Fandom's erotical illusions
Where do fandom virtual realities fit in the new the AI/deepfake landscape?
Just as we’re told to log off, disconnect and touch grass to feel better, eager opportunists have been trying to figure out ways to expand our attachment to tech. Just like corn syrup replaced sugar and Fentanyl replaced Oxycontin. In a market economy, you have to keep upping the ante, because that’s how you stoke the id.
Some would argue tech utopia is already here, ready and capable of all our indulgences. It’s even ready to fulfill needs and desires we didn’t know we had. We have access to endless streams of photos and opinions and news and video and content.
I would argue that the tech is just an aid to accelerate our reliance on external experiences, or vicarious experiences if you will. It’s particularly noticeable in the adult corners. WIRED said five years ago that, “adult is carrying the torch,” when it comes to this technology.
The adult industry has been pushing limits since it became an industry, and the tech involved allows for more advanced setups. Allowing for more “intimate” experiences with recognizable faces, for one, a deepfake that can be experienced. It’s a futurism seen in many films already, so we must march towards it. But it ultimately trades on emotions.
The sped-up heartbeat and flush of excitement, those reactions are based on unreality. It’s vicarious living, and we can’t get enough of it, our internal sensors ready to deliver in spades.
One of the buzzwords of the business is “girlfriend experience,” a replica of intimacy that can operate as “the antithesis of traditional porn.” According to Wired, the VR porn delivers “a sensation known in VR circles as presence.” I call it a vicarious experience. It’s the opposite of presence, since it deals in unreality.
In practice, what they’re talking about is not that different from the parasocial relationships we’ve all managed to develop through our online lives. In this context, much is made of fangirls’ sexual interest in their idols, but it’s an oversold concept. There are a variety of attachments present, not always driven by libido. When a porn agent was asked about whether AI creations might displace his talent, he said, “I don't think you can machine-learn a personality.”
I don’t know how accurate that claim is on its head, but I do know that we, humans, can invent and project personalities onto others. Even better if we can do it as a group. Parasocial relationships are the backbone of online fandom, and as such everything becomes up for interpretation. The lack of a constructed personality isn’t a hindrance, it can even be a positive as it leaves gaps for fans to fill in.
That’s what much of our online lives are: vicarious living, and that applies to the world of fandom and other improvised online communities. Even without high-def surround sound, 360 degrees experiences, we have been able to fulfill our fantasies through the magic of various digital constructs triggering internal imaginary worlds. We’ve even been able to construct entirely new worlds.
That’s what much of our online lives are: vicarious living, and that applies to the world of fandom and other improvised online communities.
Because the fandom output is so specific, I think it’s worth looking at another community that has on occasion shared platforms with fandom, from Livejournal to Tumblr to Twitter.
We know Reddit is home to plenty of deepfake and AI creations, typically depicting women. The fandom adjacent communities usually produce gay male content. These hobbyists provide “fake nudes” of celebrities, as well as recast explicit gay porn scenes. Not to be confused for those that post selfies, which inhabit a separate sphere.
These edits occasionally will make their way into fandom spaces, but it’s unusual for it to, since the depictions are of muscle hunks that fulfill male fantasies. I don’t think any of the creators mind women in the audience, but they can’t deliver the cum shots that are asked for in exchange for a request fulfillment.
This also serves as an example of the difference between the queer content produced for a female or male audience. Men are objectified in both, but the how and why diverges between the audiences.
Returning to fandom, even though it can be relied on for erotic content, there’s plenty of completely platonic/non-sexual content that will hit people’s spots. It’s not necessarily sexual or erotic: fandom can fulfill multiple needs. Just like ASMR or stim videos, it can hit spots you didn’t know you had.
One of the most famous fanfics in a previous fandom of mine has the characters grow up as stepbrothers, and there is nothing sexual or romantic between them. It’s a wholesome reimagining that tugs just the right heartstrings.
There is no limit to the imagined realities that can be conjured, and this extends to the adult content. Fifty Shades of Grey originally written about Edward Cullen and Bella Swan could be the most well-known example of that.
If it sounds like fandom is offering up an endless buffet of erotic variety, you should know it wasn’t always like this. Boundaries and taboos were renegotiated over time, and at a certain point, it becomes difficult to establish whether internal or external influences had most of the impact on narrative options. If there’s one thing that can be said about fandom is that it does not exist out of context. It wouldn’t exist in the first place without context.
The new genres or scenarios that have been developed in fandom over time qualify as “erotical illusions.” These are discussed in Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam's excellent book “A Billion Wicked Thoughts,”
“In the same manner that optical illusions combine visual cues into a unified stimulus that dupes our brain’s visual system. Erotical illusions combine sexual cues into novel stimuli that trick our brain’s sexual systems, triggering heightened arousal.”
They also mention that the erotical illusions that women gravitate towards often are not entirely visual, but psychologically stimulating. In one way this explains why fandom provides much of this content: the attachment to the character, fan object, and universe— that is what makes the content stimulating. The existing attachment is what pulls people in.
The diversity of output and erotical illusions has allowed for self-discovery and self-definition to flourish. I’m familiar with a miniscule amount of tropes and universes that exist, as it extends across the fanosphere. But some examples would be omegaverse, pistilverse, hybrid fanfics, male pregnancy to self-incest, and so on.
It’s only natural a vocabulary might develop around it and one’s reactions (or lack thereof) around it. There are many different newly minted orientations, if not born from fandom then at least rooted in it. It’s been a place for much of these to be explored, from the split attraction model, and asexual microidentities to gyno-/androsexuality.
There’s a lot to say about many of these terms, but aegosexuality is the one I’m most interested in this context. Previously known as “autochorissexual” it was once classified as a paraphilia, but as that’s considered a pejorative term it was reclaimed and renamed.
In clinical terms, aegosexuality describes “a disconnection between oneself and a sexual target/object of arousal.” Aegosexuals get off, but it’s a disembodied experience, not contingent on realizing the erotical illusion. They don’t want to participate, remaining detached and outside any given fantasy.
It makes sense that this identity would gain ground online, particularly in fandom as the threshold for disclosure is much lower. The more boundaries are erased, the more likely it is that we will discover further definitions for our specific attractions. If it’s at the surface everywhere else, it becomes a normal part of your presentation and self-concept.
All of this content and these discussions predate the present-day accessibility and availability of AI generators and VR tech. With the diffusion models in use, AI constructs images by culling from its harvested data. It’s possible fan made content made it into those data caches, our own content being repackaged and regurgitated to us.
Is the fandom impact on individuals overblown? It depends on what you're looking at. Fandom has played with false realities for a while, and we've seen the expansion of acceptable kinks. The access to making these universes all the more real and digestible differently is bound to deepen the online communal bonds that revolve around these niches. With the increasingly accessible tech, things are bound to change on more than one front.
Joe Russo told Collider recently that AIs obvious place in the entertainment world is to “use it to engineer storytelling and change storytelling.” Presented scenarios rely on self-insertion, that “you can curate your story specifically to you,” as if that wasn’t what fandom has been doing this entire time.
I often hear about men who eschew romantic relationships for porn and OnlyFans—but there’s nary a mention of what the women are attached to. I think some are here, and will remain. There likely will be more adoptable labels that people identify with, and a shifting of taboos.
The fandom communities themselves may disintegrate; it’s hard to compete with what AI has to offer. And with the ability to create your own, personally customized virtual experience, the community loses its appeal.
You don’t need to rely on fanfiction writers or fanartists or recommendations. It’s one way to approach self-destruction, simply on the basis of neglect. Then again, if that happens, the industry that relies on fandom communities for much of their data may have to recalibrate.
Considering that ChatGPT and Bard is a language model that relies heavily on what's available out there online -- and Midjourney does the same for images -- I imagine... AI can only go as far as how 'depraved' the most erotic of fanfic can go? Perhaps AI is ridding us of the shame of having to write it ourselves and doing the heavy lifting for us?
But, yeah, some tend to misrepresent fandoms as just being about fantasies of being in the same bed as whoever.
I really loved how you connected sexual identity, especially the asexual community, with fandoms and the context of online lives. As part of the asexual community I have seen many people discussing how fandom, reading and writing fanfics, have been useful to explore some parts of their identity. As you mentioned, there is an indirect experience and a removal of the self from the stories, but in this cases there is not a destruction of the self or vicarious living, but a different way of constructing your self where the experience with fiction and fandom is combined with the lived experience of people on the asexual spectrum.