http://escapepod.org/2009/09/17/ep216-%CE%B2oyfriend/

Are you now or have you ever been an adolescent girl? If not, shut the fuck up. I won’t tell you what gets you off– frankly I don’t give a damn. But don’t you EVER presume to know what is the mind of a young girl. I really HATE guys who buy their own hype and think that their fantasies are some true, liberated sexuality. This is part of my “problem” with the LOVE PLUS game because it is programing the virtual girl with male fantasies–making them her own–making it appear that it is in fact also her fantasy. (which, by the way, is what a lot of women do, because women have a strong desire to please and be loved) My POINT is that in this culture– which is constantly cramming male sexual fantasies down our throats (often literally)– it is almost impossible for girls to develop their OWN sexual desires.

PS: the Stepford wives are the ones wearing the thongs and taking the pole-dancing classes– all good wifebots do whatever is necessary to keep Daddy’s dick hard.

What I do disagree with is that sort of flaccid resignation that men have about themselves these days. Why do they insist that males are simple? If you review what we know of human history, you would find that the overwhelming bulk of it was made by males. There’s no sense in having some little slap-fight argument over it; that’s simply what our history looks like. So how could you look at thousands of years of history, then declare that men are somehow inferior things? It sounds like maybe some of us are having trouble reconciling their gender with their sense of self-worth. You guys need to get over that.

“They internalize these fantasies and before you know it they are dressing like strippers on Halloween, their Mom’s are taking pole-dancing class at the Y, and the whole family is buying 100% cotton thong panties from Lands End.”

I could just as easily argue that these actions are manifestations of desires that always existed and people only now feel free enough to live them out.

Do you think a woman, in her natural state, is a Stepford wive and any sexual fantasies extending beyond laying down flat for her husband are manufactured by the media?

I think human beings, being the weak, fallible creatures that they are, will generally always hang themselves given enough rope. Life usually takes care of that by forcing you to confront things you don’t want to during the course of your life, resulting, hopefully, in a wiser, more balanced version of yourself. That’s maturity, to me- the ability to recognize and deal with unexpected situations in a way which is beneficial to everyone, you included. The more we allow ourselves the ability to avoid these situations, the more immature we are becoming as a culture.

I’m sure that’s not a perfect definition, but hopefully you get the gist. I’m not defining maturity as “someone who wears a suit every day” or anything that ridiculous. I do read boing-boing, after all!

You would find that the portion that wasn’t made by males was violently suppressed, ignored and expunged from the records. Fixed that for you.

But yeah, this game would be embarrassing as all hell to play.

well in this instance, ‘immature’ was defined at least peripherally in this statement, “most men are immature and want to put the least amount of effort into anything relationship-wise.”

so we’ve got a loose definition, at least as it applies to you, which works since given that it’s literally defined by “exhibiting less than an expected degree of maturity.” the expectation part leaves it some room for interpretation.

so, regarding your observation that men could be expected typically to be at least somewhat attracted to the prospect of a virtual relationship over an actual relationship, it all comes down to effort vs return.

the astonishing thing isn’t that virtual relationships exist, it’s that there is an obvious imbalance that makes the effort to return ratio higher in the case of virtual relationships. my question isn’t ‘what’s wrong with this person that they would indulge in such fantasy’ – it’s ‘whats missing from this persons IRL relationships that would cause them to find a virtual relationship preferable’?

what im getting at is that while a healthy real life relationship will (almost) always trump a virtual one in terms of return, in terms of effort, it may just not be worth it to some. if you give people the option, ‘you can work 1 hour a day and make $40 or you can work 8 hours a day and make $100′, you find out really quick which ones actually WANT to work. you find out which ones require less to have their needs met.

Yurie: If there was a boy version, I think most women would be able to clearly distinguish between real life and in-game life. I have celebrities I like, too, but then I also have a husband. And they’re totally separate.

I have seen women completely lost to WoW. Before that, I have seen women completely lost to mucks. The attachment to the world of imagination is no less powerful for women than men; both sexes will fill in gaps in presentation to see what they want to see.

So yeah. Keep telling yourself you can hold yourself away from this kind of hole, Yurie. Maybe you can – some people are more vulnerable to this kind of thing than others. But I have seen a lot of people fall into virtual romances, with or without real ones to pull them back. And now it seems we finally begin to have software presenting a sophisticated enough illusion to do it without a person on the other end of the datastream.

Basically, there are a lot of sad nerds in Japan who fell that digital girlfriends are cheaper and more understandable.

But blame the nerds, despite the fact that by being social outcasts, the nerds have never had any sort of meaningfully significant influence on the population in the first place. It’s easier to do that than to examine the government policies and economic institutions that really got us into this mess in the first place.

Who cares about the weirdos, right? Doesn’t matter that they’re just as human as anyone else, it’s just too much easy fun to use them as a convenient punching bag, right? Scream and cry over how pathetic/dangerous/sick/whatever the “abnormal” people are, and alienate them further. That way you’ll always have a steady supply of weirdos to blame when things go wrong. Why try to understand them and help them rejoin society? If we do that, we won’t have any scapegoats left and might actually have to take responsibility!

Cruelty, alienation, and scapegoating, just more of humanity’s “normal”
self-righteous ugliness.

Considering how unusual the subject is, I was kind of surprised to find it pretty funny. In a good way.

I think this comes down to the fact that men are simple.

Methinks someone is having a spot of self-esteem issues. Maybe that’s got something to do with his addiction?

One interesting issue to consider is that Love Plus has passive protagonists. In text/menu-based games, you are in the same level as the targets of affection – you communicate via text – so you can just reverse the sense of communication. But here you are the active character, and you need to “perform” suitably. If roles were reversed, would one expect the game to work in the same way?

Kind of reminds me of Lawnmower Man that was trying to predict “Virtual Immersion Addiction” and it had the scientist with his $20,000 “NextBox” computer that’d be half a modern computer even now and he was playing in the field of virtual liquid blobs. His wife comes in: “Let’s see, Floating, Flying, Falling… What’s next, FUCKING!?”

I shot tofu milk out of my nose when he said that.

But seriously, I’ve had that same passing thought in regard to my meatspace relationships from a decade ago.

Thanks for that last comment. Beyond what you said, those sexual projections are being pushed so hard that when a young girl is flirting with discovering her sexuality/desires (in a hellishly awkward and confusing state) it seems there are always so many nearby desperately(not necessarily actively/consciously) waiting for a whiff of their sexual fantasies to be “redeemed” or “validated.”

Young women can then quickly find themselves immersed/locked into a situation, when they were just attempting to explore their ideas and feelings.

I think everyone deserves time and space for their gender & sexual developments. In the US I find media (and lest we forget the superior works of men historically) is saturated with penis imagery.

As much arguing happens over sex ed classes, generally parents don’t spend time even attempting to help their kids deal with such a monumental part of development.

Who was there to help you? Has there ever been? Maybe if you pay a counselor…

We cannot choose what mentally or physically attracts, or why, but we know as individuals what motivates us. To have some strange people with differnt fantasies than our own tell us that our variety of fantasy is somehow categorically unhealthy, is by nature offensive, and likely to be met with spite.

That kind of social antagonism can also contribute to the intensity and irresistability of the object(s) of our fantasy. The forbidden fruit is the one that promises to taste sweeter than any other.

If you think sexual video games are harmful, then don’t draw attention to them.

I agree with the guy who said that a man’s priority of software fantasies over real-life relationships is about the ratio of effort put in to the gratification one gets out of it. If, for some individuals, software produces gratification more efficiently than human interaction, what is source of the problem?

You obviously think you know….the software.

Finally, harmonious human relationships are not the benchmark of human maturity. Some mature humans pursue lofty scientific or artistic goals, and are not interested in human social pursuits. Would you call their choice in life immature too?

Way to stereotype. Y snd ft.