Sex Is Going Out of Fashion

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With every fetish having a dedicated subreddit and every vagina a Gwyneth Paltrow candle scent, it's hard to believe lust isn't the most popular of all the cardinal sins—but by "sex" I don't mean any sexually-arousing experience (cause I'm sure some of you perverts could reach la petite mort on mild airplane turbulence), I mean "sex" in the good ol' traditional bedroom rodeo. The shaking of the sheets. The nasty juices cocktail.

GRANDPAS HAD MORE ACTION IN THEIR TIME

Say what you want about old people but they've merited the historical "Baby Boom" through sheer sexual prowess. And that was back in a day when you had to invite two whole families to a rehearsal dinner and make a bunch of promises to Jesus for a little bit of afternoon delight. Now generations have to be named after backside alphabet letters cause everyone is focusing on their careers.

IS TECH THE CULPRIT?

Now instead of having a shower and working on your pickup lines you can just give up and plug the VR set or ride the “golden age of sex toys". You can get a virtual girlfriend if it doesn't bother you that any other bloke with a smartphone can turn her on too. Seriously, the amount of technology available to aid you in a solo fly is so dystopian I wouldn't be surprised if it takes real magic to break this dry spell.

Hard to argue with this: there's also an uptick in "porn video games." We may have come a long way from Pong and Super Mario, but some games stick to the roots by still being about bouncing balls are making body parts bigger.

JAPAN IS LEADING THE SEXLESS DYSTOPIA

A good decade has passed since Japanese men started going herbivore, a term to describe the neuter subculture of males that are going to 3rd base with pillows and turning the Y-chromosome into a mere gene embellisher. Hell, even vegans are into meat when it’s human. And as a firm believer in having eggs in your diet and balls in your scrotum, it worries me that none of those porcelain-looking “K-pop” Ken dolls carries enough testosterone in their bloodstream to make a baby boy’s balls drop into the sack.

WHO ARE WE GOING TO BLAME FOR THIS?

We could have a list of suspects the size of Agatha Christie's body of work if we wanted. Blame these last 2 years of social distancing. Blame plastics leaking estrogen, smartphone radiation, the news cycle and the gig economy. Point to the #MeToo movement forcing more consent clauses than Facebook's Terms of Service and call it a day—but truth be told, all of that pales in comparison with a phenomenon called supernormal stimuli.

EXPLAINED WITH BEETLES

A supernormal stimulus is any extreme version of an incentive we evolved to act upon, thus making us respond to it all the more strongly. So when a beer bottle happens to meet an exaggerated version of the beauty standards of female Australian jewel beetles, males will ditch the missus to go into a rampaging sex affair with every beer bottle that failed to find cover in a recycle bin. This may sound extremely fun for male beetles, but as it happens in every species, troubles abound when you ejaculate on things you weren't supposed to.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HUMANS

Well, you know what they say; give a brain a pair of opposable thumbs and it will work out of a way to please itself by means so revoltingly excessive not even a David Attenborough voiceover is gonna dignify it. These self-pleasuring methods may not provide the same satisfaction as the real thing, but they provide just enough to placate the impulse to go meet these needs the healthy way.

Think about it:

• There’s a porn category for every kink and Freudian slip, but guys can’t get an erection when they really need one.

• You can develop a parasocial relationship with any person in the world—yet we feel lonelier than ever.

• Do I have to link to stuff about food tasting amazing but clogging up arteries?

• Or about TV and video games satisfying our need for novelty but killing the motivation to go live an actual life outside?

SO TECHNICALLY

Sex is going out of fashion. Pushed away by virtual imitations and decaff substitutes that, though nowhere near as gratifying as taking a real trip to pound town, are enough to pacify our sex drive in the convenience of a few left-handed clicks. Turns out that the human libido is much more delicate than we thought, so if you find yourself so overstimulated nothing turns you on anymore, the solution might be to turn everything off for a little while.