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Being sexual in second life

So one of the new, well not so new anymore, internet technology opportunities for people to be sexual are sites called Second Life or things like that, where you can go into the website and participate with somebody else and create a character who represents you. And someone else is creating characters. And you can be involved in a fetish resort, or a swinger’s resort.

And you can begin to participate with romantic and sexual relationships in a real time way and people will say I’m having a relationship but they are not… reality really is a casualty here. These are still fantasy relationships. But the problem is that the brain does not make the distinction. The brain says: I’m having an attachment. My brain is getting erotically, romantically attached to the person that I am interacting with on Second Life. And so, all of a sudden now my needs around romance and attachment are highly ritualized, highly specific, making it very difficult for me to navigate a real relationship.

There is nothing real about having a relationship with somebody through the technology we are speaking of here. Now, that isn’t to say that there aren’t ways that people connect, but when we see somebody lost in that, they lose the ability to have real relationships.