Category Archives: Jack Fisher’s Insights

April 6, 2017 · 7:44 am

Building Your Own Lover: Possibilities And Implications

Strap yourself in and put on a clean pair of panties because I’m going to talk about sex robots again. I know I’ve talked about it a lot, sometimes as a thought experiment and sometimes in response to new breakthroughs, such as the first robot brothel. If it sounds like I think about sex robots more than any straight man should, I apologize. It’s not my fault the subject is both titillating and relevant.

I say it’s relevant because, even when you remove the titillating parts, robots are becoming an increasingly large part of our society. They’re not just fancy toys and CGI characters in Michael Bay movies. Robots are a growing part of our economy. In some ways, they’re taking it over.

Forget China, Mexicans, and immigrants. According a Ball State study, robots accounted for 87 percent of the loss in manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2010. People aren’t being put out of work because some foreigners are coming over and stealing jobs. Factories are just becoming more efficient because they’re using robots.

Have you ordered something from Amazon lately? Have you ordered something from any retailer? Well, chances are, a robot helped process that order and for good reason. Robots don’t get sick, they don’t unionize, they don’t get tired, and they don’t take coffee breaks.

The problem is that robots don’t respond to protests, intimidation, racism, and xenophobia. In addition, robots like the ones Boston Dynamics have created recently are kind of scary. Protest all you want. You are not going to win a fight against a robot. They may not kill you like the Terminator, but they will take over because they’re just that much more efficient.

Now I don’t want to get into a debate about how robots affect the economy and how people can possibly compete against robot workers. That’s a complex debate that isn’t going to make anyone outside of an economics class horny. Instead, I’d like to discuss the growing trends in robots in a more intimate manner.

Robots are going to be a bigger part of our lives in the coming years. There’s just too much money to be made and too many benefits to overlook. There will be those who take “The Terminator” and “The Matrix” too seriously and dread that robots will destroy us all. I’m not saying that’s an impossible scenario, but I do believe it’s one we can avoid.

That’s where the intimacy comes in. We can’t fight robots and win. Robots can’t get made without us. In a sense, we’re already two creatures that are intimately entwined. So perhaps a solution to embracing robots as part of humanity is to actually love them and teach them to love us back.

I know it doesn’t sound that sexy right now. When most people think of robots these days, they either think of the ones that took their jobs or the ones that blow shit up in every action movie ever made. On top of that, they don’t exactly much sex appeal.

However, I believe that will change. I believe it’s already changing with the way we interact with technology. We already have AI assistants that are steadily integrating themselves into our lives. We have Siri on our phones, Alexa in our homes, and Cortana in our computers. These AI’s don’t have bodies yet, but one day they will. The only question is how much sex appeal will we give them?

That’s progress for some and another step towards a robot apocalypse for another. What’s the endgame though? Well, nobody can really say right now, especially not an aspiring erotica/romance writer who gets most of his robot knowledge from comic books and TED Talks. However, there is one scenario that I might be able to explore, which may end up deciding whether we get along with them or become their pet meat-bags.

It starts with a simple question that I’m sure everyone who is single or stuck in an unsatisfying relationship has asked themselves in some form or another. If you could create the perfect lover, what would he or she be like?

With pace of advancement in robotics technology, that’s not entirely a rhetorical question anymore. If we can program a robot to keep our schedule, clean our carpets, and fill our Amazon orders, then why can’t we program one to love us? Again, that’s not entirely a rhetorical question.

I say not entirely because there’s still a lot about emotions we don’t understand. There are probably certain aspects about emotions we can never understand. Human beings are just too complicated. What else explains the love and devotion that some people put into lovers, family, and My Little Pony?

Even if we don’t fully understand our emotion, we still understand them well enough to know what want in a lover. Robots, being programmable and malleable, are an ideal medium for crafting those emotional connections. We’ve already made a movie about a man who falls in love with his phone. Someone falling in love with a life-like robot isn’t too great a stretch.

The concept has already found itself into plenty of narratives, including a Hallie Joel Osmont movie and a technical demonstration for the PlayStation 4 called “Kara.” Just watch “Kara” for a moment and let your dirty, sexy thoughts fill in the blanks.

Kara might have just been a demonstration, but it crafts a clear and believable scenario about how our future robot lovers may take shape. Like buying a custom computer, we specify how we want it to look. We specify which language it’ll speak. We even craft a personality that we find desirable. Anything we could possibly want in a lover, we could create.

Want your lover to look like a young Brad Pitt? You can have one. Want your lover to look like Jennifer Lawrence? You can have one. Want your lover to look like mix of Keith Richards and Snoop Dogg? You can have one of those too, even if it does reveal a lot about your tastes in lovers.

The gender of your robot lover could be fluid. It could be exceedingly masculine, like John Cena on steroids. It can be voluptuously feminine, like Pamela Anderson after a boob job. It can even be some sort of blend, a female body with a penis or a male body with a vagina. There’s no limit because robots aren’t confined by the limits of biology.

Those worried about the functionality of certain body parts wouldn’t have to worry. Lab-grown body parts are already in development. It’s even farther ahead than you think. I’ve already talked about the development of a bionic penis. Given a few more decades of refinement, artificial genitals won’t just be functional. They’ll function better than anything nature could create.

These robot lovers wouldn’t be slaves or servants, though. There would likely be other types of robots to fill these uses. These robots have one purpose and one purpose only. That’s to be your ideal lover. How can any other human possibly compete? Just as robots took our factory jobs, they may also take the job of every whore, gigolo, and match-maker.

For some, this is a scary scenario, people preferring the love of robots over other people. Some would even dread that this would lead to the extinction of the human race. Well, those same people probably haven’t heard about artificial wombs either. In fact, it’s probably a good idea not to tell them. If they have that big a problem with robot lovers, then chances are they won’t feel much better about robot wombs.

We create robots because we seek more efficiency. We seek lover because, as living beings, we seek connection. Robots, in their current form, aren’t alive and don’t need the same connections. However, once we create in them a desire for connection, what would that mean for them? What would that mean for us?

I’m not at all qualified to contemplate the full implications. At most, I’m qualified to take this concept and turn it into a sexy story. Chances are, I will at some point in the future. I can’t say it’ll be a prelude of things to come. I craft my stories with the intent of being fun, entertaining, and sexy.

However, there may come a day when a sexy story just doesn’t cut it. One day, our desire for connection may find its way into a robot. When that happens, what kind of connection will we create? What kind of intimacy will we forge? It’s a daunting, but sexy idea to contemplate.

3 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as Artificial Intelligence, demographics, futurism, human psychology, human relationships, love, relationships, robots, romance, sex, sex in society, sex robots, sexy

April 5, 2017 · 6:51 am

First Sex Doll Brothel Open In Spain

They’re coming. Literally and figuratively, they’re coming. That last sentence is even dirtier than you think it is. I’ve talked about it before. I’ve even posted a few scary signs that it’s closer than we think. Yes, I’m talking about robots again. Yes, I’m referring to the sexy kind.

Earlier this month, Spain took us a step closer to an era where sex robots will actually be a thing and not just the subject of one of Oscar Issac’s best movies. According to Bravo, they opened up a brothel in Barcelona which offers its patrons the opportunity to have sex with a specially-made sex doll for a mere $120.

Bravo: The opening of a naughty-doll brothel in Spain may foretell a more high-tech trend

Are you intrigued? Don’t deny it. Even if you find the idea of having sex with a life-like doll disgusting, a part of you is still curious. How could you not be curious? This is a potentially game-changing shift in our sexual culture.

Now these aren’t the kinds of sex robots that will talk dirty to us and ride us like a porn star on crack. Sex robot technology hasn’t quite advanced to that level, but make no mistake. Someone out there, who is likely very horny, is working on that as we speak. Given how motivated horny people can be, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a reality.

Naturally, this news generated some concern from the flesh and blood prostitution industry, which has been operating successfully and lucratively since the dawn of civilization. They’ve basically had a monopoly, of sorts, on those who wanted to pay for sex. This is the first real competition they’ve had in centuries.

In Spain, prostitution is not illegal. Various activities associated with it are illegal, but for the most part, two consenting parties can have sex in exchange for money. This brothel changes that dynamic in a big way. It may also pave the way for a much bigger change in the near future.

From a pure business standpoint, this brothel is brilliant. These sex dolls are not alive. That means you don’t have to pay them. You don’t have to give them health benefits. You don’t have to worry about them getting pregnant. You don’t have to worry about them getting a disease. You don’t even have to worry about them quitting. They are, essentially, the perfect employee.

That means that the brothel can offer sex at a rate that’s much lower than those offered by flesh and blood prostitutes. Like Walmart coming in and offering cheaper groceries, this brothel can offer a cheaper option to those who are lonely, horny, and in need of extra companionship.

Now you still get what you pay for in terms of quality. Like I said, sex dolls are not flesh and blood humans. Modern sex dolls feel pretty realistic, but they’re still clearly fake. Nobody is going to mistake the sex dolls at this brothel for real people.

However, that changes when the robots enter the equation. Sex doll maker, RealDoll, has announced that they’re working on a version of their product that can interact and respond to emotional cues. An early version may even be available at the end of this year. After that, all bets are off.

As we’ve seen with everything from cars to smartphones, technology tends to evolve rapidly before our eyes. The first version is rarely that polished. This brothel certainly isn’t going to put the flesh and blood prostitution industry out of work anytime soon. Again, these are sex dolls and not robots. However, those robots are coming and the operator of the brothel foresees a very promising future.

They’re saying that these robot-dolls could change tourism as we know it as they continue to pop up at resorts around the world: “Like Barcelona’s, but with dolls enhanced by artificial intelligence, it’s reasonable to expect such holiday resorts could become popular tourist destinations.”

These aren’t some fanciful dreams of sci-fi writers or poorly-acted scenes from old reruns of Star Trek. This is happening and now, with the opening of this brothel, there’s a business model taking shape. History has shown us, time and again, that when there’s money to be made, we horny, ingenious humans find a way to make it happen.

20 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as brothel, legal prostitution, prostitution, robots, sex, sex doll, sex robot, sexual health, sexual issues, sexual practices, sexuality, sexy, sexy robots, Spain

April 4, 2017 · 6:56 am

Love And Age Disparity: Why It Matters

A few years ago, Bill Maher, one of my favorite comedians, did a little routine on the titillating phenomenon of hot female teachers hook up with their male students. Being the brilliant mind he is, he summed it and the controversy surrounding it quite nicely.

“When an older male teacher sleeps with a younger female student, that is a crime. When an older female teacher sleeps with a younger male student, it’s a crime we didn’t get it on tape.”

It’s a funny, but fairly accurate observation. Whenever a story comes out about a hot female teacher sleeping with a male student, the knee-jerk reaction in many men, and even a few women, is pretty telling. We may act like we’re appalled in polite conversation, but in private, we’re thinking, “What a lucky kid! I wish I had teachers like that when I was a kid.”

We have an entirely different knee-jerk reaction when the genders are reversed. While it doesn’t make the news quite as often, it does happen. Most of the time, however, the knee-jerk reaction is entirely different. Most are appalled and disgusted, both in public and in private. We think and we say, “That man is a monster and a predator! How dare he sleep with one of his students? He should be hung from the highest tree!”

There’s no way around it. This is a double standard, something I’ve talked about many times before. It’s probably the most stark double standard there is between genders because it’s one of the few both sides agree on. A female teacher sleeping with a male student is kind of fun and titillating. A male teacher sleeping with a female student is a disgusting crime.

Now I’m not going to make the claim that this disparity is wrong. I’m not going to take the position of Men’s Rights Advocates and claim we should make the stigma between male and female teachers seducing students an equal phenomenon. It’s not. There are many reasons why it’s not and I’ll save those reasons for another blog post.

For this post, I want to focus more on the less obvious aspect of the teacher/student affair phenomenon. It’s one that actually manifests in many ways outside the classroom. It involves the age disparity between the couple.

A couple with a large age disparity is a bit less controversial, but it will still get people from both genders arguing about it. However, it’s still plenty titillating for both genders so I’ll try to focus on that component. Yes, there is a unique sexiness component to age disparity. Yes, I’m going to talk about it. If that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, you might want to read my posts about sex robots instead.

Age disparity is one of those understated, but obvious issues that has always been part of our sexual culture. Men seeking younger women isn’t just an old, common tradition. It’s downright practical.

Even feminists and hippie types concede that for most of human history, it made sense for older men to seek younger women. That’s because for most of human history, women died at far greater rates due to complications during childbirth or pregnancy. A woman who survived two or three pregnancies was considered extremely lucky. A woman who lived long enough to seek the intimate company of younger men was downright rare.

This cold pragmatism has ensured that men seeking younger women is an inescapable component of our sexual culture. To this day, older men seeking younger women isn’t really taboo. When a rich man seeks the company of a beautiful young woman, it’s just shrugged off as one of those things rich people do because they can.

That’s why the idea of older women seeking younger men still generates this awkward reaction. It’s not so much that it’s taboo. It’s just new in the sense that it was an impractical practice until very recently.

Now, the concept of a “cougar” is a real phenomenon, so much so that MILF (mom I love to fuck) porn is big business. The idea of older women seducing young men may not disgust us, but it does get us thinking awkward thoughts.

Awkward or not, age disparity in romance is one of those things that occupies a nebulous region of our sexual culture. We understand why it happens. We’ve even conditioned ourselves to accept it in some instances, as the life of Anna Nichole Smith can attest. It’s just not something we think about and maybe that’s the problem.

Pragmatism aside, there are some legitimate reasons why younger women would seek the company of older men. Not all of those reasons have to do with wanting to inherit his money. Granted, that can be part of it, but that’s not always the case.

In an older man, a young woman can see someone who is experienced, established, and mature. As a man, I can’t help but concede on the maturity part. Having been a young man and having survived high school, I freely admit that young men can be immature little shits who don’t know the first thing about loving a woman. For that, on behalf of young men, I apologize.

Beyond the maturity aspect, an older man might actually know what the hell he’s doing when he gets a woman into his bed. Unlike a young man, who may know next to nothing about female anatomy, especially if he got his sex education in Texas, an older man has more experience in satisfying a woman. That experience goes a long way.

When the genders flip, some of those reasons still apply. It’s true. Men will seek the company of older women for that extra experience. True, an older woman is less likely to have the perky features of a younger woman, but perky body parts only go so far.

As a man, I can offer a bit more insight into this. I can’t say I prefer older women, but I can totally understand why men would be attracted to them. Younger women, especially those who are extra perky, tend to be more demanding. I’m not just talking about expensive shopping trips either. Youth in both genders tends to breed arrogance and arrogance can be a huge turn-off to a man, no matter how attractive a woman is.

In older women, men see someone who is a bit more measured and self-assured. They see someone who knows how to be independent. She doesn’t demand that they make her the center of their world. An older woman can take care of herself. She knows how to handle herself without whining for someone else to do it. A woman who can do that at any age will intrigue a man to some degree.

Between the sheets, the intrigue only grows. While younger women may make men horny, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll make them feel satisfied. Young women who lack in sexual experience may not know how a man likes to be touched, teased, and pleasured. I admit that male anatomy isn’t quite as complicated, but make no mistake, ladies. Experience does make a difference.

Whether you’re a man or a woman, age will play a factor in your sex life in some form or another. It may not always be direct, but it will still be a factor. At the end of the day, though, does it matter?

If an older man falls in love with a much younger woman or if an older woman falls in love with a much younger man, is their love any less genuine? Is the intimacy they enjoy any less meaningful? Granted, it isn’t always as titillating, but it can still have meaning.

In some respects, our culture and media create an artificial taboo of sorts. So many love songs, TV shows, and movies paint this ideal picture of love. It almost always involves two people who are relatively close in age. Add a little sex appeal and that’s basically the standard by which we measure sex and romance.

While that standard has its merits, it doesn’t work for everyone. Everyone’s tastes in sex and romance are unique. Some people are going to be attractive to different kinds of people for different reasons. In the end, so long as the feelings are genuine and not associated with Anna Nichole Smith, I think it’s still every bit as meaningful.

An Ode To Hot Teachers

Being a teenager sucks. Going to high school sucks. Going through puberty sucks. Unless you’re a star athlete or a cheerleader with the body of a young Carmen Electra, chances are your adolescence in general sucked.

Mine sure sucked. As I’ve said before, I was socially inept shut-in who did little to take care of himself. On top of that, I had a horrible acne problem that eventually required medication. I wasn’t just a pain to be around. I wasn’t much to look at either. That basically guaranteed that my teenage years were going to suck, despite having great parents, great siblings, and an environment that gave me every opportunity to be less miserable.

I get the impression that my experience is not typical. Teenagers are walking cocktails of hormones, emotions, and ignorance. Everyone, from the nerds to the jocks, finds a reason to be miserable at some point. The fact anyone survives it at all is nothing short of a miracle.

I highlight this misery because I want to establish a certain context here. Life as a teenager, going to high school and enduring the monstrous transformation that is puberty, is fraught with misery. Anything that makes it just a little bit easier is akin to giving a starving child a lifetime supply of chocolate cake.

That leads me to hot teachers. No, I’m not talking about a porno sub-genre. I’m not talking about the scandals involving teachers sleeping with their students that make the front page of Fox News’ website at least three times a year either. I’m just talking about that one teacher during that one year in your teenage life that actually made going to school less miserable.

Don’t deny it. You had a teacher like that. I’m not saying he or she was a supermodel or an Olympian, but they definitely got your attention and not with their teaching skills. Something about them just sparked that chaotic cocktail of hormones in your body in just the right ways. It made you think thoughts you didn’t quite understand, even after you discovered internet porn.

Hot teachers are a sliver of gold in the mountain of horse shit that is adolescence. In some ways, they’re a rite of passage. You only really feel like you’re growing up when your genitals start doing strange things around a teacher you find attractive. It can be awkward, as anyone who has ever had to hide a boner in the middle of algebra class can attest. Then again, awkwardness with teenagers is par for the course.

I believe that hot teachers are a gift to the world, if not an act of mercy to all those whose adolescence was more miserable than most. They remind miserable, emotional, melodramatic teenagers that there’s still beauty in the world. It’s not all just acne, homework, and standardized tests. For teenagers of every generation, their value cannot be overstated.

As a tribute to the hot teachers of the world, I’d like to share another personal story. Unlike some of my previous stories, though, this one doesn’t involve actual nudity. It does involve thoughts of nudity though. How can it not? It involves my teenage self.

It’s true though. I too once had a hot teacher, one I still remember fondly to this day. She was a rare beacon of light in the never-ending torment that was high school. She actually made me less miserable in high school. That’s something that therapy, anti-depressants, and Taco Tuesday can’t boast. She’s kind of a personal hero is what I’m saying.

Out of respect for her privacy, I won’t reveal her name. For the sake of this story, let’s just call her Ms. Diana. I had Ms. Diana for a history class in my sophomore year. At the time, I was 16. My acne problem was just starting to become a crisis. My hormones were just starting to go into overdrive as well. I remember having to hide at least one awkward boner a day. Ms. Diana didn’t help in that effort, but with her, I didn’t mind.

Ms. Diana was one of those young, energetic teachers who loved to talk fast and fill the room with energy. She wasn’t the kind of teacher who would just give presentations, pass out worksheets, and lay out lists of facts. She actually tried to keep people engaged. She tried to get people excited. She might as well have been the high school equivalent of a lion tamer.

She was also hot. I hope that goes without saying. I don’t just mean hot, in terms of personality. I mean Ms. Diana was hot in that she would’ve looked awesome in a bikini and not because she had a beauty regiment on par with Gwenth Paltrow, complete with jade egg for a healthy vagina.

No, Ms. Diana’s beauty was a natural beauty. She didn’t need makeup. She didn’t need designer clothes. She came into class wearing something she probably bought on sale and she still made it look sexy. That’s a special kind of beauty, even by teenage standards.

That beauty definitely resonated with my teenage self. I can’t remember a class where I paid more attention and felt more engaged. I can’t say that about a lot of the teachers or classes I’ve taken. I also can’t say those classes got me thinking and feeling things that I didn’t feel without an internet connection. It was a strange, but beautiful thing.

Now I never went out of my way to tell Ms. Diana that I found her very attractive. That’s not because I wanted to avoid a scandal that would end with one of us being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer though. I didn’t tell her because it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t necessary because I wasn’t the only hormonal teenage boy in that class and some of those boys did not have filters between their brains and their mouths.

It was very much an open secret in the school. The boys thought Ms. Diana was hot. Nobody really argued about it. Nobody denied it either. I get the sense she knew that. I don’t think she would’ve agreed to teach teenagers if she didn’t to some extent. Maybe she knew she could keep her students’ attention by being hot. I’m not saying it’s a little coy, but you can’t argue with results.

This eventually culminated in an incident I still laugh about today. It happened one day after lunch. We were filing into class. I was there a few minutes early and so were a couple of my male classmates. Then, out of nowhere, this exchange happened:

Male Student: Hey, Ms. Diana! Is your dad a terrorist?

Ms. Diana: Um…no. Why do you ask?

Male Student: Because you’re the bomb!

I laughed. We all laughed. Even Ms. Diana laughed. This after September 11th, by the way. The fact that we laughed about it should hint at just how hot Ms. Diana was and how much me and my fellow male students appreciated her.

To this day, Ms. Diana holds a special place in my heart and my memory. At a time when so many memories from that era were bleak and forgettable, she was a shining star that came along at just the right time for an awkward teenage boy. I like to think that the feelings she inspired in me helped inspire my future aspirations as an erotica/romance writer.

I doubt that’s what Ms. Diana intended to teach me. I’m pretty sure she just wanted me to pass my tests and exams. Thankfully, I did. That other inspiration was just a bonus. Maybe one day when I become a famous erotica/romance writer, I’ll thank her. She deserves as such for helping me survive high school.

Until then, I remain forever grateful to Ms. Diana. On behalf of all those who had lurid thoughts about their teachers, I thank those wonderful teachers who look good naked who helped inspire both minds and genitals. You may not think it, but you helped us in ways that went beyond teaching us. You helped make our teenage years slightly less miserable. For that, you should be proud.

With that, I leave you with the ultimate ode to hot teachers, courtesy of Van Halen.

8 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as education, high school, hot for teacher, hot teachers, human psychology, love, romance, sex, sexual education, sexual health, sexy, sexy teachers, teachers, teen drama, teenagers

April 1, 2017 · 8:45 am

We’re ALL Perverts (According To Cracked)

In the interest of science, sex, and having an excuse to talk about subjects that get our blood flowing in all the right ways, I’d like to do a quick survey. Don’t worry. This isn’t a pop quiz. It’s not another one of my sexy thought experiments either. It’s just my way of making a point, one that may very well be important to our collective understanding of sexuality.

It’s just four questions. Anyone can take it. They’re simple yes/no answers. If it takes you more than 20 seconds, then you’re just overthinking.

Question 1: Are you a man?

Question 2: Are you heterosexual?

Question 3: Do you enjoy the sight of female breasts?

Question 4: Do art forms that depict female breasts appeal to you?

If you answered yes to all of these questions, then congratulations. You’re a pervert. That’s right. According to a growing sentiment within our culture, any straight man who dares to admire female breasts in any form of media, be it video games, movies, or TV, is somehow a pervert.

That’s the message that a recent article of Cracked.com gave. Usually, I’m very fond of Cracked.com’s work on discussing matters of sexuality. However, every now and then, they write an article that reeks of politically correct horse shit. This particular article talked about how video game developers put a lot of effort into the physics of breasts on female characters. For some reason, that makes them and those who play these games perverts.

Let’s step back for a moment and try to make sense of that without hitting ourselves in the head with a baseball bat. This is apparently an issue now. Men admiring women’s breasts is controversial. Granted, women’s breasts have been subject to controversy in the past and I’m not just talking about Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance either.

We’re still a culture that gets exceedingly queasy when we talk about sex in any form. We all remember how awkward it was in health class when we learned about the inner workings of a penis and vagina. Boobs have a sexual component to them. So unless you’re on a nude beach, at Mardi Gras, or in a Super Bowl halftime show, it’s going to be awkward.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong about feeling awkward about sex or certain body parts. Who doesn’t feel a little awkward when they find out their best friend’s mom got a boob job? That doesn’t mean it qualifies as an outright perversion, does it?

Thankfully, we’ve advanced our society to a point where we have these things called dictionaries and this amazing achievement allows us to actually check the definition of a word to see if it fits a certain context. The definition of pervert in a sexual is actually fairly concise. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition is as follows:

An aberrant sexual practice or interest especially when habitual.

The keyword in that definition is “aberrant.” That means unnatural, improper, or abnormal. Now I know people don’t agree on what’s natural, proper, or normal. In fact, I would argue that most people can’t agree on that. They can’t even agree on pizza toppings. However, when it comes to our biological wiring that helps us survive and reproduce, I think we can find some common ground.

With few exceptions, straight men like breasts. They like the sight of breasts, the feel of breasts, and the depictions of breasts. I know this, both as a straight man and as someone whose readers regularly demand more vivid depictions of breasts in my novels. It’s as natural as enjoying a cold beer on a hot summer day.

So why is this wholly natural, hard-wired predilection being classified as a perversion? Why would the brilliant writers at Cracked.com see the efforts of video game creators to make more appealing breasts as a catalyst for perversion? Do they think men even need a catalyst to admire breasts or want to see them?

Well, a lot of it is our fault. By our fault, I mean both men and women alike. The media, and video games in particular, has been subject to much greater scrutiny lately in matters of sexism. If something can even be slightly misconstrued as sexist or objectifying, then that’s the end of the conversation. It’s sexist. It’s wrong. It’s immoral. Anyone who enjoys or appreciates it is a monster.

That last part was sarcasm, but I worry that sarcasm can’t do justice to the sheer absurdity of that notion. I don’t want to say it’s entirely a product of feminism, political correctness, or prudishness. However, it is a bad sign.

I don’t doubt that those at Cracked.com and those who complain about breast physics in video games have good intentions. They see beautiful, big-breasted women in media and think that’s objectifying and degrading. That’s an understandable sentiment. They completely lose my sympathy, however, when they try to conflate objectification with basic biological wiring.

The science is fairly conclusive. Humans are visual creatures, as evidenced by the significant amount of brain matter we dedicate to processing visual images. Art, media, and everything in between seeks every possible way to generate attention and garner interest.

Female breasts naturally create powerful imagery and not just for straight men either. They are a distinct feature within a sexually dimorphic species. As such, we’re going to respond to that imagery. It’s not a perversion in that it’s unnatural. Hell, you could make the case that it’s one of the most natural reactions human could possibly have.

I don’t deny that there are many facets of sex, nudity, and breasts are still taboo. However, it does our culture and our species a disservice when we start identifying natural reactions to natural sights as perverse. That conflicts with our own sexual nature and, as any Puritan will tell you, that nature is hard to suppress.

So in this case, Cracked.com is dead wrong. We are not perverts for enjoying the sight of female breasts. Game developers who put a lot of time and effort into the physics behind breasts should not be shamed or shunned. If anything, they should be celebrated. They’re putting that much effort into one of nature’s most beautiful creations. On behalf of all straight men who appreciate the sight of breasts, I thank them.

6 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as boob physics, boobs, breasts, cracked.com, female sexuality, feminism, human sexuality, male gaze, masculinity, sex, sex in media, sex in video games, sexual health, sexuality, sexy, technology, video games

March 31, 2017 · 6:59 am

The Negative Side Of The Body-Positive Movement

There are a lot of things that sound great on paper, but become a major problem when put into practice. Why else would anyone think that communism, slavery, or every reality TV show on TLC was a good idea at some point?

I’m not saying some ideas become a total disaster when put into practice. There are varying degrees of problems, screw-ups, and failures when it comes to to the extent of that disaster. Some are manageable. Some can even be glossed over and overlooked. Just look at the ideas behind every Adam Sandler movie ever made. That’s not to say that “Don’t Mess With The Zohan” wasn’t a ridiculous idea on paper, but it was still entertaining enough to work.

This brings me back to the body positive movement. I talked about it a lot when I discussed body shaming in general, but I’m bringing it up again for the same reason I reminded everyone that it’s okay to find beautiful people sexy. There’s a frustrating, counter-productive problem emerging in this movement that threatens to undermine its good intentions.

I don’t deny that those intentions are good either. According to Wikipedia, this is the goal of the body positive movement:

“The Body Positive teaches people how to overcome conflicts with their bodies so they can lead happier, more productive lives.”

On paper, that’s a wholly noble goal. It’s right up there with comforting a crying child, feeding a hungry puppy, or getting Bill O’Riley to shut up. I’ve no objections whatsoever to that kind of endeavor. There are people who have unhealthy conflicts about their bodies that need help. Whether it’s their weight, their hair, or their belly button, these unhealthy conflicts can cause a lot of stress for people.

As is often the case with any movement, though, some take it too far. By that, I don’t mean people go as far as a typical episode of “South Park.” The body positive movement still hasn’t reached the level of the PC Bros, although I do worry it’s getting dangerously close.

Why do I say that? Well, much of it has to do with an emerging trend from the body positive movement, one that’s distinctly negative. In many respects, it’s a backlash of sorts. If you’re going to give love and encouragement to those who don’t fit the mold of a typical Barbie doll, then what will you give to those who do to some extent?

This is part of the overly crude nature of human psychology. Like the rest of the human condition, it’s a blunt instrument. It’s not a scalpel that’s capable of discerning the fine details of a situation. That means if someone is going to direct love towards one group, then they’re going to direct hate towards another. It’s not always intentional or direct, but it is there and it’s happening more often.

Remember this little gem from the advertising world from the summer of 2015? It involved a beautiful woman, a bikini, and a question about beaches. In terms of sex appeal, it checks all the right boxes.

In any other era, it would’ve been as non-controversial as chocolate, kittens, and cartoon ducks. It’s visually appealing. It evokes an appealing mental pictures in those who see it. It generates some level of arousal in our brains. By all accounts, it’s as basic as it gets in terms of advertising.

However, those behind the body positive movement were exceedingly upset over this ad. From their perspective, this ad was shaming every woman who didn’t look like a goddamn bikini model. Never mind the fact that it doesn’t directly insult anybody. Never mind that it never directly says that people who don’t look like bikini models shouldn’t be allowed on the beach. This was the message the body positive movement gleaned from this ad.

As a result, those behind the body positive movement and those who protest against fat shaming decided to get loud, angry, and upset. Some protested it. Some parodied it. By and large, it was fairly healthy wave of outrage that social media did too good a job of fueling.

On some levels, I can understand why some wouldn’t like this advertisement. I can certainly see why some priest, mullah, or monk who takes a vow of chastity or laments at people thinking impure thoughts would be offended by an ad that features a beautiful woman. Those people, however, have far greater concerns than the body positive movement.

I can even understand why some self-conscious people might not like it. They may see that they don’t look that good in a bikini, get depressed about it, and not even want to go to the beach. Again though, it’s worth pointing out that this ad, and most others that involve beautiful people, don’t directly attack these people. They are just utilizing the current standard of beauty that most people find visually appealing.

For the body positive movement, that’s just untenable. To them, the mere existence of these ads is akin to lining up everybody who doesn’t look like a bikini model, standing them in a row, and then spitting on every one of them one-by-one.

This is where the body positive movement falters. It’s also why I have a hard time supporting it. The body positive movement has gone from a supporting role to an either/or, us-against-them struggle. If you don’t support people of every body type, then you’re a bad person. You’re mean. You’re a bully. You’re immoral.

From my point of view, that kind of approach is downright hypocritical in a movement that espouses positivity. It’s also wholly unequal in that the body positive movement focuses more on women than men. By that, I mean it disproportionally shames men more than women. Fat men are still pigs and slobs. Fat women, however, are inspirations.

As a man, I don’t just find this insulting. I find it to be an outright affront. It contains two of the few traits that most people find untenable, hypocrisy and inequality. It’ll cheer a woman like Ashley Graham, a plus-sized model who has been on the cover of Vogue. However, when it comes to men, they still haven’t given the likes of John Goodman or Drew Carey a call.

It sends the message that men are the enemy. They’re the ones behind all the fat shaming and insults. As such, they don’t get to be part of the movement. They can still be shamed for being fat slobs. However, if you dare shame a woman, then you’re a horrible person and it’s the job of the movement to make you a villain.

Now I get that men and women are wired differently. We’re a sexually dimorphic species. However, when it comes to being an asshole, the standards are gender neutral.

I still support efforts to help those who have unhealthy body image issues. Those people really do need help, love, and support. What I don’t support is immediately labeling someone who finds the old Barbie and Ken bodies attractive as somehow immoral or wrong.

No social movement has ever succeeded by insulting large swaths of people and shaming them for misguided reasons. Add traces of inequality and hypocrisy to the mix and that movement is bound to falter. It won’t always crash and burn, but people will eventually stop taking it seriously. In the end, apathy and annoyance will kill the body positive movement faster than any bikini model.

11 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as beauty, beauty standards, body positive, bullying, fat shaming, feminism, physical appearance, sex, sexual health, sexuality, skinny shaming, social justice warriors, the human body

March 30, 2017 · 6:32 am

Are We Becoming More (Sexually) Uptight?

There was once a time in American culture where the media couldn’t even acknowledge that sex existed, let alone happened between wholesome scenes of family dinners and fishing trips. An average episode of “Scandal” would’ve horrified audiences in 1965, who were used to seeing a married couple sleep in separate beds on “I Love Lucy.”

Without a doubt, sex on TV has come a long way. We no longer bat an eye when Kevin Spacey goes down on Kate Mara in “House of Cards” or when Glen Quagmire raises the bar for sexual debauchery on “Family Guy.” By all accounts, we’ve become a lot more accepting.

That being said, is it possible that we’re becoming more sexually uptight? Bear with me. I promise I’m not being sarcastic here. This is part of an ongoing observation that I’ve explored in other posts.

Some of it has to do with trends in feminism. Some of it has to do with the various peculiarities of the gender dynamics in our sexual culture. I’m not saying what I’m seeing is definitive, but as an aspiring erotica/romance writer, this does concern me because it may very well affect my industry.

Now when I ask whether we’re becoming more sexually uptight, I don’t mean to say that we’re regressing to a point where women can’t show their ankles and men can’t acknowledge that the female orgasm exists. In an era of internet porn and Photoshop, that sort of prudishness just isn’t possible. Never-the-less, there are other ways for Puritan attitudes towards sex to manifest in new ways.

Picture the following scenario:

There’s a beautiful woman walking around topless on a sunny beach. A young man takes a moment to stare at her breasts and admire their beauty. The woman notices the man and is appalled. The woman points at the man, calls him a misogynist pig, and rallies every woman around her to scold and shame the man for daring to look at her exposed breasts.

What I just described isn’t necessarily something that happens on a day-to-day basis. It’s more a manifestation of the kinds of sexual attitudes that are evolving. We no longer censor sexuality or deny that it exists. Instead, we shame people who dare to appreciate it in ways we don’t approve of.

In many respects, this is just as bad as any censorship by the FCC because it isn’t imposed by a government body. It’s something that we’re doing to each other. Unlike government bureaucracy though, shaming actually works. In fact, shaming pre-dates government because it uses the built-in system of guilt that every human who isn’t a sociopath has hardwired into them.

Now trends in being sexually uptight aren’t new. For much of human history, civilization has gone through various cycles of sexual attitudes. Some ancient cultures, like Egypt, were relatively liberal in their sexual attitudes. Others, like Victorian era England, were so famously uptight for their sexual repression that visible ankles were considered scandalous.

Even in modern times, there are some parts of the world that are more sexually repressed than others. Places like India and Saudi Arabia, despite being thriving modern economies, have some very backwards attitudes towards sexuality. They don’t need shame to shun someone who has sex in a way they don’t approve of. They have the authority to just throw those people in jail, which they believe is sure to kill their sex drive.

What makes this trend in the west so disconcerting, though, is that it’s emerging from a society where equality and justice are among our highest values. Countries like America pride themselves, despite protests to the contrary, in their values towards gender equality. The problem is that, for some, equality just isn’t enough.

Here’s a real-world example that illustrates this issue. Back in 2013, an incident occurred at Occidental College wherein two freshmen had consensual sex while drunk, but only the man ended up getting expelled. Why did he get expelled? Well, by their standards, a woman cannot consent to sex while drunk. Therefore, the man committed sexual assault.

Think about that for a moment and try to make sense of it. Two people get drunk, but they’re not so drunk that they can barely stand. In this story, the two people involved could not only send texts. They could also talk about using condoms and practicing safe sex. How can such responsible behavior constitute assault?

It didn’t matter though. By the standards of the school, the man still committed sexual assault and was expelled. The woman didn’t get charged with anything. She was a victim who was traumatized by the act of having consensual sex after a few drinks.

Again, think about that for a moment. Think about what that kind of mentality indicates. Our sexual culture is becoming unequal again, but this time in a different way. Instead of women being shamed for their sexual practices, it’s men who are being shamed.

Today, a man who lusts for a woman and expresses his fondness of sex is considered a pig, a deviant, and a sexist. A woman who lusts for a man and expresses her fondness of sex is considered liberated, free-spirited, and strong. That is not equality. That is a recipe for repression and injustice, albeit in different way.

Ironically, this trend is regressing fashion trends among women. We’re already seeing it in superhero costumes. Female characters are less likely to show off their breasts or female curves. It’s as if highlighting the physical traits of women is now considered an act of misogyny.

As a man, I find these trends troubling and insulting. Am I somehow wrong, immoral, or sexist because I enjoy the sight of beautiful naked women? Are my attitudes towards women somehow flawed because I dare to admire their beauty? I wish those were rhetorical questions.

This troubles me even more as an aspiring erotica/romance writer because it means some of the novels I want to write might be rejected as being sexual in the wrong sort of way. I can easily imagine rejection letters saying “this book doesn’t have enough diversity” or “the man enjoys the sex too much” or “the woman is too feminine.”

I can just as easily imagine such regressive attitudes turning the erotica/romance I love into this target for those who claim it’s an affront to women. Never mind the fact that I write these stories to enchant, entertain, and titillate, some will still see it as some sort of egregious act of sexism.

This really does concern me. I’d rather not return to the days where people don’t even acknowledge sex exists and any attempt to discuss it is somehow taboo. We’ve already experienced that kind of repression and it doesn’t work. Let’s at least try to remain sane on matters as important and intimate as sexuality.

13 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as censorship, feminism, intimacy, love, Radical Feminism, romance, sex, sex in media, sex in movies, sex in society, sex on TV, sexual freedom, sexual repression

March 28, 2017 · 7:01 am

How Professional Trolls Hack Your Brain

Here’s a quick non-rhetorical question. What do Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Bill Maher, Lena Dunham, Bill O’Riley, John Oliver, Alex Jones, and Sean Hannity all have in common? Other than being richer, more successful, and more well-connected than you or I will ever be, what could possibly tie them together in a way that would help them get along at a barbecue?

Take all the time you need. I know this is one of those questions that’s not going to have a very satisfying answer to anybody. I also know it’s one of those questions that pisses people off, even before they answer it. This is the internet. People get pissed off for far less.

Are you done? Well, knowing full-well that I’ve already pissed off plenty of people, here it is. They’re all trolls who use the exact same tactics to make themselves successful and relevant. They may not do it overtly. They may not even admit to it, but on some levels they understand what they’re doing and why it works. Sadly, it works very well.

Now when I say they’re all trolls, I don’t mean to imply that they’re the kind of internet trolls that harass people on social media with insults, death threats, or pictures animals eating their own shit. Those kinds of trolls are a different breed. Granted, they’re annoying and should be ignored at all cost, but these professional trolls are on another level in that they make a damn good living doing what they do.

What these professional trolls do is as brilliant as it is disturbing. Pick any notable public figure who says controversial things. It can be Milo Yiannopoulos making derogatory comments about Muslims. It can be Lena Dunham saying she wished she got an abortion. Just think about any controversial thing that any controversial figure has ever said.

Whether it’s entirely planned or one of those instances where they don’t shut themselves up fast enough, the results are the same. People get outrage. Hashtags get started. Protests erupt. Venomous hate clashes with vocal support. There’s basically all this noise full of anger and passion.

As all this is going on, Milo and Lena are probably laughing to themselves at how much free publicity they just got. Anyone who has ever been in show business, media, or publishing will probably agree. The hardest part of success in Hollywood is getting publicity. There’s only so much of it to go around and people have a very finite attention span. Being able to get free publicity is like being able to play a game with cheat codes.

Now we’ve all heard there’s no such thing as bad publicity before. That sort of sentiment pre-dates the internet, going all the way back to the days when Ozzy Osborne bit the head off of a bat. Today, there’s one key difference that takes this phenomenon, gives it an unlimited supply of crystal meth, and sticks a nine-inch needle in our collective brains.

That difference is immediate access to information. From the internet, to our computers, to our phones, and into our pockets, we no longer have to wait for the evening paper to hear about these atrocious events. Thanks to social media, alerts, and annoying text messages, we can know about them mere minutes after they happen.

While this is a marvel of modern technology and communication, it does have a downside and it’s one that the professional trolls of the world have exploited to the utmost. That downside has to do with how stupid our collective brains are.

By that, I don’t mean that people themselves are stupid. I may be in a minority, but I believe that people, in general, are fairly decent and competent in their day-to-day lives. When I say our brains are stupid, I’m referring to the overall functionality of the hardware involved.

This goes beyond caveman logic, which I’ve cited many times before on this blog. This even goes beyond humans being wired for survival and reproduction rather than logic and reason. This is a byproduct of nature being too much of a blunt instrument rather than a scalpel. In this case, it makes professional trolls rich, successful, and famous.

They do this by hacking an unfortunate quirk in the human brain and using it to their advantage. It’s called “Misattribution of Arousal.” Unlike other convoluted scientific phenomena, this is exactly what it sounds like.

Have you ever been on a roller coaster? Have you ever been really scared by something? Well, if your brain is in working order, it got you extremely aroused and alert. You were afraid, excited, anxious, or euphoric. You could’ve felt any number of emotions at the time.

From your brain’s perspective, though, it’s the goddamn same thing. You’re aroused. There’s a stimulus you need to respond to. That’s all there is to it. As brilliant and complex as the human brain is, it’s still a pretty crude organ. It can’t do math worth a damn. It can easily be tricked by the David Copperfields of the world. It can, however, be tricked into getting aroused for all the wrong reasons.

This is what professional trolls do. They do or say something that gets people aroused. It’s not enough to just get their attention. I’ve already covered how attention is a big part in the “Always Be Closing” approach to success. However, attention only does so much. Adding arousal to the mix does something far greater.

When your brain is in a state of arousal, it doesn’t care much for specifics. It just knows its aroused and needs to respond to something. When you have instant access to information that upsets, angers, or thrills you in any way, that triggers arousal. That arousal, even if its the bad kind, causes the release of dopamine and this is where it gets really dangerous.

For those of you who aren’t caught up on neuroscience, you should still know what dopamine is. That’s the feel-good, everything-is-awesome chemical that our brain uses to reward us for doing things we like. Naturally, it’s a big part of our sexual response. If your brain is swimming in dopamine, that means you’ve had amazing sex.

Now the outrage/interest/arousal we fell with professional trolls doesn’t release quite that much dopamine into our brains. However, it does release some. It releases enough to get a response and due to the crude wiring of our brains, that’s more than enough.

That means that, on some levels, we like being outraged or upset by professional trolls. We like the feeling we get when we despise certain people, groups, or ideologies. Anger, hate, and fear all trigger the same arousal. Our brains enjoy that arousal to some level and thanks to modern communication, it’s far easier to get today than it has ever been in human history.

It’s uncharted territory. If these professional trolls were around 40 years ago, they would probably have a much harder time building an audience. They could say some of the most horrendously-offensive things anyone could possibly say, but it wouldn’t get a lot of attention because word would spread too slowly. The internet, along with social media, is changing that in a big way.

The professional trolls are maximizing that change to their benefit. They’re finding all sorts of ways to anger, upset, or inspire us, even if it’s stressful. Again, our brain doesn’t care. It still arouses us. It still gives us a non-trivial dose of dopamine. That’s all it takes to get people going.

It’s the hidden, unknown, unacknowledged secret that we’re just starting to understand. Whether you’re a die-hard social justice warrior or an outspoken supporter of the alt-right, you use the same methods as the professional trolls. You say and do what you need to do to get people aroused.

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or honest. You don’t even have to believe it on some levels. There are probably many figures out there who, in their private moments, know that what they’re saying is wrong or foolish. They just don’t care though because they’re not looking to say something right or uplifting. They’re trying to get people aroused and worked up.

Now I don’t know which professional trolls feel this way in private. I believe that on some level, they all really believe in what they’re doing. I also believe that on some level, they understand that some of it is misguided and flawed. There’s this vast gray area of understanding that’s hard to grasp and we’ll probably never know for sure just how much these professional trolls believe their own rhetoric.

Whatever the case, this is the world we live in now. We’re all very much at the mercy of the flaws of our collective brains. It’s hard to say where we’ll go from here. I don’t see the methods of professional trolls changing anytime soon. What they’re doing works. It’s making them money, getting them attention, and earning them fame. Until that changes, they’ll keep doing it.

There’s a lot more I can say about this topic and the science behind it. I’ll probably do a few other posts on it, if only to explore the implications for my own efforts to become a successful erotica/romance writer. Until then, I’ll leave some of the other details the brilliant people at Cracked.com.

A while back, they did a podcast on this subject. They bring up some pretty interesting/disturbing points about professional trolls. I don’t agree with their sentiment on every issue, but I do think they make some valid points. For anyone who is generally annoyed by professional trolls, those points are important to understand, if only to maintain a healthy perspective on why trolling works so damn well.

18 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as alt-right, Bill Maher, con-artist, cracked.com, extreme right, human psychology, ideology, internet, internet outrage, milo yiannopoulos, outrage culture, regressive left, social justice warriors, trolls

March 22, 2017 · 7:00 am

Would You Let An AI Choose Your Spouse?

It’s that time again. I’m pitching another one of my sexy thought experiments. I don’t know exactly how many people actually dedicate a significant portion of brain matter to these thought experiments, but I’m one of those guys who just like to put strange, sexy ideas out there. What people do with them is up to them.

This latest sexy thought experiment is actually a spin-off, of sorts, of another post I did that asked the semi-serious question on whether we should actually marry for love. That question wasn’t a thought experiment. I admit some of the points I made were done in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. This time, however, I want to ask a serious question with serious implications for us and future generations.

I’ve already pointed out that the concept of actually choosing your spouse is a new and radical idea in terms of the history of marriage, family, and relationships. Today, over half of all marriages in the world are arranged and some even champion this form of marriage because it boasts a lower divorce rate. That’s a debate for another post. For this thought experiment, I want to focus on the underlying principle of arranged marriages.

The logic is not entirely flawed or heartless. The idea is that finding a spouse or long-term partner is hard and shouldn’t be entrusted to the erratic whims of love. Men can fall in love with a nun and a cocktail waitress in the same day. Women can fall in love with their high school sweetheart and tennis instructor just as quickly. Love and passions are chaotic to say the least. That makes them an unstable foundation on which to build a relationship.

Arranged marriages are usually arranged by parents. That makes sense because who knows you better than your parents? They birthed you. They raised you. They changed your diapers, cleaned up your messes, and listened to you whine when your favorite TV shows got cancelled. In many respects, they know you better than anyone. Why wouldn’t they be qualified to find you a spouse?

I know it still doesn’t sit right for those in the freedom-loving, I-choose-my-own-path-and-I-DARE-you-to-get-in-my-way spirit of the modern west. It’s sort of a rite of passage in western culture, escaping the influence of your parents and authority figures to set your own path. There’s nothing wrong with this, but let’s not lie to ourselves. Sometimes we use that freedom to make stupid decisions.

For a decision like this, choosing a life-long companion with which to share our lives and passions, it’s generally a good idea not to make a stupid decision. The near-50 percent divorce rate in the United States, as well as every episode of “Married With Children,” is a testament to how bad it can get when we make stupid decisions about our love lives.

This is where the thought experiment enters speculative territory. We can argue whether or not our parents know us well enough to choose our spouse. Some parents know their kids more than others. My parents know when I’m lying, when I’m sad, when I’m upset, and when I just farted. Not every person can say that about their parents.

So what if there was something far smarter, far more informed, and far more resourceful than our parents could ever hope to be? What if there was very powerful, very intelligent authority figure that we trusted and respected because they’re such a critical part of our lives? Would we trust that to pick our spouse?

Enter artificial intelligence. I’ve brought that up a lot on this blog. I’ve posted warnings about just how quickly our future robot overlords are catching up to us. I’ve even made the argument that our future overlord will be a dominatrix. However, I’m not ready to dread our overlords as Skynet rip-offs just yet. I believe our robot overlords may very well earn our submission before it ever needs to impose it.

Finding us the perfect spouse would go a long way towards earning trust. Human beings are a very social, very passionate species. That’s why it should come as no surprise that science has uncovered a wide range of benefits of a long-lasting, healthy relationship. When you’re in love, sexually satisfied, and with that special someone, it makes your life better. That should be more obvious than Pamela Anderson’s cleavage.

An artificial intelligence, loaded with enough information about us and potential lovers, would be able to, in theory, find us the perfect spouse that complements us in every way. Now this would require insight into people that even our parents don’t know.

For a machine like this to work, it wouldn’t just need to know whether we prefer blondes or brunettes. It would need to know everything about everything, right down to which side of the bed we like to sleep on, and locate someone who finds that sexually appealing. That’s a lot of information about us and not everybody shares that kind of information easily, even if people are too eager to share every wet fart on social media these days.

Those limitations aside, let’s take the thought experiment to its greatest extreme. Let’s imagine an AI that has perfect knowledge about us. Perhaps it actually reads our thoughts and feelings, something computers are just starting to do. We all want to find love. If we had a chance for a machine to do it for us, wouldn’t we take that chance? After all, we already trust machines with our email, our schedules, and our porn stash.

It has a massive database of our thoughts and millions of others. It can then perfectly process all that information, determine which individuals are compatible, and hook them up with an efficiency that puts eHarmony, Match, and Tinder to shame.

Now we may never create a machine that works that perfectly, but we could conceivably create one that is powerful enough make determinations that no human mind can possibly make. Even if it wasn’t perfect, would you still take that chance? Would you still let that machine find you your perfect spouse?

Personally, I would give it a try. In fact, I would’ve tried it the second I became legally allowed to try it. I’m not saying I’d be that eager to get married, but I would definitely be eager to find someone who is truly compatible with me and complements me in every meaningful way.

I say this because when it comes to choosing a spouse and finding someone who is truly the one for you, it’s hard. Don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely worth doing, but it’s still very hard and prone to a lot of mistakes.

You’re bound to make mistakes. You’re bound to find someone you think is compatible with you, only to find out that they bring out the worst in you. You’re also bound to endure plenty of heartache along the way. I certainly have had my share. I know as well as anybody how much it sucks. If there’s any way to get around it or minimize it, I’d say it’s worth doing.

We’re already trying. The growth of online dating shows that we want technology to help us find better lovers, spouses, or one-night-stands. We want our technology to make this easier for us. My own less-than-memorable experience with online dating shows that this technology has a ways to go.

Like all technology, there is a growth and maturity period. Right now, we’re at the very nascent stages. We’re just starting to let AI assistants like Alexa, Cortana, and Siri into our lives. The kids born today will grow up having always had these AI’s in their lives. In some cases, they may trust them more than they trust their parents, especially as they become more advanced.

As a new generation comes to trust computers with more and more, doesn’t that mean it’ll only be a matter of time before we trust them to choose our spouse? I’m not saying it’s inevitable, but we’ve seen marriage and cohabitation evolve a lot over the centuries. The one constant, though, is that we all continue to seek love. If we have tools that can better help us find that love, then shouldn’t we make the most of it?

I’ll leave others to do this thought experiment themselves. Again, it probably won’t come to pass anytime soon, but there’s no reason to think that it wouldn’t. We already trust computers with so much. We’re bound to trust them even more as our lives and the world around us gets more chaotic.

5 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as AI, arranged marriage, Artificial Intelligence, computers, eharmony, futurism, human relationships, love, Match.com, men and women, online dating, relationships, romance, sex, sexuality

March 21, 2017 · 7:01 am

Animation: A Possible Solution For Erotica/Romance Movies?

This is a follow-up to a post I did a couple of days ago on the future of erotica/romance in movies. It’s an issue that I find myself contemplating more and more with the success, financially speaking, of the “50 Shades of Grey” movies. Since it’s an issue that may end up affecting the industry I work in, namely that of erotica/romance, it’s one in which I’ll keep a close eye on in the coming years.

I’ve already laid out the unique challenges facing erotica/romance in cinema. Even with the success of “50 Shades of Grey,” those challenges are pretty daunting. We’re still a long way away from a sexy erotica romance movie getting as much hype as a “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie. Given how that movie has the sex appeal of Chris Pratt going for it, it’s not affair fight to say the least.

Fair or not, the obstacles for erotica/romance are still pretty daunting. Between its association with the porn industry and a society that is still horrified of the idea of women being excessively sexual, it really does seem as though this genre on which I’ve chosen to build my writing career has a long way to go.

At the moment, there is a sizable, but not exceedingly large gap to overcome. On one side, you have mature stories with erotic themes like “50 Shades of Grey” and “Showgirls.” On the other, you have porn and the poorly-acted skin flicks that only air after midnight on Cinemax.

Bridging this gap, telling a serious story in a movie with a non-gratuitous amount of sex, is the key. As the success of “Die Hard” and all its assorted rip-offs can attest, it only takes one solid movie to kick-start a new trend.

In giving this issue some serious, sexy thought, which I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at on this blog, I think there might be one avenue that erotica/romance can take. It would help circumvent some of the biggest obstacles that I laid out before and complement other emerging trends as well. It could even completely reinvent the way movies, sexy or otherwise, are told.

What is this sexy solution, you ask? Well, it already exists in a major way, but it’s due for a major leap forward. It’s this:

That, my friends, is high-quality animation from the video game, “Destiny: The Taken King.” Take a moment to admire it. Then, think back to how animation used to be. If you’re with me to this point, you’ve already made the overtly-sexy connections.

This may be the key. This may be the secret weapon with which to shatter the seemingly-impenetrable walls that keep erotica/romance relegated to midnight skin-flicks on Cinemax. Animation, namely the high-quality kind that companies like Pixar and Bungie pay top notch for, could be the key to making erotica/romance work.

On paper, it makes perfect sense. With animation, you overcome one of the biggest obstacles in producing a quality movie, namely finding actors and actresses that can both emote the necessary passion and not shrivel, literally and figuratively, when they have to get naked and make love on demand.

Animated characters don’t complain about mood, chemistry, or how their trailers are painted. They don’t age. They don’t get fat. They can look as beautiful or as ugly as a director wants them to be. They are, by default, the perfect medium for bringing a character to life. A number have already become quite iconic.

Now this isn’t a wholly radical idea. In fact, it’s already an established industry in a magical land called Japan. There’s an entire genre of animated porn called anime porn. This brand of porn utilizes themes and stories so outlandish, so extreme, and so disturbing that even the worst moments in “Game of Thrones” cannot compare. Look up something called “Futanari” for proof. Be warned though, you won’t be able to unsee it.

Radical or not, Japanese anime has the same problem that our softcore skin flicks on Cinemax have here in the United States. The stories are flat. The acting and dialog is atrocious. The main point of these movies is to titillate and not enchant.

Pretty much every male character in an anime porn acts a certain way, just like every bleach-blond, big-breasted woman in a softcore porn acts a certain way. There’s no real depth. It’s just basic, bland, and blunt.

That may be a product of sticking to a winning formula. Japanese anime porn has been around for decades, has an established fan base, and isn’t going to risk that fan base by doing something different. That’s just how an established industry works.

That said, it does prove that there’s a market for mature, animated content. We’re already seeing major studios attempting to tap that market beyond the usual “Simpsons” and “Family Guy” demographics.

In the past few years, new cartoons with mature things like “Archer” and “Bojack Horseman” have found a major audience. Even among younger audiences, shows like “Samurai Jack” reveal that there is a market for a more mature cartoon.

The timing of this growing market couldn’t be better because as this audience is growing, technology in graphics and animation is improving. Moreover, video game companies and developers are using those improvements to tell better stories. Some of these stories are every bit as engaging, dramatic, and emotional as movies. I know this personally, as I’ve freely admitted that the end of Final Fantasy X and Mass Effect got me choked up.

Major video game makers are already exploring deeper, more mature stories that don’t just rly on killing zombies or shooting aliens. Games like “Heavy Rain” utilize mature themes, a rich story, and intimate moments. Having played the game, I can say that this definitely strikes plenty of chords, including the sexy kind.

So there’s a growing market for mature cartoons. The technology for graphics in animation is also improving and being refined through the $5.2 billion video game industry. What’s the hold up then? Why aren’t we seeing an animated “50 Shades of Grey” movie that isn’t limited to Jamie Dornan’s acting abilities?

As is often the case in the entertainment industry, it all comes down to money. That’s the simplest and most complete explanation. It’s safe to assume that if every major movie studio could replace every actor and actress with a 3D animated model, they’d do it in a heartbeat, thereby ensuring that they never have to work with Shia LeBeouf or Lindsey Lohan again.

The reason they can’t do that is because, as much as animation has improved, it’s still expensive. Toy Story 3, the current gold standard for animated movies, cost $200 million to make. For TV, the average cost of a half-hour animated show is about half-a-million and the cost of a top-quality show like “The Simpsons” is about $2 million.

For comparison sake, entire movies like “Boyhood” and “Whiplash” cost less than $5 million. Animation is also more labor-intensive, which requires a great deal of outsourcing, something the cast of a typical sitcom doesn’t have to worry about.

As it stands right now, animation is not a preferable option for making movies, TV shows, or erotica/romance. It’s costly, labor-intensive, and affiliated with too many talking animals. However, that may be changing in a major way very soon.

This is where I try to channel my inner psychic and see a bit into the future. Granted, I’m about as much a psychic as I am a starting point guard for the Golden State Warriors. Don’t assume I know more than someone working at Starbucks, but at least trust me when I say I do try to see the forest from the trees and make connections where I see them.

While the cost of animation is going up, advances in computing power and AI are growing as well. Most are content to let AI’s run their schedule or make annoying telemarketing calls, but they can’t make are, right? That’s intrinsically human, right?

I’m sorry to say that our future robot overlords are catching up faster than you think. Back in 2014, the University of Spain created, Iamus, a program that creates its own melodies. Not to be left out, Google followed suit with a program of their own in 2016.

That’s all well and good, even if it sucks for the future Taylor Swifts of the world. That doesn’t mean robots can draw, right? Humans still have that on the machines, don’t they?

Again, our future robot overlords are catching up faster than you think or feel comfortable accepting. In 2016, Google created another AI called “Quick Draw,” which can recognize simple doodles. A number of robots have even been able to produce their own artwork.

Granted, these works of art are a long way away from being Picasso or Elvis Presley. It’s a start though and, as our recent history with technology has shown, the pace of that technology will only accelerate. Given how slow and clumsy we humans are, it’s only a matter of time before they’re a billion times better at it than we are.

On top of that, the technology for computers to read our minds is emerging as well. This too is in the very early stages of development, but there’s a lot of money in technology, art, and doing things a billion times better. If a computer can make a movie like “Frozen” a billion times faster and a billion times cheaper, you can assume Disney will be all over it like Homer Simpson in a donut factory.

This has huge implications for every art-based industry in the world, but what does this mean for animation and erotica/romance? Well, most importantly, it means at some point the cost of animation is going to come down.

Eventually, a future version of Google’s drawing software will be so advanced that it can do the job of 100 animators 100 times faster and a million times cheaper. That means movies like “Toy Story 3” no longer cost $200 million. They could cost only a couple million. That means episodes of shows like “The Simpsons” can cost less than a used car.

This opens up countless possibilities for new stories to be told, which don’t have to rely on the bloated budgets or corporate backings of major studios. Since AI is also developing to a level where it can mimic voices, it means that even the cost of voice actors will go down or be replaced altogether.

It won’t happen all at once. There won’t come a day when entire animation studios go out of business or new studios pop up overnight. These types of technology trends take time to develop. They never happen all at once. Cell phones took 40 years to get to where they are now. Modern TV took over a half-century. Expect this kind of technology to take a few decades at the very least.

Image result for old tv

However, there’s a lot of money to be made. The rising cost of producing movies is creating a strong incentive to find an easier, cheaper way to create a similar product, minus all the zeroes at the end of the price tag. When there’s that much incentive, then economics usually makes it an inevitability.

That means the first real erotica/romance movie may not be the same live-action piece we saw with “50 Shades of Grey.” It may very well take the form of colorful, sexy animated feature that doesn’t require self-conscious actors or actresses to use body doubles. Maybe one of my own novels will one day take that form. I hope I live long enough to see it.

Again, that day will not be tomorrow. However, this may be the future of erotica/romance. In that sense, Jessica Rabbit may be less a cartoon sex icon and more a prophet. If so, she may go down in history as the sexiest prophet of all time.

4 Comments

Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights

Tagged as 3D animation, adult animation, adult movies, animation, anime, cartoons, erotica movies, erotica romance, Japanese Animation, Jessica Rabbit, love, mature, mature rated, movies, romance, romance movies, sex, sex in cinema

Category Archives: Jack Fisher’s Insights

Building Your Own Lover: Possibilities And Implications

First Sex Doll Brothel Open In Spain

Love And Age Disparity: Why It Matters

An Ode To Hot Teachers

We’re ALL Perverts (According To Cracked)

Are We Becoming More (Sexually) Uptight?

Would You Let An AI Choose Your Spouse?

Animation: A Possible Solution For Erotica/Romance Movies?

Donations

Jack’s Sexy Novels

Latest Release

Recent Posts

Jack Fisher’s Twitter Feed