled to experience a “normal� sex life. It could also be used for educational purposes such as proper sexual education or anatomy. VR porn could also lead into more developments in technology. If figure 1 is any indication, by 2020 we should have a standard in VR headsets and content. Conclusion While I was unable to find any concrete evidence about the effects of VR pornography on the brain, one could only imagine that the effects are more powerful than current mainstream porn due to the stimulation of more than one of the senses. With the introduction of VR porn, there is little to no limitation to what porn companies could produce. Companies are already developing technologies to stimulate a person’s taste, smell, and feel when watching VR porn. With the growth in these technologies, VR porn is quickly becoming a close second to experiencing actual sex. If VR porn continues to grow in popularity along with the continued advancements in technology, I have no doubt that VR porn will quickly become the next standard in mainstream porn consumption.
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