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Reading through this, I imagined writing a comedic novel romance where the protagonist ends up at a sex party with tech tycoon Jack Buckerzerg, ends up having something forgettable, but then can't forget it because of the deluge of connect us requests from his multi billion dollar social app FriendHook, it's sort of a cross between You've Got Mail, Russian Doll, and hopefully at the end, a slasher film.

None of the people discussed in this post are based on actual people - whether living or horribly lifelike simulacra.

Yeah there isn't any "free love" as in "free beer" but rather "sex work" driven by some people having way too much money.

(I got into a big argument with a person I was, and maybe am, involved in a love triangle with who thinks that most of the the time "having an affair" is really prostitution in disguise.)

What differentiates prostitution and casual sex apart from uhm, payment for services? But even then one could say that in casual sex you're just bartering each others attraction for sex. What is prostitution then? Trading sex with someone who has less of everything apart money?
From the viewpoint of the individual there are different motivations to have sex. Prostitution doesn't satisfy all of them.

From the viewpoint of society prostitution might seem OK in principle but in practice there are safety problems that bring in organized crime and problems with human trafficking that never go away. The market for legal prostitution in Nevada is a lot like the market for legal weed in California, just a pimple on top of a large illegal business.

In 2022 we may be at the nadir of impoverished philosophy. In particular sectors of the "left" try to link "sex work" to "female empowerment" which brings us way back to the concept of alienation from the early Marx. That is, money ruins everything.

We need better ways to think about it. Scale is one of them. When you have 10,000 guys simping to one camgirl you've got a problem. It's going to take a while before it is widely recognized that OnlyFans is more dangerous than traditional pornography. In the meantime the left has to discover some alternatives to neoliberalism.

Should be "Swinger parties and cuckoldry in Silicon Valley" to be more accurate.
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I can't believe people are pearl clutching about sex parties in San Francisco of all places.
I can't think of anyone who'd be more prudish in public than a chicom.
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I'm a little confused how modern journalism works on the internet. Isn't this an article written by Dorothy Cucci and originally published on Business Insider? I think SCMP is syndicating the article and using Business Insider for the by line in the header and linking to the original article in the footer?
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How else do you sell "reporting" on something so mundane?

Nobody's buying my book: "Social grouping in private life subcultures often pull members from their public life social groups"

They're also not buying my other book: "The party lifestyle of restaurant kitchen workers"

That's why this book's adverting is: "The sex you're not having, and the NERDS who do"

There's so little content in this book that even the news article resorts to talking about... *checks notes* a hacker at DEF CON doing a cannonball?

Books like this have a prerequisite of - and themselves also perpetuate - a media that teaches people to hate eachother over trivialities.

Find the equilibrium: endless money, high male to female ratio, focus on career over family, a history of "free love", and a geographic concentration of open-mindedness.
Not a surprise, folks!

When I talk to prospects (job, consult, who cares?) and they tell me "we're like family" do you know what goes through my mind? Yep, this or a potluck where I avoid eating anything. It's because I had a bad childhood, and as an adult I choose my own family and nobody gets to choose it for me and most especially my employer.

See? This is indeed work related.

While we're at it, can we simplify the "sexual orientation" question by making it a two-parter?

1) Sexual orientation? (yes/no)

2) If yes: dominant / submissive / other?

and leave the poor "no"s alone! I empathize with them, honestly. If I ranked those four categories in order of predominance it would be No, Submissive, Dominant, and Other with No being the largest but not as large as Dominant and Submissive combined. As an Other I'll hang out with the Nos at work if you don't mind. That's not going to stop the doms and subs from sizing people up, because that's just what they do; that's not permission by any stretch and working for a company which is "like family" isn't either.

Not looking for votes either way. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

That whole "dom" and "sub" thing is so tiresome it makes me want to take a nap.
Yep, "polyamory" is becoming a synonym in the media for "disorganized sexual activity."

Meanwhile you don't see real polyamorists (for whom "love" has something to do with it) in the media because they're boring. You don't see much fiction about them either because they don't have as much conflict as say, "mono" cheaters.