VR Developers: You Really Need to Talk About Your "Bedding Taylor Swift in the Oculus Rift" Problem Before It's Too Late

Shortly after Facebook purchased Oculus VR back in 2014, I attended a VR conference featuring Palmer Luckey, who of course was the star of the show. In the press room, he was surrounded by game industry reporters and podcasters peppering him with fanboy questions, one of which touched on virtual reality porn. As I recall, Palmer casually talked about porn as just one of many possible VR use cases, and wasn't too concerned about the potential PR issues around it.

"You don't understand," I said, interrupting Luckey. "When Second Life was at its peak in media hype and interest from big companies like IBM and Amazon, we started getting hit with salacious news stories about porn in Second Life. And then way worse, a German TV news program even reported about simulated child pornography with avatars. It was a huge PR disaster and totally freaked out the major companies and educators, who started pulling away. To this day, Second Life has a stigma because of it." (Or words to that effect.)

Palmer Luckey looked at me like I was a crazy man, and went on with the interview.

Which brings us to sex with Taylor Swift in the Oculus Rift -- which is a line in Father John Misty's sardonically brilliant indie hit, "Total Entertainment Forever":

Bedding Taylor Swift

Every night inside the Oculus Rift

After mister and the missus

finish dinner and the dishes

And now the future's definition is so much higher than it was last year

It's like the images have all become real

And someone's living my life for me out in the mirror

Here's Father John Misty explaining his reasons for these lines which he recently sung on Saturday Night Live:

“Human civilizations have been entertaining themselves in disgusting ways all through human history,” he said. “We have to consider that maybe there are ways in which we entertain ourselves now that are equally as disturbing.”

“The fact of the matter is, I don’t want that to happen to Taylor Swift. That is the worst thing I can think of; that is so horrible,” he told Exclaim! “But again, this plays into progress, where like, the internet was supposed to be this new democracy, a utopia of information where everyone had a voice and we were all interconnected, and we would experience true democracy—and it turned into pornography, followed only by outrage.” He later adds, “And if you don’t think that this virtual reality thing isn’t going to turn into sex with celebrities, then you’re kidding yourself.”

I can personally guarantee Father Misty that virtual sex with avatars of non-consenting real celebrities is hardly the most disturbing thing that exists in the virtual world -- not even close. And while his point is a socio-cultural one (and a very valid one at that), it's also one, in less poetic treatments, can hurt whole industries. Because I can also guarantee he's raising issues that the media will focus on, when and if VR ever really starts to gain mass adoption numbers. Because that's when the hype honeymoon ends, and the hard questions begin.

Comments

[Iggy 1.0]

There's something pathologically wrong when:

1) A Silicon-Valley dierati like Luckey cannot understand your point, as if the operating system in his head does not work that way and

2) When bedding a fake celebrity in a fake world causes us more outrage than, say, the blood and guts of a typical FPS game or, for that matter, a climate-change-denying charlatan in a red baseball hat squaring off against another clown who brandishes his nukes in North Korea.

At times like these, I wonder if our civilization even deserves to survive.

[Estelle Pienaar]

Secondlife is a community while the Oculus Rift is a technology. Porn can be a part of the internet without damaging the image of let's say Facebook. In the same way can be a part of VR without damaging the reputation of SfW communities. It's a question of seperating the products. While Secondlife no one can ever be sure not to run into a flying dick anywhere. So it's like comparing apples with flying banana dildos...

[Blazespinnaker]

Oh, come on. Palmer was very very familiar with SL. But seriously, any narrative that was sh!tting on his payday was not going to be acknowledged as anything other than insane.

[Blazespinnaker]

The real promise of vr will be uploading our minds into substrates that can be backed up giving us eternal lives, or perhaps interestingly letting us live as many lives as we want, being reborn each time to develop a greater enlightenment as to what life truly is about.

[Clara Seller]

I think that the media is a lot more predictable these days. If you want the media to overlook any negativity about your product, you just need to negotiate a trade or the right price to get them to parrot what ever you want. It's completely possible to get the women on the view to sing praise of virtually taking Taylor Swift from behind or get Brian Williams to ramble about the beauty of a big VR crotch rocket. Make it worth their while and their will sing like a flock of canaries. We live in MR...Monetary Reality.

[Fred]

Too often we credit artists to have some kind of deeper insight in addition to being entertainers, I guess it's because they are celebrities and they got to be worth listening to, right?

I don't quite see the problem with porn content on a VR platform, nor do I see any possibility to prevent it from happening. The decision not to view it (..or to view it) is made in our minds. No little censorship microchip can ever prevent that.

[Fred]

But you are right Hamlet, they need to have a strategy in place IF a scandal arises, a blueprint on how to deal with negative press. I think the SL scandals were handled "so-so" but then again I think almost all major decisions around SL platform has made me groan to myself..

ps. A news story perhaps: LL caps the sum of lindens you can convert and extract out of SL on a monthly basis and launches a e-mail verification initiative. What's all that about?

[CharleyJohnson]

I don't detect in all of this an actual plan for combatting virtual sex with Taylor Swift, etc. I doubt that a viable plan exists. Look, everyone, the following two things are both true: (1) the internet has become essential to modern life, commerce, research, etc., etc. and (2) the internet is full of porn. And, one more thing. Every time the media produces a story about sex using Oculus Rift, the sales will go up. Humans find sex very interesting.