Sex and the software: what it means to have an active sexual life in the digital world

The economy has become in the last few decades more and more intangible. We went from a product-based economy, where agricultural and industrial outputs constituted the majority of the goods, to a service-based economy. Going to restaurants, traveling, getting a haircut, going to a concert were and still are activities we value and pay for. Due to the digital era, even services became more and more immaterial. We started valuing and paying for infinitely downloadable and reproducible software-based goods: applications, e-books, online courses and even services that help you build, maintain and distribute these software-based goods.

Picture by Carlos Lindner

Going from hardware to software had ramifications that went beyond the economy and affected, in particular, human interactions and relationships. For example, you can now maintain friendships while living apart, without any need for physically meet the other person and drinking together a physical coffee in a physical bar. Romantic long-term relationships and marriages got affected too. They are not necessarily there to bring children into this world, the most “hardware output” you can think of. Instead, relationships are there to primarily satisfy our inner and intangible needs for happiness, meaning, wholeness, sense of adventure, self-discovery and anything in between.

What I have noticed is that it is not just relationships that became more “software-oriented” lately. To my greatest surprise (and utmost despair), even what eventually might lead to a relationship has dramatically steered towards software too. Yes, I am talking about sex. And yes, sex is going to be once more the main topic of this blog :)

Despite working in a field riding the wave of the digital economy and transformation, I think of myself as someone who conducts a rather nondigital life. At least compared to the average millennial. I don’t read e-books, as I enjoy the feeling of holding physical books in my hands. I don’t have Spotify, but I often go to concerts. I don’t shop online, as I prefer having a real shop assistant telling me if I look fat in the dress I tried on. I don’t have Netflix and when I feel like crying and binging on Gilmore Girls and eating spaghetti with butter, I just ask my ex-boyfriend for his password. I am not that active on social media either and that is why very few people read this blog… And, most importantly, I am not on dating apps, because I am not interested in male profiles. I am just interested in males.

Photo by Asal Lotfi

I have many girl friends who, on the contrary, are or have been on dating apps. Their stories have always been fascinating to me. On the one hand, I could witness how being a profile (software) to swipe and not a real person (hardware) to interact with lowered the bar for human decency and respect. According to their stories, dudes had no problem setting up a date and then postponing or cancelling last minute, as if showing up physically didn’t entail some real logistics to undo. On the other hand, I realized that interactions among profiles rather than humans steered the very notion of what sex constituted towards a more intangible flavour. My girl friends were flooded with texts and pictures, including sexual ones, for weeks, without ever getting to an actual physical encounter. Given that dating apps are there to ultimately get you laid, it might just mean that, over there, sexting and sending pictures of genitals are sufficient to consider the exchange a true intercourse. After all, profiles cannot but have software-like sex.

I have always listened to my girl friends’ stories with a deep sense of relief that nothing like that was occurring in the real world. Sometimes they were really frustrated and I tried to convince them to unsubscribe from those idiotic apps. To do so, I was telling them how better my sexual life was in the nondigital world compared to theirs. I used to tell them that the broad choice of profiles that dating apps were offering was just an illusion. And that “settling” for a limited choice of physical men paid off in the end. At least something concrete was happening for me! Yep, I was hiding behind the privilege of not needing to create a profile and bragging about my supposedly moral integrity for choosing the high road. And I kept going with my nondigital lifestyle looking down on the people having profiles… until the pandemic hit.

Photo by Alexander Sinn

The pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of our lives at a rate nobody was prepared for. Especially myself. Given that nobody and no place were reachable physically, all aspects of our lives were consumed through software. Needless to say, that fact that I had no dating apps meant that throughout the pandemic I had no sex. Not even the dull kind of sex consumed between profiles. Meanwhile, my girl friends kept having software-like sex. (I figured that they must have found my sexual life in the real world uninteresting in the end, because they all kept their profiles). Once the restrictions got lifted and the world decided that it had enough of Covid, I was eager to go back to my old nondigital life. In all its aspects. Sooner than later, I realized that there was no chance to really go back “to normal” and that, instead, there was a “new normal” to get used to. That new normal meant that our days would have been conducted in a hybrid mode, constantly bouncing back and forth between the real and the digital world. And that new normal encompassed sex too.

After the pandemic, I set two goals for myself: I wanted my sexual life to stop being non-existing and I wanted it to be fully conducted in the real world, like it used to be. While the first goal was attained easily, the second one turned out to be impossible to achieve. I soon realized that also my sexual life had landed in the hybrid limbo of the new normal. I was flooded with useless texts and erotic pictures that lead nowhere. And people were scheduling, postponing, rescheduling dates and could less and less commit to a fixed day and time. I was striving to have real world hardware sex but I was treated like a profile, without even being on dating apps. I was affected by the trend of seeing and interacting with people as mere software too. And when I say “mere software”, I don’t state this lightly. Due to my job, I have some knowledge about how software is crafted and what are the latest trends and buzzwords around it. Nowadays the most advanced teams in the industry adopt the so called DevSecOps model. Software development (Dev) is integrated with IT operations (Ops) while keeping an eye on security (Sec) so as to avoid as much as possible to introduce vulnerabilities to the code. What I noticed is that sex in the digital world (or in the hybrid limbo I find myself into) follows the same principles of current software development trends. That is why I named this new paradigm as well as their advocates and practitioners DevSexOps, which can also be an acronym for “Devolution of Sex into Optional”.

Photo by Marvin Meyer

If you are in the mood for some nerdy content, in the following, you can find three pillars of DevSecOps declined for DevSexOps. You will understand in what sense developing code is similar to conducting a sexual life in the digital world. You might even appreciate the irony of it. Or sink into despair. Either way, enjoy the rest of the blog post!

CI/CD

In the world of software development and DevSecOps, CI/CD means “continuous integration and continuous delivery”. In other words, incremental code changes are made and deployed frequently. In the world of the DevSexOps, CI/CD means “continuous integration, continuous delaying”… into your agenda. Let me explain what I mean. Back in the days when nobody used to mistake me for a software profile and it was clear to men that they were interacting with a real hardware woman, my sexual encounters were framed like a date. They had a place, a day, a time and at least one planned activity that was other than sex, be it a dinner, an apéro, a walk in the city or a visit at the museum. People made time for the other person and for sex in general and dates were scheduled at least one week in advance. Also, before the pandemic, dates were mostly happening during the weekends, as everybody was working from their office (eventually commuting) and seeing each other was rather difficult over the weekdays. Nowadays, as we all work from home or, at least, in a hybrid mode, people somewhat expect sex to be hybrid too. After the pandemic, I noticed that men started asking for the same flexibility that is typical of the digital world, where everything is done through software and can be rescheduled infinitely. Sexual encounters are not planned in advance because no logistics is needed: they happen at your place, where you are supposed to be all day anyway. They do not resemble to dates either. They are in fact reduced to mere time slots set to “private” and placed somewhere in the calendar between client calls. And because they are mere time slots that can be quickly modified without no concrete consequence, if you want to have any chance of getting real sex, you must be prepared to continuously delay these slots and integrate them again and again in your agenda. As said, continuous delay and continuous integration, CI/CD.

Photo by Monica Sauro

“Can you confirm for tomorrow at lunch?” I sometimes find myself texting the night before a “slot” is supposed to happen. “I want you so badly” is what I get in return. To which I reply, in deep frustration: “This is not a confirmation.” At that point, a lot of reasons why it is impossible to confirm right away are texted back to me. A foreseen bad day at work, a possible business trip, an important deadline, so important that might get delayed to the following week. Reasons culminate with the fatal question: “Are you flexible tomorrow? Can I tell you mid-morning if I can pass by at noon or later?”. And proud nondigital-me who prefers not to have sex at all than compromising on her hardware values ends the conversation with: “Do you think I am a yoga teacher? I am not flexible, see you another time”.

AUTOMATION

In secure software development, DevSecOps know that the more code is prepared in advance and automated, the less they have to write it. Automation, therefore, boosts efficiency and has the additional benefit of lowering the thinking process as there is less code they need to take care of. Declining the principle of automation for DevSexOps means that, if you are lucky enough to get to an actual physical encounter, sexual intercourses will for the most part all look the same. This is because when a process is automated and efficient, there is just no room for variations and adjustments. As anticipated in the CI/CD pillar, when you strive for efficiency, remove all aspects that are not related to sex and condense your dates to time slots, what you get is a sexual encounter that unfolds like a stand-up meeting at work. You have to quickly arrive at a common understanding and consensus of what are the next steps to do. Being straight to the point and conscious of the temporal boundaries that were assigned to that precise slot are considered virtues. And then sex happens, one step after the other and, an unmentionable (ever shrinking!) number of minutes later you are back at your desk ready for the next client call. Sex becomes one of these house chores that remote working made it possible to run in parallel and to tick off your todo list between meetings. At the end of the day, it will amaze you how much this hybrid new normal enabled you to load and unload the washing machine three times, go grocery shopping, cook a soup and even have sex without affecting business as usual.

Photo by Planetcare

DEPENDENCIES

If you want to produce code that is secure, DevSecOps have to pay attention to external code dependencies, meaning code written from third parties, because this could potentially introduce vulnerabilities. Also in the context of sex, DevSexOps know what safety means. You cannot invite people into your bed without taking into account all the other unchecked dependencies they might have. That is why protection is a must. And both in the digital and nondigital world, men tend to be rather risky when it comes to safety. In the old good days of nondigital sexual life, when some of them tried to avoid using the condom claiming that they were fine, risk-adverse me used to answer: “Good for you, but I am not”. As I watched their face paling and melting, it was interesting to see how far their libido went and if it was strong enough to overcome the shock of what they had just heard. Now that everybody is on dating apps, you might think that using protection is not needed in this new paradigm of software-like-sex. What venereal disease can you get from a dick pic after all? But just because digital sex is so boring that even venereal diseases gave up on it, is it ethical to send a dick pic to everybody just because it is risk-free? I mean how do you know that the dick pic was at least taken for you only and it is not the same picture shared already with hundreds of women? Dependencies still matter even in the digital sex world and it is important to show some respect and put a minimum amount of effort in the interaction, even if it is through texting. This is the trick that I use to ensure that the dick pic was taken for me only when a guy asks me if he can send one. I reply that I work in cybersecurity and to please forgive my professional bias and obsession with safety but that he should wear a condom in the picture… Nobody so far has ever got my sense of humour and, after this request, all of them disappeared. I wonder why.

Photo by Alexandre Sinn

These were what I believe are the main similarities between DevSecOps and DevSexOps, or better, between how software is produced and how digital sexuality is lived. I do not dare to try to think of more similarities, because I am sure I will find more and that will stop being hilarious and just be depressing.

What is true is that, no matter how hard I tried to preserve my real world sexual life, I could not completely escape its digitalisation. In fact, I got caught up in it, in all its downsides, even without being on dating apps. Needless to say, being treated like a software was a shock and to a certain extent a humbling experience: I am not looking down on my girl friends and their profiles any more. Instead I have compassion for them as much as I have for myself, as we are all sitting on the same sinking boat. Maybe one day I will get used to this new normal and even find it fulfilling to have software-like sex. Who knows, maybe my first orgasm out of a dick pic is just around the corner ;)

Breaking Thirty Quote

Now I would love to hear from you! Did you also notice a shift in how people approach sex compared to before the pandemic? Or did you notice that even earlier? Or are you still one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to deal with sex in the digital world? Do you believe that apps have improved or worsened people’s sexual and romantic life? Let me know in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe to the Breaking Thirty Newsletter for more blog posts.