Naughty America have been inviting a number of online tech magazine writers to try their vr porn movies, and without fail it seems, they loved it. There seems to be a definite trend in the growing positive articles about adult vr, as compared to previously when most journalists felt obliged to claim that it was ‘creepy’ or suchlike. Take, for example, the writer at Digital Spy, who compares trying vr porn to the experience of losing one’s virginity :
Bashing the bishop, strumming the banjo, flicking the bean: whatever you call it, virtual reality is about to change it for good. I just had my first experience of VR porn, and it was as fun, exciting, and scary as The First Time.
But unlike that momentous event, this one didn’t happen in a teenage bedroom: my VR ‘V’ plates were taken in an outdoor cafe at the world’s biggest phone show, Mobile World Congress. (Never had that name seemed more ironic.)
With the help of adult entertainment site and VR porn pioneers Naughty America – and a Samsung Gear VR headset – I put down my coffee and in seconds found myself looking down at a ripped torso that clearly wasn’t mine, and a frankly intimidating jumbo man handle.
And I wasn’t alone. Completely unknown to the crowds around me, I was joined by two naked girls who quickly set about the johnson-that-wasn’t-mine-but-kind-of-was in a remarkably lifelike scenario. (I mean in the sense of real life happening, not plausibility. This was porn, after all.)
The scenes feature serious visual depth and three-dimensionality. My mind told me to reach out and touch, but my invisible arms were grabbing nothing but air. With the ability to move my head and look around the 180-degree field of view, it’s a classic case of look but don’t touch, but that didn’t really matter to the experience. Probably a good thing given where I was. In an instant, porn has transformed from a passive to an interactive experience.
By the time the second scene rolled round I was starting to feel like I was viewing it through my own eyes. The first-person perspective (PoV, in porn terms) meant I was no longer just watching porn, I was experiencing it too. This was my gym-toned, God-favoured body. My “partner’s” genitals were mere inches from my face. My brain felt like it was adapting to a new body and sensations, and when the ‘talent’ made eye contact, VR porn wasn’t just immersive, it became genuinely intimate.
But the writer notes that the ultra-realistic nature of vr porn, and its feeling of real intimacy far beyond 2D porn, may raise ethical questions.
But VR porn raises more than your heart rate – it raises moral dilemmas too. Despite being nowhere near a physical woman, the reality of the experience made me feel guilty. How would my girlfriend react knowing what I’d been getting up to at work? At what point do you have to consider it cheating?
Then there’s the issue that most of the ‘material’ is about the male, heterosexual gaze (as usual). There’s simply very little available yet for women (or men) who want to experience VR porn from a female or gay (or both) perspective, a fact that Naughty America puts down to lack of demand.
But that might change with time. Just as the internet has facilitated some (small) steps towards serving women’s demand for pornography as well as men’s, VR will inevitably create its own market. Porn is no longer just about titillation, it’s about experience. Fans of 2D smut who sample VR will simply never be able to go back. Like, ever.
The writer is clearly wrong about the lack of ‘alternative’ vr porn for women and gay men. This may be true of Naughty America, the site that he was sampling, but both BadoinkVR and VirtualRealPorn have released many ‘vrole play’ porn videos which lets you take the POV of another gender, race, and/or sexuality. For example, Badoink have made videos that let you experience interracial sex inside the body of a black man, or lesbian sex as one of the lesbians. There are also already gay vr sites and even a transsexual vr site.
Meanwhile, an informations officer at Naughty America has publicly agreed with my recent prediction that vr porn will soon be a billion dollar industry. Naughty America also make the claim that the Sony Playstation VR is doomed if it doesn’t allow vr porn in its app store, just as it’s decision not to allow porn on the Betamax enabled VHS to win the video tape wars.
