New research shows that online dating sites promising "matching algorithms" don't work: The Dubious Science of Online Dating. In other news, I just helped launch the new blog for How About We, a dating site that tosses out algorithms in favor of proposing date ideas.
for some reason, thinking about contraceptives as a prisoner's dilemma in which women disproportionately lose (HT @MZHemingway), makes me almost as depressed as experimenting with an iPad as a dude magnet and discovering it doesn't work.
ah well. onward. -- FB
so women still aren't welcome in tech start--up culture? dudes, consider the following:
smarter, more educated women drink more. check.
promiscuous women cause earthquakes. you betcha.
the navy is cool with adding chicks on submarines, and taking away smokes. aha.
now let me ask you, do you want to get laid or not? -- FB
Women "with degrees are almost twice as likely to drink daily" sounds like fodder for all sorts of inappropriate joking, but I'd like to think it's about a willingness to abandon oneself to both pleasure and the moment. [via] -NA
Top secret Improv Everywhere thing today involving Stormtroopers, if that's your thing. My thing? Stormtrooper burlesque. -- DG
The Zentai Project makes it sound like its some sort of hip, performance art-type thing to go around in a full body latex/lycra suit. I remember when we used to just call those people into masking gimps. -- DG
Esquire asks Mary Louise Parker to give up sex for a month. She accepts. Then declines. Then writes about it. Sort of. Seems a bit staged but anything she does or doesn't do is completely forgivable.
See also: giving up the news ("I read novels during my daily commute. I straight-up ignored Chris Matthews. Bliss. Then things got weird") and drinking by Editor in Chief David Granger ("The other hardest thing about not drinking is eleven o'clock"). Smells like the first Esquire feature-turned-book I might even buy--giving up on things as a trend seems like a natural, compelling next step in our excessive "try everything" culture. --FD
The cover for the upcoming "Sex" issue of Granta features a very pretty pink vagina purse. Subtle! --FD
"Sure, you can carpe diem, but with the late-night text you're saying you're ready to carpe a.m." -- From the inaugural sex column on late-night texting in the newly-launched HuffPost College. --FD
OK Cupid's trends blog is amazing. Graphs, graphs, graphs... and dating data!
Your new favorite Wikipedia entry for the next five minutes: Catullus 16. It's a 1st century BC poem, the first line of which is translated, "I'm gonna fuck you guys up the ass and shove my cock down your throats." [via]
Belle de Jour, the anonymous sex blogger from London, never really became a huge phenom in America. (Most people don't even know that Secret Diary of a Call Girl, the ITV2 show about her, gets replayed on Showtime in the States.) Anyway, she has finally revealed her identity and the best part is that not only is she a she -- but she's a scientist! Dr. Brooke Magnanti, welcome to geekboy adoration.
Marge Simpson's Playboy pictorial leaked. Okay, listing her measurements as 26-26-26 is funny.
"The sexy son hypothesis is one of several possible explanations for the highly diverse and often astonishing ornaments of animals." Oh, science.
Your new favorite dating site: FarmersOnly.com. It boasts "Over 100 marriages" and has a trademark on "City folks just don't get it!" I agree! Luvs. [via]
Scientific American: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? It's science!
Esquire's Jezebel-bait: Where Have All the Loose Women Gone? "From Tina Fey's fake prude to Sarah Palin's real power play, here's why strong women just aren't that into having sex with you anymore."
I know I shouldn't bother hating such things, but... "It's official. Boys text, therefore girls must learn how to flirtext!" Flirtexting. It's a book. Ugh.
There's a Grigoriadis profile of Sasha Grey in the new Rolling Stone, which is of course not online, but there's a blog post. The lede of the story:
On an overcast Sunday in Los Angeles, Sasha Grey arrives at a set for the film The Fuck Junkie promptly at 9 a.m. This is not her real name, though it's a subtle one for a porn star, a mash-up of Sascha Konietzko, a founder of the German industrial band KMFDM, and the Kinsey scale of sexuality, which identifies sexual orientation as shades of gray.Other things we learn:
Something new to hate: The Vassarettes. A band created to sell a line of bras, which they must perform in. Comparisons are made to The Pussycat Dolls, but they remind me of Vixen.
A Porno Based On The Cosby Show. Start your "jello in your pudding pops" jokes... now!
Virginity rates among students by major. From Anthropology (20%) to Math (83%).
Long O article: Why Women Are Leaving Men for Other Women. Not sure why the answer is not "because they're hotter." [via]
Diddy is live-twittering himself having tantric sex right now. And you are reading it.
The neurochemical version of The Game: NYT Mag's cover story, What Do Women Want? (Okay, not really. This piece kinda rambles, misses on its few points, and could generally use a big structural edit. But there are a few good bits in there.)
Your favorite Tumblr for the next five minutes: Disgusting People I Have Made Out With.
In addition to that Sodebergh flick, Sasha Grey is also appearing naked in skyscraper ads for American Apparel around the internet.
My non-observation observation for the day: Sexy People is on Blogger, whereas Boner Party is on Tumblr.
Esquire: What's with All the Ugly People Having Sex? "Pornography, like every other type of expression available in contemporary life, has been democratized. This is new." (Psst, no it's not.)
The porn star Sasha Grey is starring in Steven Soderberg's next movie, The Girlfriend Experience. You might know her from music videos for The Roots ("Birthday Girl") or Smashing Pumpkins ("Superchrist") -- or from porn. Update: NSFW profile on VBS where she calls herself an "existentialist porn star" and This Recording's homage.
The Onion: 'I Am Under 18' Button Clicked For First Time In History Of Internet.
2009 NYC Sex Blogger Calendar photo shoot. A million words would not be enough...
'Fauxmosexuals' Ruining It For Real Gay People. Ahem. I happen to just like scarves, m'kay?
Well-known internet people get engaged via Twitter. The rest of the nation hurls.
The Atlantic likes their rhetorical questions: Is Pornography Adultery?
New Gmail extension: Mail Goggles. Too bad emailing her isn't the real problem.
SideTaker.com. She gives her side, he gives his side, users vote on who's right. I am hereby resolving all conflicts via crowd-sourcing. [via]
My Black Book. Store your sexual partner histories and it provides trend analysis -- with pretty graphs! [via]
Have a good weekend, internet. 50 Sexiest Music Videos of All Time. (Shocked that Prince isn't #1.)
Just released: SXSW Panel Picker. Vote for my panel! We'll discuss oversharing, the dangers and benefits of posting your sex life, and the crushing collision between quasi-sex and micro-celebrity. The panelist list will be spectacular! (The panel was Melissa's idea.)
What do actual call girls think of Showtime's Secret Diary Of A Call Girl? Salon asks them. [via]
Hollywood Stars' Secret Porn Pasts. Includes Stallone, Coppola, Sonnenfeld, and... wait, both of Thora Birch's parents were porn stars?
I've often wondered about the legal difference between prostitution and pornography.
It seems an obvious paradox that both acts are essentially the same: sex in exchange for money. However, there is of course one key difference: a camera.
Culturally speaking, this appears to be an extremely revealing detail of the modern psychology. Sex for money is legal only if it's recorded and distributed. The camera, it would seem, validates everything.
But it almost seems like a legal loophole that could be exploited. Imagine this scenario: The vice squad arrests some dude for picking up a hooker. "I wasn't soliciting sex," he claims. "I am making a porn movie." Does his claim to record and distribute the sexual act make it legal? Does he have a First Amendment case? It sounds like a glib question, but it's a legit case!
(Shhh, don't steal my idea, but I want to write a Law & Order script about this. I've already got a title: Get Off The Bang Bus.)
I've talked about this elsewhere, but the tricky part of the First Amendment in the coming years will be answering this question: what constitutes free speech in the age of personal media?
I've ranted about the slippery slope that Josh Wolf, for instance, created by essentially claiming that any act could be constituted as journalism, and hence protected by the First Amendment. If you think about the logical conclusions of that, the danger becomes clear. Would this include corporate security tapes or accidental photos? If journalism is simply saying it is, we're opening ourselves up to some slippery cases. (And don't mistake that remark as fear of actual so-called citizen journalism. That's what I want to make sure we protect!)
Anyway, back to porn... It turns out that the legalities are even more complicated [via]. The basics are this:
The First Amendment will get some tricky questions thrown at it in the coming years, as one of these "personal media" cases eventually trickles its way up the Supreme Court. Given the current makeup of said body, I'm worried what the outcome will be. Sometimes, it may be better to not test the law.
The other day I was questioning the statistical validity of certain lists (while at the same time praising any list that places me above Lockhart!), but now we have this list to contend with. Suck it, Kanye!
A different tactic than the moral outrage over those cute girl blogger lists: The Top 10 Boy Bloggers We'd Let Rub Our Touchpads.
Any of ya wanna reconsider those bilious comments about Jezebel? Hey, fine if ya don't, just askin.
Times of London: "I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty." Psst, you should! [via]
Well, since I linked to the last one... Playboy's Hottest Bloggers.
So last week Tracie and Moe of Jezebel were on Lizz Winstead's show, Shoot The Messenger. Things got rowdy when the topic turned toward rape. It's a seven-layer cake of complicated.
I hate linking to this stupid Converse viral video campaign too, but whatever: Out Of Your League Girl On Confidence.
This is what happens when you read The Game as a how-to rather than a cautionary tale: Dimitri The Stud, the worst voicemail of all time. Update: he's got a website. [via]
Time for your classics lesson: Meaning of Ashley Alexandra Dupre's Tattoo Revealed.
Esquire: The Five Most Ridiculous Porn Scenes.
Salon.com: U still up? Wait, you mean to tell me that there are people out there who text each other with no intention of hooking up?
I try not to mix my work projects into this site, but one of my clients, IFC, just launched the third season of Young American Bodies, a video series that first made a name for itself on Nerve.com.
Perhaps you were recently feeling that maybe America wasn't fucked? Let me fix that: YouTube entries for Playboy's 55th Anniversary Playmate Search.
Now here we go.... I C U: Where The Boys/Girls Are, LAT's interactive distribution map illustrating where the single people are by age. NYT, your move. [via]
Your new favorite hookup site for the next five minutes: Divorce360.com (beta). Tagline: "If it's over, what's next?"
IntelligentPeople.com -- a dating site for smart people. You have to take an IQ test to get in. [via]
So the woman-faking-orgasms-in-movies meme... we've got Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, Kristen Bell in Forgetting Sarah Marshall... what else?
Playboy is looking for hottie waitresses for their "Girls of Olive Garden" issue. Can't wait to see them buttering their breadsticks.
I love science because it explains complex things like which women I am more likely to take home for one-night stands, or something like that.
An interview with the dude has a robot girlfriend. I don't even know which quote to pick. Let's try this one: "Just like gay people can get along fine with girls, I can get along fine with humans. Just not in a sexual way."
I love that the Orlando Sentinal did a little internal database search and found they had nude photos of Ashley Alexandra Dupre in their archives too. This after that Girls Gone Wild prick did practically the same thing. I bet if you check your iPhone photo library you'll find some too.
Ashley Dupre's Girls Gone Wild video. (The late-night, stickers-on-the-nipples version.)
Kottke rounds up the post-Spitzer intellectualizing of prostitution. My favorite part of this whole thing is seeing sex bloggers finally getting bylines in big publications!
No matter how hard you try, sometimes you can't stop yourself from linking to The Onion: Pornography-Desensitized Populace Demands New Orifice To Look At.
The founder of Clean Flix, the Utah-based company that "sanitized" and redistributed DVDs, was arrested for having sex with two 14-year-olds. Why are these stories so predictable?
OMFG, officially my favorite Onion video of all time: Use Of 'N-Word' May End Porn Star's Career. PROUDLY, NSFW -- there's a penis in it!
Since I'm sorta notoriously -- or, I'm told, frustratingly -- very good friends with nearly all of my exes, the conversation on Jezebel had me hitting refresh all day Friday. (Off-topic: you think the commenters on Jezebel are hooking up? I'm pretty convinced some are.)
Unfortunately, the author of Love + Sex With Robots comes off as a boring academic on his Colbert appearance. I'm reading the book right now and will report back soon. [via]
This is the future of everything: vagina in a cup (sfw, surprisingly). Doy, OF COURSE it's Japanese! Best part is that it comes in different positions. Because vaginas in a cup are the spice of life!
Hm, I missed this one... Love and Sex with Robots could be worth reading. NYTBR review and author interview.
Michael Ian Black: A Series of Letters to the First Girl I Ever Fingered.
Similar to how it's nearly impossible not to look into Victoria's Secret when passing by on the street, I'm mildly obsessed with the saga of Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis, who has been awaiting trial for eight months without bond from a jail cell. Last year's LAT Mag profile sealed the deal on whether he was despicable (he is), but today's NYT Styles analysis says that conservatives are defending him.
Interesting study using Hot Or Not data: You're Not Attractive.
I always thought 30 Rock invented the word vajayjay -- turns out it was Grey's Anatomy. And Oprah pretty much owns it. This and other scintillating details about the origin of the word in today's NYT Styles. (UPDATE: In the comments, at least one previous use of the world. I hope the OED references this post.)
Online couple cheated with each other. The grass is always greener... or something.
This is goddamn brilliant: CustomReceipts.com. They will print fake ATM receipts with your name and whatever balance you want. Why would you want that? So when you need a piece of scratch paper to write down your phone number for girls at bars.... see! brilliant!
The Onion: Study: Casual Sex Only Rewarding For First Few Decades. Exactly.
A couple interesting counterpoints in the Larry Craig scandal: Dan Savage on what would happen if he got arrested and Christopher Hitchens on why gay men continue to have sex in public places.
Best cities for singles, according to one of those silly Forbes surveys: #1: SF, #2: NYC, #8: Seattle, #12: Minneapolis.
I see survey after survey declare that men have more sexual partners than women. And it annoys me every time, because this is of course statistically impossible. The New York Times finally takes up the issue. The answer? Men aren't more promiscuous -- they lie more. Or, perhaps, women lie by underestimating.
Seattle Weekly strangely gives the large story treatment to cougars -- no, not the ones found in the wild. Although this is purely anecdotal, Seattle seems to have a larger cougar population than most places. (In other Seattle news, H&M is finally coming here, which, at this point, is as exciting as another Target opening. All the girls want a Zara, but Seattle just can't handle fashion -- the REI aesthetic reigns supreme.)
Sean Bonner does a little graphic for Suicide Girls that charts all relationships on the axis of mental attraction vs. physical attraction.
29,000 convicted sex offenders are on MySpace. And every single one is Tom's friend.
Chris Nieratko is the porn DVD reviewer for Vice, which is all I should need to say about that. His new book (Skinema) collects 150 of the reviews, which is all I should need to say about that too. Except he did an interview with The Stranger, which makes this all sound more interesting than you might guess -- Nieratko doesn't actually review anything; instead, the book is a platform for some crazy confessional memoir.
When you start to think your life sucks, just remember you could be the guy who lives with 100 love dolls. (Btw, sex dolls cost 6K, but you could always go the DIY route.)
You wouldn't believe how much time I spent last night looking for videos of Paris Hilton doing drugs -- because I know I've seen them online before! If you haven't heard, she claimed on Larry King last night that she's never done drugs... Liar! I couldn't find the ones of her doing coke, but here she is getting high in Amsterdam. Update from the comments: Of course Smoking Gun has all the entire collection.
The lawsuit against Wonkette from the Washingtonienne scandal has finally been dropped.
Sarah Silverman is just about the only person you could put on the cover of Maxim's Hot 100 list that would cause me to link to it.
Reason #37 that Good magazine is good: a video infographic about internet porn. Brilliant, and only mildly nsfw.
My new favorite thing in the world: the Wikipedia discussion pages for porn stars. The actual Wikipedia entry for Jenna Jameson is of minor interest, but the discussion page is full of esoteric debates about her name, ex-boyfriends, a supposed ring finger tattoo, and something to do with "butter and focaccia bread." But that's nothing compared to the discussion page for porn star Peter North, bursting with debates about penis length, ejaculation quantity, an early career in gay porn, and, for some reason, his popularity in Hong Kong.
Nerve.com: The Rise of Cuckolding Culture. Freaks! [via, which makes a whole meme out of this]
YouPorn. Yep, exactly what that says too. Except I was intrigued by this idea from Barry at The Big Picture: "There seems to be a burgeoning number of people -- 'Amateurs' in industry parlance -- who have been getting busy videotaping themselves, well, getting busy." Sounds like a trends piece ready to happen.
