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December 27, 2011
We thought the idea would spread like wildfire though our sex-positive San Francisco Bay Area circles and beyond — we harbored grand delusions of being the biggest Facebook group ever, and this technically, I believe, was possible. The larger the group, the more anonymity you'd have when you joined — your name would be lost in the vast numbers of the group’s spreading waves. We’d find out interesting things: “Holy shit, I’m sexually connected to Julian Assange.”
"The larger the group, the more anonymity one would have with joining — their names being lost in the vast numbers of the group's spreading waves."
We quickly tried a little marketing with our invitees, asking them to join the group and then invite their own former lovers, saying it was a great sociological experiment. Shockingly, that didn’t go so well. The only feedback I got was a text message from my mom asking me if my my Facebook account had been hacked by Russian spam bots. Shortly after getting the invite, a beautiful French girl who'd broken my heart years back posted "Why are people so fucking retarded?" as her status. (But then, I never had a chance of getting back with her anyway — c’est dommage.)
Over a year later our numbers stand at eleven — so much for exponential growth. It was a valiant attempt to do something provocative and novel with Facebook, but only ten others shared my enthusiasm: for everyone else, it was ridiculous and borderline creepy.
Yet hope remains. Maybe it’s time to give the idea another go. I still have grand hopes for our little group — someday, people won’t think of it as “Nick’s pervy Facebook group.” They’ll just see the largest Facebook group of all time, and with a few more clicks, suddenly realize its true nature and what it really says about all of us.
Then again, maybe it was destined to fail from the beginning. Maybe people would rather connect their sexual dots randomly than have the picture collectively drawn for them. Maybe that’s half the fun of these late-night drunken conversations: “You slept with who? Me too!” Or maybe the actual truth is just too dark: what if we’re all closer to each other “in that way” than we’d really like to admit? Some things are probably better left to the imagination. You can fantasize that you're chastely removed from the sticky fumblings of the rest of us down here in the dirt, or you can accept that we're all a lot more connected than it appears.
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Hooking Up
Safe Sex
Commentarium (36 Comments)
So basically, you tried to recreate the chart from the L word, and failed. Perhaps your friends just weren't as cool as fictional LA-based lesbians.
that means WeHo does it better than san fran
I'm in there twice because I've fucked myself!
I think this is a brilliant idea! I actually used to keep stats of who I'd slept with out of my FB friends . . . and the number was always bigger than I thought it would be! It'd be interesting to see who they have slept with . . . and so on.
I'd be terrified to join the group and invite my sexual partners. Seeing just how many people are connected through sex would make me worry knowing, statistically, a couple of them would have an STD or two. And then my mind would be clouded with thoughts of whether or not people I had slept with had slept with someone who had one.
If you've been with that many people that you're that worried, statistically speaking, you've already contracted herpes. Ever had a cold sore?
Oooh. Touchy subject. Ask the chick downstairs whose had roughly 40 guys. (Not sure if she meant '40 guys and rough sex' or 'approximately 40 guys'.)
the average number of sexual partners for adults in the United States is around six to eight for men and four for women.
No. That may be the average number *claimed* by men and women, but the number - by necessity - has to be the same. It's math.
Please return to our conversation when you've (a) understood what you're thinking about, and (b) have decided that you can communicate it adequately. kthxbai
I think I'm going to start ending all of my idiotic statements with "It's math." Foolproof.
Please allow for the fact that this is the one site on the entire web that doesn't allow for html tags and then get back to us. Your pedantism is noted and appreciated though...
Damn, I love that word... "pedantism".
Unless there's a lot more gay and bi men than the probably 10% (plus or minus). If there were then that would explain the difference in the numbers between men and women. Just saying.
There aren't as many gays as the lefties would have you believe. It's just a lot of smoke for the left agenda.
McKingford, let's try to break this down for you. Take ten men and one woman. Nine of the men are gay, one is bi. All of the gay men and the bi guy have had sex with each other, because as everyone knows, we're just big old sex fiends. The bi guy also has sex with the woman. That gives each of the gay guys nine partners, the bi guy has ten and the woman has one.
It's math, sweetcheeks.
I don't know about your math, but I like your pants. They're very intelligent.
Hey, that's brilliant. Take an instance where I'm clearly talking about heterosexual partners and change the subject!
Hey Smartypants, isn't there a word for "changing the subject"? The whole pedantry thing just gave me a new love of obfuscatory words.
im a woman and ive fucked roughly 40 guys. .. the average in this article being 6-8 for men is laughable. or maybe everyone i know is getting it on way too much.
Hi beetle. Just for, ah - puposes of verifying statistical accuracy - yeah - could you please supply me with your name, address and phone number. I'll, ah, be in touch. Muchly appreciated.
40 guys. Jesus. That's a lot. I'm no prude, but... there's no word that describes how badly that eclipses my count. Do you feel that 40 is within the bounds of normal and healthy?
40 may be higher than average, but it isn't beyond the "bounds of normal and healthy." Who cares if a girl has had 40 or 100? Safer sex exists for a reason.
Well, she didn't state that it was "safe sex". So you're presuming that she used condoms, oral dams, etc etc? I would suggest that this is not the default. Even a kiss without protection is not "safe", you can get herpes or hepatitis quite easily. At 40, I can only assume that she's a petrie dish of undesirable pathogens. Ugh.
grow up.
"for all seven billion of us to be sexually connected in a mere six links, everyone on earth would need to have an average of 43.74 sexual partners." Not sure who did the math on that one, but that's not quite right.
Yeah, but it's math, so it *must* be right.
Just what about the 6th root of 7 billion is inaccurate? It says average number of sexual partners. You could have one woman fuck everyone in the world, but the average number of partners would still be the same. Think before you post.
Well first of all you're assuming the graph is random. Which is wrong.
@Ryan,
First of all, that's taking into account all seven billion adults -- and children. Still sure about its accuracy?
Only problems being: 1. Don't want to get in touch with certain people I've had sex with in the past. 2. Sometimes the sex has been secret, and we're not about to let the whole world know that we've been there.
Perhaps you should just consider not being such a slut.
da fuq
lol
I'm one of those guys that grew up in the halcyon days of the late 70s, at a university in the midwest during a time when AIDS was almost 10 years away from even being mentioned, and the worst thing you heard anybody getting were pube lice. The threat of herpes was floating around, but nobody much seemed to know anyone who had it. Every gal you met seemed to be responsibly on the pill, so it was a wild cavalcade of bareback action. I've never had any religious stigma about sex, and I've always had a great curiosity about what different women looked like naked. I'm proud to say I never used cheesy pickup lines or gave the old "But baby, I LOVE you; I want you to have my babies!" crap either. Usually, sex accrued out of natural conversations and a shared sense of fun. As such, I've ended up having some sort of meaningful (to me, at least) sex with approximately 250 to 300 women, a number that suits me fine. I will freely admit that many of the last 50 or so have been paid for, since at age 54 now, and with tastes that run toward the younger set, I've succeeded in shutting myself off from 99% of traditional activity. I've had to learn to adjust to using condoms more often; I'm disease-free, fortunately. I've given myself a host of pretty great memories. My longest traditional monogamous (mostly) relationship was when I was in my late teens and early 20s, and lasted about 3-1/2 years. I was always geared toward group sex and cuddle party type stuff anyway; I don't feel monogamy is very natural, nor really desirable. It's hard to imagine being able to get all the past lovers to agree to this project, but I do love the idea. We're all connected anyway somewhere up in the universal mind, I think, so why not at the "universal groin" as well?
'As it stands, the average number of sexual partners for adults in the United States is around six to eight for men and four for women.'
Really? Huh. Makes me feel like a slut...
Oh well.
The French Girl had it right.
Worst idea ever.