When Real Isn’t Real Enough: VR and Hyperreality’s Erotic Allure

How ultra-immersive adult entertainment might be altering our sexual awareness

A paper by researchers from Indonesia’s University of 17 Agustus 1945 Surabaya and Gadjah Mada University examines the possibility explicit virtual reality media may cause consumers to develop unexpectedly different views towards what is or isn’t intimate—perhaps even shifting their sexual identities and perspectives.

Conducted by Nara Garini Ayuningrum, Achmedza Aziz Ghofar, Isrida Yul Arifiana, and Nadia Aulia Ferlinda, and subsequently published in the Journal of Scientific Research, Education, and Technology (JSRET), the research is framed around sociology and philosophy’s concept of hyperreality; the point when a sufficiently immersive technology becomes more real than real, including to the point where genuine experiences could either feel less appealing or ironically a pale imitation of someone’s preferred, yet wholly synthetic, virtual version of it.

The Astroturf is greener

The study employs a qualitative approach along with netnography—a form of “Netnography is a qualitative research method adapted from traditional ethnography. 

Developed by Robert Kozinets (2019), systematic observation and analysis of online interactions uses discussions, shared content, and comments to try to understand the cultural practices, social dynamics, and collective meanings of digital spaces. 

Valuable for exploring how individuals engage with, contribute to, and shape online communities, Netnography helped the team analyze this phenomenon by reviewing Pornhub’s top three Virtual Reality-based adult videos.

As part of their evaluation, the team broke down the elements behind VR’s ever-increasing popularity, beginning with accessibility. Until relatively recently, virtual reality technology was too expensive for most to try, let alone spend a lot of time exploring.

RECOMMENDED READ: One (Virtual) Step At A Time: Using VR to Alleviate Sexual Stress

Next is anonymity, the allure of being able to watch or, with more advanced gear, interact with anything, anywhere, and at any time. Then there’s accommodation, meaning accompanying virtual reality’s undeniably explosive growth has been a matching rise in the number of sometimes wildly different types of content. In short, if you’re into it, then somewhere out there is a site—or more like a dozen sites right up your sexual alley.

Too good or not good enough?

From there, the researchers state, “the most cutting-edge step that VR Porn tries to accommodate is the projection of intimacy,” noting how feeling emotionally connected with someone else is essential for forming and nurturing healthy relationships, sexual or otherwise: 

“If the implementation of VR technology manages to get a combination of hardware, software, and sensory synchronicity, then it will achieve something known as a “sense of presence”, where the subject really feels like a real presence. In its development and efforts to make sense, VR Porn devices can create entirely new and immersive sexual experiences for their users that may never be realized to be done in the real world”

However, the team disparages VR’s total immersion, leading to where, “Instead of expressing sexual desires, the constant consumption of VR Porn and self-isolation from the real world can have a misleading effect on the abyss of pseudo-reality.”

Beyond compare

It’s difficult, if not flat-out impossible, to predict what, if any, negative impacts VR adult content might have on human sexuality in the coming decades.  If the  Indonesian team is even slightly correct, we could see a growing number of people for whom sex outside of VR might feel like a pale imitation of their preferred, super high-resolution, state-of-the-art, better-than-the-real-thing reality.

However, even if proven to be true, it will be years, if not decades, before these sorts of not merely fully but totally indistinguishable—eventually surpassing what lies beyond our VR headsets—immersive fantasies can come anywhere close to reality.

But even if these technological advances came faster than expected, would they, if you take my previous suggestion, do what these and other researchers appear so worried about?  Yes, VR can be shockingly immersive, but take away its bells and/or whistles, and it’s basically what happens when watching adult videos, reading erotic literature, or looking at dirty pictures.  

Except rather than virtual reality doing all the work for us, our imaginations transport us to universes of idealized, sexually limitless experiences where anything goes: world after world, fantasy after fantasy, all freed from reality’s annoyances and limitations.

It’s not if virtual reality will alter society and how we view and interact with each other sexuality, but when and how. Positive, negative, or somewhere in between, we shouldn’t forget that while reality is not without its many pleasurable perks, we’ll always prefer our fantasies.  

It’s not wrong, dangerous, or heralding your choice of sexual, cultural doomsday, but what makes us so wonderfully human.

Image Sources: Depositphotos