Digital Group Sex and the Rise of Zoom Orgies
COVID-19 introduced the world to virtual orgies. Will we keep them around after the pandemic?
Orgies have been around for a very long time. Some have suggested, with archaeological evidence in tow, that sex orgies are tens of thousands of years old. It’s quite possible that long before the comfortable, isolated, private sex we know and love today, the kind that takes place tucked away in bedrooms all over the world, people engaged in sex out in the open.
Sex wasn’t a singular, individual event, where two people got together and snuck away behind a tree somewhere, so much as an act revered and celebrated by entire tribes.
Groups would express their sexuality through various forms of spiritual sex. And back then, spirituality was a series of religious customs passed down from generation to generation…that is, people practiced spirituality in groups.
Pornography is one of humankind’s oldest inventions, with statues and prints that date back tens of thousands of years. Sex is as much a part of the human story as humans themselves are and without sex, there would be no humans.
From ancient Sumer to Babylon, Ancient Egypt to Greece and Rome, from the prehistoric world to the ancient one, sex with large numbers of people was a feature of human sexual expression all the way up until Christendom ruined the party.
Sex became something to be shunned and feared, practiced only in order to procreate, and it was reviled as a carnal sin.
In the 1800s, group sex started to become popular in the West again, after hundreds of years of lying dormant, particularly in France.
The Libertine age of Marquis de Sade saw a rebirth in sexual appetites, as France and elsewhere in Europe began to shrug at the scolding, paternal orders of the Church and explore sexuality with the newly rediscovered humanism that had just hit the scene with the scientific revolution.
Up until the 1930s and 1940s, however, it was believed that group sex could be dangerous and cause disease. But then antibiotics came along and, with their ability to wipe out many STIs, changed the game. Instead of having to worry about all the possible infections, people only had to fear viral ones.
And then the 1960s happened and human sexuality exploded…
In the 1970s, arguably the peak of the mid-century sexual revolution, group sex became popular again. While it’s still taboo to this day, and certainly isn’t something you want to discuss in the office break room, it’s quite popular.
We Love Group Sex
Research shows that about one in seven Americans have had group sex, while one in five Americans find them appealing. Considering that only about 5% of the population identify as ethically non-monogamous, this tells you that there are a lot more people out there having group sex casually than there are people who are swingers or polyamorists.
The sensory overload of group sex is one of the most popular fantasies among Americans and many others all over the world. Group sex is the number one niche of arousal material consumed by Americans, with other types of kinks falling in line behind group sex as the crowned jewel of erotic material.
In PornHub’s 2019 Year in Review, both “threesome” and “gangbang” made the top twenty-five list of most popular searches. Both categories also made the top twenty-five on PornHub Gay.
It’s safe to say a lot of people out there like having sex with a lot of people out there — or at least the fantasy of it.
For decades, individuals and swingers alike have been using websites like Adult FriendFinder and Swing Lifestyle (SLS) to rally the troops and gather in clandestine hotel rooms and private homes to engage in a little naughty fun with more than just one another person.
But then the pandemic struck, and human sexuality came screeching to a lonely, miserable halt….
COVID-19 & Human Sexuality
As the pandemic forced people to shutter up indoors and hide away from one another, people began to get the itch. We wanted contact; we wanted affection of all sorts. Social distancing, quarantines, and state-issued lockdowns in many places all signaled the beginning of the end of in-person sexuality.
Many people felt like they were going bonkers being totally unable to see their friends and families. Others thought they were losing their marbles because they couldn’t get out and engage in the kinds of sex they wanted to, at least not safely.
COVID-19 felt like an STD, even if it technically wasn’t.
This is especially true for those who enjoy group sex. Cramped hotel rooms could easily become a breeding ground for the novel coronavirus at a time when we didn’t even have a vaccine to combat it.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way. And seeing as every one of us has been all but forced to keep our hands to ourselves, some people out there got creative and took matters into their own hands.
Virtual Gangbangs and Digital Orgies
And just like that, the digital orgy was born. In the early days, the workaround for the great pandemic cockblock was to hop on Zoom and host meetings where the participants would get naughty in whatever ways they felt comfortable doing. All of this was socially distanced, of course.
These were colloquially known as “Zoom orgies” and they were a much-needed lifeline for the sexual practitioners all over the world who’d been suddenly deprived of their precious affection.
Swinger groups and sex clubs began rushing to the platform in droves, to get their fix of sexual delight with groups larger than two.
Killing Kittens
Killing Kittens sounds like it might be the name of a local death metal band. But it’s actually a high-profile sex club dedicated to redefining sex, power, and pleasure. They’ve hosted events for over a decade and a half now and when COVID-19 hit, they didn’t miss their moment.
Killing Kittens may not have been the first to host a Zoom orgy, but they were the ones who managed to host an orgy of 100 people on a single Zoom call. The company Zoom, who hosted the event unknowingly, frowned on this practice, of course, and swore to crack down on anyone caught having sex orgies on their platform.
This is understandable. Zoom could be held liable if anyone was under the age of 18 and participated in such an event, just as PornHub was taken to the cleaners recently for having a few dozen performers on their site under the age of 18.
All in all, this is incredibly inventive, and it just goes to show you the lengths people are willing to go to in order to secure love, affection, and sex.
Adult FriendFinder
It was only a matter of time before Zoom caught on to what users were doing with their software, software that was probably not intended with digital orgies in mind, and they really began cracking down on these kinds of naughty events.
But other, less bashful companies took a cue from Zoom’s sudden surge in cyberspace sex parties and eventually launched their own service to fill the void for this particular niche.
Adult Friend Finder was one of the first to try to extend a helping hand during the pandemic, as quarantines and social distancing measures made groupsex impossible to do safely. AFF launched a service called Virgy which could host video chats.
And in case you’re not in the mood to deal with the laborious work of arranging the logistics off-platform, Virgy, a portmanteau of the words “virtual” and “orgy,” offers the ability for users to connect with perfect strangers over the internet and get their freak on with one another.
Gunner Taylor, the CEO of the company Adult FriendFinder, spoke about the new service, saying:
“With large gatherings banned across the country and popular sex party clubs forced to close their doors, we wanted to create a venue geared specifically for virtual orgies.”
This sheds a whole new light on the idea of casual hookups through an app. Some might even say it’s revolutionary.
Think about it…
Until now, there have been webcam sites like Chaturbate, there have been porn sites like PornHub, and there have been hookup sites and apps, like Tinder. But it wasn’t until the pandemic forced human ingenuity to do what it does best, that the best of both worlds coalesced into a service that allows for casual sex with strangers over the internet, at least not since the rise of high-speed internet.
And here we’ve all been using Skype and Google Hangouts this entire time.
The Pandemic and Beyond
With all of this novelty, it’s safe to say, the combination of technology and necessity has pushed humankind forward in a unique way. In the past two years, what we consider groupsex has gotten a major overhaul.
In a recent study titled Group sex in the time of COVID: Intimacy, leaning, and community-building in sexual communities during a pandemic, the study authors explored how humans adapted to the pressing times thrown upon us without our consent.
Not only did they observe the various ways people attended in-person sexuality courses, like bondage classes complete with social distancing, but they also observed how those in sex communities overcame the barriers to intimacy with Zoom orgies. And the results were overwhelmingly positive.
All of this begs the question…
What exactly is groupsex? And does it require physical touch or even being in the same room as one another? Zoom orgies are showing us that physical presence may not be the prerequisite for groupsex we always thought it was.
Is this activity truly sex? My intuition tells me it is.
I know, I know, when most people think about groupsex, cybersex in groups probably isn’t what comes to mind. But this could be a game-changer for a variety of reasons, like practicing safe sex or being able to have sex with groups of people from all over the globe with the click of a mouse.
There are even some other suggested services that you could use, ones that don’t have those pesky disclaimers that warn you they can shut your account down at any time should you host a video call they deem inappropriate.
Jitsi, WIRE, and BigBlueButton are all options for anyone who’d love nothing more than to host a virtual romp.
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Three books I recommend checking out:
Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships
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