"They're Just Tixel Pits, Man": Disputing the 'Reality' of Virtual Reality Pornography through the Story Completion Method

ABSTRACT

Pornography is a substantial part of humans' everyday interaction with computers, yet to date the topic has been underconsidered by HCI. Here, we examine some of the common cultural ideals non-experts constructed of a "new" pornographic experience - Virtual Reality (VR) Porn - through use of the "Story Completion Method". Forty five participants completed a story stem about a male character who was about to have his "very first virtual reality porn experience". Through our analysis, we demonstrate a narrative of a "perfect", idealised sexual experience, as well as one which emphasised the imagined "precarious" and dangerous consequences around this technology use. We indicate how the stories reproduced ideals around heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity, suggesting an agenda of "Designing for Eroticism" as a tactic which could avoid such problematic discourses. We also suggest the opportunities and challenges presented through use of the "Story Completion Method".

References

1. Teresa Almeida, Rob Comber, Gavin Wood, Dean Saraf, and Madeline Balaam. 2016. On Looking at the Vagina Through Labella. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), 1810--1821.
2. Feona Attwood. 2002. Reading porn: The paradigm shift in pornography research. Sexualities 5, 1: 91--105.
3. Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith. 2014. Porn Studies: an introduction. Porn Studies 1, 1--2: 1--6.
4. Jeffrey Bardzell and Shaowen Bardzell. 2011. Pleasure is Your Birthright: Digitally Enabled Designer Sex Toys As a Case of Third-wave HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11), 257--266.
5. Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, and Lone Koefoed Hansen. 2015. Immodest Proposals: Research Through Design and Knowledge. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15), 2093--2102.
6. Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, Guo Zhang, and Tyler Pace. 2014. The Lonely Raccoon at the Ball: Designing for Intimacy, Sociability, and Selfhood. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14), 3943--3952.
7. Shaowen Bardzell. 2010. Feminist HCI: Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10), 1301--1310.
8. Martin Barron and Michael Kimmel. 2000. Sexual violence in three pornographic media: Toward a sociological explanation. Journal of Sex Research 37, 2: 161--168.
9. Genevieve Bell, Mark Blythe, and Phoebe Sengers. 2005. Making by making strange: Defamiliarization and the design of domestic technologies. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 12, 2: 149--173.
10. Jeremy Birnholtz, Irina Shklovski, Mark Handel, and Eran Toch. 2015. Let's Talk About Sex (Apps), CSCW. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW'15 Companion), 283-- 288.
11. Mark Blythe, Kristina Andersen, Rachel Clarke, and Peter Wright. 2016. Anti-Solutionist Strategies: Seriously Silly Design Fiction. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), 4968--4978.
12. Karen Boyle. 2010. Everyday Pornography. Routledge.
13. Johanna Brewer, Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, Amanda Williams, and Susan Wyche. 2006. Sexual Interactions: Why We Should Talk About Sex in HCI. In CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '06), 1695--1698.
14. Laura Buttrick, Conor Linehan, Ben Kirman, and Dan O'Hara. 2014. Fifty Shades of CHI: The Perverse and Humiliating Human-computer Relationship. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '14), 825--834.
15. Victoria Clarke, Virginia Braun, and Kate Wooles. 2014. Thou Shalt Not Covet Another Man' Exploring Constructions of Same-Sex and Different-Sex Infidelity Using Story Completion. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 25, 2: 153166.
16. Victoria Clarke, Sonja J. Ellis, Elizabeth Peel, and Damien W. Riggs. 2010. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer psychology: An introduction. Cambridge University Press.
17. Jonathan Coopersmith. 1999. The Role of the Pornography Industry in the Development of Videotape and the Internet. In Technology and Society, 1999. Women and Technology: Historical, Societal, and Professional Perspectives. Proceedings. 1999 International Symposium on, 175--182.
18. Nicholas S. Dalton, Rebecca Moreau, and Ross K. Adams. 2016. Resistance is Fertile: Design Fictions in Dystopian Worlds. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '16), 365--374.
19. Gail Dines and Robert Jensen. 2004. Pornography and media: Toward a more critical analysis. In Sexualities: Identities, behaviours, and society (2nd . Ed.), M. Kimmel and R. F. Plante (eds.). Oxford University Press, New York, 369--380.
20. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. 2013. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. The MIT Press.
21. Andrea Dworkin. 1989. Pornography: Men possessing women. Plume.
22. Anna Eaglin and Shaowen Bardzell. 2011. Sex Toys and Designing for Sexual Wellness. In CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '11), 1837--1842.
23. Ingrid Erickson, Libby Hemphill, Amanda Menking, and Stephanie Steinhardt. 2016. On the Production of the Spirit of Feminism. interactions 23, 5: 36--44.
24. William A. Fisher and Azy Barak. 2001. Internet pornography: A social psychological perspective on Internet sexuality. Journal of Sex Research 38, 4: 312-- 323.
25. Guo Freeman, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2016. Revisiting Computer-Mediated Intimacy: InGame Marriage and Dyadic Gameplay in Audition. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), 4325--4336.
26. Hannah Frith. 2013. Accounting for orgasmic absence: Exploring heterosex using the story completion method. Psychology & Sexuality 4, 3: 310--322.
27. Stuart Heritage. 2015. How virtual reality porn could bring about world peace. The Guardian. Retrived January 5, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/09/h ow-virtual-reality-porn-could-bring-about-world-peace
28. Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott. 2002. Embodying Orgasm. Women & Therapy 24, 1--2: 99--110.
29. Adam N. Joinson. 2008. Looking at, Looking Up or Keeping Up with People?: Motives and Use of Facebook. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08), 1027--1036.
30. Gopinaath Kannabiran, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2012. I just made love: the system and the subject of experience. In CHI '12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 51--60.
31. Celia Kitzinger and Deborah Powell. 1995. Engendering infidelity: Essentialist and social constructionist readings of a story completion task. Feminism & Psychology 5, 3: 345--372.
32. Haewoon Kwak, Changhyun Lee, Hosung Park, and Sue Moon. 2010. What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media? In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW '10), 591--600.
33. Shaun Lawson, Ben Kirman, Conor Linehan, Tom Feltwell, and Lisa Hopkins. 2015. Problematising Upstream Technology Through Speculative Design: The Case of Quantified Cats and Dogs. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15), 2663--2672.
34. Amanda Lenhart. 2009. Teens and Sexting: How and why minor teens are sending sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images via text messaging. Retrived January 5, 2017 from https://calio.dspacedirect.org/handle/11212/2060
35. Joseph Lindley and Paul Coulton. 2016. Pushing the Limits of Design Fiction: The Case For Fictional Research Papers. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), 4032--4043.
36. Linda Lovelace and Mike McGrady. 2012. Ordeal. Kensington Publishing Corporation.
37. Evgeny Morozov. 2014. To save everything, click here: The folly of technological solutionism. PublicAffairs.
38. Hiromi Ozaki. 2010. Menstuation Machine. Retrived January 5, 2017 from http://www.di10.rca.ac.uk/hiromiozaki/menstruationmachine.html
39. Tyler Pace, Shaowen Bardzell, and Jeffrey Bardzell. 2010. The Rogue in the Lovely Black Dress: Intimacy in World of Warcraft. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10), 233--242.
40. Lukasz Piwek and Adam Joinson. 2016. "What do they snapchat about"? Patterns of use in time-limited instant messaging service. Computers in Human Behavior 54: 358--367.
41. Nicole A. Poltash. 2012. Snapchat and sexting: A snapshot of baring your bare essentials. Rich. JL & Tech. 19: 1.
42. Fabin Rasheed, Prasad Onkar, and Marisha Narula. 2015. Immersive Virtual Reality to Enhance the Spatial Awareness of Students. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on HCI, IndiaHCI 2015 (IndiaHCI'15), 154--160.
43. Bonnie Ruberg. 2016. Doing it for free: digital labour and the fantasy of amateur online pornography. Porn Studies 3, 2: 147--159.
44. Marie-Laure Ryan. 2015. Narrative as Virtual Reality 2: Revisiting Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. JHU Press.
45. Beatriz Sousa Santos, Paulo Dias, Angela Pimentel, et al. 2009. Head-mounted display versus desktop for 3D navigation in virtual reality: a user study. Multimedia Tools and Applications 41, 1: 161--181.
46. Sarah Sharples, Sue Cobb, Amanda Moody, and John R. Wilson. 2008. Virtual reality induced symptoms and effects (VRISE): Comparison of head mounted display (HMD), desktop and projection display systems. Displays 29, 2: 58--69.
47. Lisa Z. Sigel. 2000. Filth in the wrong people's hands: Postcards and the expansion of pornography in Britain and the Atlantic World, 1880--1914. Journal of Social History 33, 4: 859--885.
48. Chelsea Stark. Virtual reality porn is here. Mashable. Retrieved January 5, 2017 from http://mashable.com/2016/01/08/naughty-america-vrporn-experience/
49. Scott R. Stroud. 2014. The dark side of the online self: A pragmatist critique of the growing plague of revenge porn. Journal of Mass Media Ethics 29, 3: 168--183.
50. Chek Tien Tan, Tuck Wah Leong, Songjia Shen, Christopher Dubravs, and Chen Si. 2015. Exploring Gameplay Experiences on the Oculus Rift. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY '15), 253--263.
51. Sam Tregillus and Eelke Folmer. 2016. VR-STEP: Walking-in-Place Using Inertial Sensing for Hands Free Navigation in Mobile VR Environments. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), 1250--1255.
52. Eleanor Walsh and Helen Malson. 2010. Discursive constructions of eating disorders: A story completion task. Feminism & Psychology 20, 4: 529--537.
53. Raymond Wong. VR porn is here and it's scary how realistic it is. Mashable. Retrieved September 21, 2016 from http://mashable.com/2016/01/08/naughtyamerica-vr-porn-experience/
54. Computer Gaming World Museum. Retrieved January 5, 2017 from http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year= 1992&pub=2&id=100
55. Daydream - Google VR. Retrieved January 5, 2017 from https://vr.google.com/daydream/

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing