AI are two letters that everyone’s thinking of right now. How will AI impact my job? Should I be afraid of AI? Can I use AI to help me write my best friend’s wedding speech, and will my best friend notice? Beyond all that, our love, sex, and romantic lives also have the potential of being altered forever by artificial intelligence. We’re already traversing all of the above in a digital landscape, right?
But how do we navigate concepts as human as love and sex, in a realm as unpredictable, volatile, and lawless as cyberspace? Moreover, how do we do it safely, and why do we do it at all? Host Melissa Mason sits down with counsellor and therapist Tammi Sue in the latest episode of POPSUGAR’s Love Rants to discuss these very issues. Tammi Sue, through her business BARE Therapy, helps plenty of young Aussies through their “stucks” as more people deal with rising levels of anxiety.
Her thesis as to why we so quickly turn to talking about love and sex online — or ‘digital foreplay’? It saves us from having to have those same conversations face-to-face.
Tammi Sue on Digital Foreplay and AI
“It’s super rare these days for people to be comfortable to have a face-to-face conversation about something where they need to get vulnerable,” Tammi tells Melissa in the newest episode of Love Rants.
“Being in that digital age, we’re just more comfortable literally sitting in the same room with someone sending a text to them about something they wanted to talk about rather than having that conversation IRL. That definitely comes into the space of sex, because, ultimately that is where we are at our most vulnerable. When we have sex, it’s weird noises, it’s going completely bare, it’s looking into somebody’s eyes.
“It’s very confronting, so being able to use different apps or having something else that redirects your attention outside of just the two of you is a way to say what you like while minimising the shame that might come with rejection or thinking ‘Oh you’re into that? That’s a bit weird, I don’t want to do that.’ By doing it digitally, you’re removing a little bit of the vulnerability from it.”
Melissa expands on this idea, saying that if AI can help people become more comfortable in their own sexuality, then it shouldn’t be looked down upon for that purpose.
“Any sexual interactions online where you’re in a more anonymous space, we generally see it as kind of seedy,” she says.
“It’s always gotten a seedy rap but actually, if you think about it, if all parties involved are consenting participants and of age and everything like that, it could be wonderful. If you can explore your sexuality with AI or in that anonymous space, I think that’s a really fantastic thing for gaining confidence.”
Listen to Tammi’s full episode of POPSUGAR’s Love Rants below.
