Whilst this site itself has seen a huge traffic drop over the last year, thanks to Google deciding it is ‘unhelpful’, my official subreddit : r/immersiveporn has reached a notable milestone. Created in 2017, last week it finally reached over 1,000 subscribers. It’s something to raise a glass to, although I have no illusions that a lot of the nominal followers are the incessant spam bots that leave comments claiming that so and so is the best AI girlfriend site, and then massively upvote them. Real posts and comments tend to get few upvotes. In fact, I’m still virtually the only person posting there. The same is true for my other subreddit r/digisexuals, which has also crept up to the 1K mark. Unfortunately, despite the much heralded ‘rise of the digisexuals‘, it seems that a digisexual or any porn and sex tech community is hard to build (other than communities that simply share AI porn).
Tying The Disparate Strands Of Digisexuality Together Is Difficult
Whilst ‘digisexuality’ is a real and growing phenomenon, in that the sexual behaviours it describes (sexual satisfaction through technology, increasingly as an end in itself) is indeed an accelerating trend, we still seem to be a long way from seeing a self-conscious digisexual identity emerging. There is still no like-minded active community of digisexuals, celebrating and supporting each other, in the way that there are for countless little sexual niches and fetishes, let alone anything that even shows signs of becoming a new sexual/political identity such as lesbian, gay, or trans.
Large and thriving communities do exist, however, for specific categories of digisexuality, such as sex dolls, or VR porn. Despite some overlap, these various categories remain rigidly separated from each other. Perhaps that will change as the overlap gradually increases, for example, with VR and AR porn fans making increasing use of sex dolls to enhance their experience.
I am though, somewhat cautious when it comes to predictions about digisexuality as an identity shared by a community, rather than a label imposed by academics and journalists observing a trend from outside. I certainly do not envision a digisexual identity as inevitable, even if millions upon millions do ultimately come to see technology as essential in their sex lives.
The history of porn itself may indicate that digisexuality as an identity may forever be an illusion. Porn has been consumed for centuries, and of course has exploded in the age of the Internet and easy access to pornographic materials. Yet there has not been the slightest hint of a sexual identity arising from it. The closest thing to any ‘identity’ emerging from individuals who appear happy to ‘get off’ largely on porn alone, are the ‘gooners’. The term itself seems to have arisen as a label to describe somebody ‘addicted’ to porn. Many self-confessed ‘gooners’ seem happy to embrace the term, but it’s not clear if this is anything like a political identity, for example consciously opposing or at least reacting against the NoFap community or other anti-porn movements. From my observations, it seems largely a self-debasing term used by men simping for webcam girls and other online thots. If the gooners are the closest thing to a digisexual identity emerging, then the prospects for one seem pretty dim indeed.
