Virtual reality porn blurs the line between fantasy and reality, is more addictive than regular porn, is ruining relationships, and is causing viewers to seek out ever more violent scenes. So says a female television ‘relationship expert’ who was quoted in an article published today at the New York Post. Laura Press, who appears regularly on Australian TV as an expert on relationships, made a battery of unfounded and unlikely claims about VR porn. I’m going to pick them apart here.
First of all, Press makes use of a recent study, which according to her (as paraphrased by the New York Post) – ‘found that sex-tech can blur the line between reality and fantasy, which could damage relationships and lead to harmful behaviors’. In fact, the 2022 study she is referring to, found no such thing. It did indeed find that viewers experienced VR porn more immersive and real than regular porn, but it concluded that this increased empathy with the performers in the scene.
Collectively, the results underscore the notion that VR improves immersion and presence for subjects, and this can translate to increased sexual desire, empathy for performers in pornography, and sexual anxiety in watching pornography. This is a field in infancy, and the initial results of empirical work suggest that VR can intensify some key aspects of the experience of pornography.
The next claim she makes is that VR porn is more addictive than regular porn, stating that 20% of VR porn users are ‘addicted’, while only 10% of regular porn users are. No source for this statistic appears in the New York Post article. I spent half an hour trying to find a source for it online, but could not. Even the ‘Your Brain On Porn’ website, which devotes an entire page to the horrors of VR porn addiction, does not make mention of this supposed fact.
It’s starting to sound a little as though this woman is making it up as she goes along. Perhaps the 20% figure comes from her own experiences with couples she has counseled, many of whom seem very eager to share their VR porn experiences with her?
“Due to its interactivity, it can raise questions among couples about whether using VR porn is cheating as you are so much more involved compared with viewing standard pornography,” she said.
“What couples also raise in sessions with me is that once an addiction to VR porn kicks in, there is less or even no time for communication, affection, and intimacy in the real life relationship.”
Doesn’t seem very scientific to me. Especially not given the value judgment tucked in there that ‘VR porn is cheating’.
But the relationship and VR porn expert isn’t finished yet. Not only is immersive porn more addictive, it can lead to men developing bizarre and violent Japanese fetishes, and then demanding that their partners act them out in the bedroom!
“Because virtual reality is designed in a way to meet all the senses and fulfil fantasies, the user can fall into sensory overload and regular intimacy with a person can seem dull by comparison,” Press explained.
“This can lead to someone watching more violent, aggressive or what some may describe as ‘bizarre’ fetish VR porn in order to get the dopamine and feel-good hit they are looking for.
“These fetishes can then invade the bedroom with the expectation that their partner would be OK with more extreme sex, which is not conducive to a healthy relationship.”
And all those dopamine hits in VR mean that addicts will seek out increasingly violent content to get their sexual highs.
“Your brain does not know if it is real or virtual, flooding your brain with dopamine. This is why people go back for more and more – this overload shuts down the dopamine receptors.
“The danger then is that in order to get that same ‘feel good’ feeling requires more intense, aggressive and for some even violent VR porn to get the same dopamine hit as felt on the very first use.”
If VR porn addicts inevitably desire increasingly violent VR porn, they are likely to be quickly disappointed and forced to go cold turkey. One of the most common complaints among VR porn fans is that it is almost universally vanilla and tame. It’s difficult to find any VR porn scenes depicting anything that even counts as ‘rough sex’, let alone anything that warrants the term ‘violent’. But then, Laura Press does set the bar very low there. According to her, a staggering ’88 percent of all pornography contains some element of aggression’.
This last claim pretty much sums up how seriously her argument should be taken. But sadly, as we know only too well, all it takes is one ‘expert’ to be given a platform for views like this, and governments around the world will race each other to pass sex tech stifling laws. Some of the (presumably male) commentators below the article were not convinced by Laura. ‘Surprise surprise. Some overweight chick doesn’t want her guy looking at hot chicks and she’s using her expertise to explain why it’s really important‘, one reader bluntly opined.
Featured image courtesy of BadoinkVR.
