“For a good time, get online” may soon replace the more familiar graffiti scribbled in bathroom stalls around the world.
To see why, just log on to the “social” areas of many online services or the Internet these days, and this is the kind of socializing you’re almost sure to run into:
“BigOne27: Are you ready for some good loving tonight?”
“Mistress155: Maybe. What can you supply?”
“BigOne27: You name it, babe, I’ll give it . . . .”
The rest of the dialogue, which continued for over half an hour, is best left to the reader’s imagination.
It was taken directly from a “chat” area of a popular U.S. online service and is representative of the kind of “information” that many believe is the driving force behind the popularity and growth of the information superhighway.
“The reason that online services are popular has a lot more to do with virtual matchmaking and sexy chitchat than with anything else,” writes John Dvorak, author of several books on telecommunications and computer columnist for PC Magazine.
On any given day or night in cyberspace, whether on America Online, CompuServe, the Internet or elsewhere, users can log on to lascivious discussion areas using an assumed name and play out their fantasies with others.
“Nobody wants to admit it, but the more anonymous and sexually explicit the service, the more successful it is,” Dvorak said.
The facts seem to support Dvorak’s assertion.
America Online is the fastest growing commercial online service in the U.S. The company’s “chat” areas, with titles such as “Flirts’ Nook” or “Gay & Lesbian,” encourage users to adopt pseudonyms representing either gender. And the subscriber base of America Online has tripled in the last 12 months, now totaling more than 1.2 million, said Pam McGraw, spokeswoman for America Online.
On the Internet, the immense worldwide network of networks, sexually oriented “newsgroups”-analogous to “chat” areas on commerical services-are immensely popular and offer a dizzying number of topics.
While there are no hard statistics linking the explosion in popularity of the Internet to its numerous and uncensored sexual topic areas, the evidence available is intriguing.
“The Internet Yellow Pages,” a book released this year by McGraw Hill, attempts to provide an overview of the Internet for the non-technical user. Sex-related information and newsgroups occupy a full nine pages in the book, more than any other section. Topic areas range from “amputee fetish,” “bestiality” and “bondage” to “prostitute prices,” “sex talk” and “watersports.”
“The sex talk on the Internet is one of the major draws,” said Stephen Brothers, a technical support manager at a university in Colorado. “It is obvious when you see groups of guys in the computer lab hanging around a monitor watching the discussions,” he said.
Is the abundance of bawdy banter in cyberspace healthy?
Some think it is. “For shy adults, and the majority are, the online interaction provides options that the bar scene and normal life don’t,” said Rich Roth, a software designer in California.
But others are increasingly concerned about the inability of online services and the Internet to control who can access sexually explicit areas.
For now, however, the online community remains a truly open, uncensored world, and users offended by the online sex talk can only hope for what one long-time Internet follower calls “less idiocy and rudeness.”
