thoughts on thots
this entry is intended as a reflective piece on sexuality and is intended for a mature audience
I participated in a sex toy hackathon a while back. It was a pivotal sexual awakening for me. I got invited because of my succubus website Lilith's Den and it was probably one of the best organized gigs I'd been to. Great food, great conversation, great memory. I've never participated in an event like this, and I'm not a sex worker. I had a lot of respect for all of the attendees and I felt driven to bring my best to the table. It was the first gig I've had that really pushed me as an artist.
We only had about 24 hours to make something. A lot of people made toys and software in groups. I ended up working on my idea solo. A website for a dead cam girl named Claris being kept alive by artificial intelligence. I was inspired by the questions I have on who owns our online presence when we die, and what is left of us when our holograms outlive our legacy? Visually, it's suppose to be a fusion sci-fi and ghosts. It seeming "haunted" in the same way a house is haunted felt right. It added something playful to something morbid. It was a good environment for this project because everyone made me feel safe to do something risque and subversive. I'd be more hesitant to do something like this otherwise, especially with the tragic reality of sex worker murder and suicidality. I personally believe art is suppose to challenge culture, and there is something to be said about how we avoid the darkness behind the camera and how sometimes that darkness is an erotic flavor people purposely pursue. Where one should draw the line is up for you to decide, and will bring no one else comfort but yourself. Everyone's threshold varies wildly.
One thing that was really important to me was blurry, over processed images to capture the impression of generated images based on generated images. If someone is long dead, eventually the images of them artificially made will outnumber images of them living and are used as reference. The longer a digital ghost exists the more it loses the character and personality of that person, and becomes an imitation of an imitation. It's thinking about storytelling details like this that make websites exciting for me!
I started thinking about this experience again because of the new legislation. I feel like sex workers are in more danger on the internet than ever. The current trend of onlyfans agencies is one I find deeply disturbing. We've modernized the pimp without giving proper education on this industry because this country sees it as it's underbelly. There are people approaching young girls with huge followings promising them easy money, unknowingly signing up for their digital avatar to be in the control of someone else. No one is starting this conversation fast enough and I have a suspicion they will wait until it makes the sex workers themselves look bad to use against them for their own narratives.
I've said before I don't like money as an expression of love, but I've got no problem with sex work. The two are very different. The general public has a narrow perspective on it, and to their credit there are some forms of sex work you'd never know existed unless you participated in an alternative lifestyle yourself. Sex work has saved some lives, and it's ruined some others. There is so much potential to reduce the harm that comes to sex workers, if we are willing to humanize them.
