The Looming VR Revolution™ may not completely change the world, but it at least promises to change how we think about video games and porn.
Here at Kotaku we’ve played plenty of VR games, and some on our staff have tried out various types of VR Porn. The games are generally cool; the porn is actually pretty wild and startling in unexpected ways.
This latest video from Buzzfeed Blue isn’t that different from similar videos we’ve seen in the past, but it’s still fun to watch people deal with the fact that there are porn stars within inches of their virtual selves.
I’m struck by the way some of these folks recoil as the actors draw near. When my colleague Nathan Grayson tried out a similar thing last year, he had the following to say:
She got close. Really close. If she were a real person, we’d have been nose-to-nose. It was weirdly uncomfortable. My brain—only partially aware that what it was experiencing wasn’t real—surged its synapses with mixed signals, ones usually reserved for awkward encounters with actual humans. “Who is this person? You just met her. Why is she right in your face? Please step back please step back please step back she’s not stepping back. Why can’t you step back?” I could count the moments of eye contact in eternities, it felt so awkward.
That awkwardness is the thing I think a lot of people aren’t quite expecting when it comes to this. We think “VR Porn” and immediately think, okay, cool, virtual sex with a porn star. I’m getting the sense we don’t fully account for how startling that kind of simulated intimacy can really be.
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