August 24, 2004

• If the future of CGI holds nothing but endless anorexic porn bodies, then the terrorists have won.
• Sounds more like controversy-drumming two branded marketing than actual cultural shift. I kind of fail to see the distinction between the 'real' women who normally grace the pages of Playboy and this 'fake' one. The amount of photoshoping and airbrushing already does a pretty good job of erasing personality and humanity, so what is the difference?
• Photoshop Smotoshop. Still are people.
• Meh. Notice the rise of so-called amateur porn. Head over to Sensible Erection, and note how the readers criticise the obviously fake and the airbrushed, and how they swoon over signs of apparent authenticity, such as freckles. I think it's clear that wanking to a literal icon has limited appeal. If you are right, es el Queso, don't worry - those too powerfully attracted to simulacra will fail to reproduce, thus limiting their numbers. And in the short term it reduces the competition for the affection of actual women. When we hit the boundaries of the hyperreal, we will not go splat. *tee hee hee*
• Isn't this just marketing tie in with the new Playboy game coming out? (a shitty Sims clone, I think)
• I second vitalorgnz's comment: meh. I'm sick of silicone and producers of pr0n telling me what's sexy and what's not. A plastic surgeon can't create beauty. He can set bones and skin to specific angles which people find more acceptable - hence many people who've had work done looking the same. You just compound the problem with airbrushing. It's the imperfections that make it. (Having said that...I'd do that nazi-killin' vampiress dominatrix until she wished she stayed in the grave.)
• Meh. Notice the rise of so-called amateur porn. Head over to Sensible Erection, and note how the readers criticise the obviously fake and the airbrushed, and how they swoon over signs of apparent authenticity, such as freckles. I think it's clear that wanking to a literal icon has limited appeal. A lot of the same comments are made at Fark, and I'd have to say I agree. I also blame Playboy for that trend, and for Pamela Anderson.
• I'll third it. Just today I was having a meeting with clients at a cafe, and there was a "woman's mag" with a shock-horror story about Rachel Hunter having "ballooned" 7 kilos. We (being four guys) looked at it (women's mags are like crack cocaine for men, as any woman with a boyfriend or hiusband will know), noted she looked better than she normally does. One of my clients leaned back, looked at the ceiling and announced, "You know, chicks try to get all skinny because they think we like it, but they're just wrong. Why do they do it?"
• Apropos of nothing, I think it was Jaron Lanier who once said regarding virtual reality: "When your average joe can plug himself into his computer and have sex with a bevy of virtual supermodels? It's going to make crack look like skittles. There will be people that no one ever sees again."
• That said: While amateur porn has seemed to increase in popularity, so has anime porn so, apparently, there is a market for pornography that contains patently unreal characters. The manga phenomenon in Asia seems to bolster that idea. Pesronally, I think you'll see more of this sort of thing, as Playboy (along with all the other general interest porn publications) thrashes around trying new things in attempts to revive it's flagging circulation.
• Will this cause a new generation of even more socially inept geeks? As a socially inept geek: trust me, they are already here. Moreso the teenage/college-age ones than my actual peers, but I have heard many a young nerd sincerely bemoan the fact that real girls aren't as affectionate and patient and wonderful and pretty as the girls in the cartoons, and why can't those dumb real girls be more like them? (Granted, het female geeks in that stripe have their own unrealistic expectations.) I wish I were joking. So yeah, this isn't going to create a generation of people with ridiculous expectations, because they're already out there. But I don't think it really affects anything, because the sort who is going to get so attached to a nonexistent "person" most likely isn't the sort who is going to be breeding anytime soon anyway. I think those who have actually had dealings with real-live people know the difference between real and imaginary, and aren't going to carry over some unrealistic "standard" any more than those who consume good ol'-fashioned airbrushed porn. But it does have that brave-new-world thing going, and if I were a pornographer I'd probably love being able to generate just about any staging/situation/cast without worrying about legality, fatality or reality.
• To see what a really talented 3D artist can do with the human form, see Stephen Stahlberg's work. (ALL ITEMS NSFW) Phonegirl is a favorite of mine. Dominatrix Trixie is closer to the spirit of the original article. For a quick overview of his work, check here. To see his work progress over time, see the comprehensive galleries at his WEBSITE. Wow.
• Bonus points for GuitarMonkey! Steven Hagg Stahlberg has been putting the rest of us to shame for quite some time now. My old favorite: Girl on Stool. [NSFW, DUMBASS / may contain tasteful nudity] It's about 2-3 years old, too. (Maya / Dual Pentium III 733 - 384 MB) She's more realistic-looking than any of Playboy's airbrushed silicone bimbos, staring with their dead eyes, reclining in soft focus.
• Oh, stating the obvious, but I feel compelled: One of my clients leaned back, looked at the ceiling and announced, "You know, chicks try to get all skinny because they think we like it, but they're just wrong. Why do they do it?" They don't realize that there can be too much of a good thing. I didn't realize this apparently obvious fact for quite some time, myself. I thought guys were lying when they said women could be too thin. Women know that men have no use for actual fat chicks (unless they're fetishists), but the other half of the equation - that you can have too much of a good thing - doesn't get much press. Not sure why that is.
• There's a lot of money to made out of the insecurity industry, Wurwilf. Jenny Craig got real rich out of low self-esteem...
• Fes: I think this is the quote you're thinking of: They say that one day through virtual reality a man will be able to simulate making love to any woman he wants to through his television set. You know, folks, the day an unemployed ironworker can lie in his Barca Lounger with a Foster's in one hand and a channel flicker in the other and fuck Claudia Schiffer for $19.95, it's gonna make crack look like Sanka. -- Dennis Miller
• I almost started rambling in that vein, rodgerd, but it wasn't so concise as that. Indeed.