Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Is "Our First Time" serious sex-education or cheesy scam?
Jul 16, 1998 | Maybe they're telling the truth. Maybe "Mike" and "Diane" -- the shadowy, pseudonymous virginal couple who have announced their intention to deflower each other live on the Web -- really do hope to prove that streaming video sex feeds aren't just for perverts, that the act of procreation is a beautiful thing.
There's some evidence to support their claim of altruistic motives: Their site, Our First Time, is presently empty of ad banners, sponsors or cross-promotion deals. The site's promised discussion area and opinion polls were up three days before its official opening this coming Saturday, as a preview of the "educational" content to come. The site's creator and mastermind, Oscar Wells, has so far displayed media restraint in protecting the identities and privacy of the couple -- whom he could have landed in conference calls and talk shows by now.
But there's an awful lot that's suspicious about Our First Time, too. Why would these kids go through with their first, perhaps clumsy, no doubt anxiety-ridden sexual encounter on the Internet, of all places -- their embraces captured by Webcams and streamed to hundreds of thousands of lascivious spectators?
The site's HTML code includes search keywords like "voyeur, forbidden, tasteless, gross, naked" that aren't exactly going to draw an audience seeking educational fare. The photos currently displayed on the site aren't pornographic, but they are somewhat cheesy in a pin-up kind of way -- and black bars cover the faces of "Mike" and "Diane," as in an old-fashioned pulp. And then there's the matter of an e-mail spam of suspicious origin "protesting" the site; it hailed from a spoofed Juno.com address and was supposedly signed by the Christian Coalition, but that organization has disavowed any involvement. So has Our First Time.
Are "Mike" and "Diane" sex-ed crusaders? Virginal exhibitionists? Performance artists? Or is this some new permutation of "barely legal" porn?
On the one hand, no one has before proposed to lose their virginity online in a tastefully shot way --"This won't be shot any different than on 'NYPD Blue,' except they don't have a script and are going to be nervous as hell," Wells says.
On the other hand, video feeds of people having sex aren't exactly scarce in the Web's red-light districts.
Wells says that the idea for Our First Time arose in a chat-room discussion with Diane in the wake of the live Internet birth of baby "Sean" on June 16. Wells recalls trying to access the site during that media event -- and being turned away because of the site-traffic overload. "It referred me to an area about family planning," he said, "and there were people bitching and moaning about this event, but there was one woman who was the voice of reason, and she was Diane. She said it was educational and beautiful and it pissed her off that if this could be shown live and considered beautiful, then why not Step One of the conception process? And why are people so spastic about it?"
"Then she said, 'If I could, I would lose my virginity on the Internet,' and I, being a programmer, contacted her," he said.
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