Dying Losers

Kill me, daddy, kill me dead!

A few weeks ago, I watched Bryan Johnson talk on a panel about AI (this wasn’t something I chose to do, for the record. I didn’t know it was happening until I got there). At one point, he tried to clumsily shoehorn his own catchphrase (”don’t die”) into a response, with the cadence that seemed to assume the audience would say it along with him. They did not.

“This guy,” I thought to myself, “is a loser.”

(A note to say that I didn’t have “loser” as a category of person until I started spending time in America, where the ever-present stench of power turns people into scheming, dickless eunuchs choking down viagra just to feel their blood pumping).

I spent the next two weeks gleefully describing the situation to colleagues and friends, revelling in the social limits of what money can buy.

At this point, Bryan “goth baddie appreciator” Johnson is admittedly low-hanging fruit for us internet laymen, but remains interesting as a golden boy of the Effective Altruism community.

Gilt-edged but plagued by its broad scope of application, Effective Altruism is meant to assess how we should use our limited resources and time to better humanity. It was originally applied to initiatives like raising money for mosquito netting, but now includes figures like Johnson, who has reframed his blood experiments as a product of his own generosity, set to cure humanity of its greatest ill: death itself.

Johnson, along with many others of the EA tech-glitterati, are seeking immortality.

It’s probably obvious that I don’t respect this project, or the idea that death is a creature you can kill. If I have an edge to my tone, it’s because it hits a soft spot of something deeply familiar, but with which I’ve taken a different direction (“beware the narcissism of small differences”).

That is to say, I’m a total hypocrite.

Bryan Johnson might be the most measured man, but I can confidently say I register on the leader board from emergency walk-in clinic visits alone.

In the three weeks since this incident, I’ve convinced myself I have glaucoma, breast cancer, skin cancer, ALS, and an alcohol allergy.

Two separate emergency dentists this year have gently asked- after many x-rays- if the issue might be psychosomatic (it was).

One doctor asked if I really wanted full-panel STI testing done if I hadn’t had any sexual contact since my last one (I did).

Adjacent to Johnson, I live my own life stalking death like a psycho, thinking it’s stalking me. And I am the loser, of course I am, because this is a game I can never win.

“Noelle of Porn World,” you might be thinking, “what does this have to do with the world of porn?”

Sweet reader, everything has something to do with sex, and the more you deny it the more you look like someone caught with their pants around their ankles.

The wider network of Effectively Altruistic, Bay Area AI tech brotherhood has been covered on and off- in varying degrees of concern- for their seemingly wide community interest in kink, BDSM and “Consensual Non-Consent,” aka rape play. I experienced this myself, sitting in a circle of self-identified rationalists as they explained to me the pleasures of “red means no” parties; full-contact “rape orgies” where participants are encouraged to fight back.

I’ve been asked often if the Silicon Valley Weird Sex(TM) rumours are true, usually in whispers, like it was a conspiracy and not something they had all made github pages advertising their affinity for.

I will admit that I find “weird sex” to be a generally boring point of analysis, particularly for moralisms.

Firstly, I’m intimately familiar with the sex nerd archetype most often associated with this type of sexual eyebrow-raising. Sex nerdism can be strange, yes, but without supplemental factors, I think it’s often harmless- having more to do with an interest in theatricality and a deep-rooted adolescent overcorrection regarding their ability to attract. I don’t mean this disparagingly, by the way- I spent my teen years playing strip Magic: The Gathering. I know what a sex nerd looks like because I own a mirror.

But what I find more interesting than broadly “weird sex” is the specific interest in BDSM, kink and particularly full-contact CNC; a relatively common fantasy in individuals, but one I’ve never seen such widespread community interest in outside the Bay Area.

Kink and power-play are practices of manufactured risk, with CNC clocking at a more intense point on the same spectrum. The idea that many of these people are devoting their 9-5s and beyond to eliminating the ultimate consequence (death), only to go home and collectively play-pretend violence (scaffolded with extensive rules and consent forms) is fascinating, and- to me- makes complete sense.

The rationalist interest in manufacturing risk is the direct byproduct of their commitment to flushing it out.

We- collectively, even outside of this subsection of people- are at a crossroads. The #MeToo movement launched worldwide conversations on the risk of sex, but positioned it, largely, as an individual failing of communication. In the years since, I’ve watched sex-positive communities try to scrub the dirt off of getting dirty with increasingly Human Resources-style attempts to communicate all the risk out of sex, hoping that balancing the books of disclosure will prevent all harm and wrongdoing.

I am all for consent conversations with the people you are intimate with. In fact, I highly encourage it. But- and this is where I might lose you- I do believe risk is the primary mechanic that makes sex any fun.

Risk is vulnerability (“what will they think of me”), risk is anticipation (“what if it isn’t like I hoped”), risk is, of course, connection.

From a porn data perspective, taboo is, of course, endlessly popular because of risk. Even on the other side of things, why are people interested in “real” couples and “genuine” intimacy, other than eroticising the emotional stakes of an actual relationship?

Somewhere in another article, I said that committed-relationship-eye-contact-missionary is the most perverted sex a person can have, and I stand by that. The tension of having your life so tied to another person’s that they could destroy it is far more effective in its masochisms than any shiny black toy from the sex shop’s BDSM corner.

Without skin in the game, so to speak, there’s nothing to play with. So the simulacrum of risk is reintroduced- methadone style- with rape parties and group sex.

In the same vein, without death, would we have anything to live for?

Those with anxiety that debilitates are often forced to learn the humiliatingly trite lesson “to live is to die” every day. If I were to give into my own neurosis, to commit to stalking death until I killed it, I would never fuck again (or do many other things, but this is a fuck-related newsletter). In many situations- particularly this past year- I’m ashamed to admit my discomfort is strong enough that I forego intimacy altogether, scared of the ways sex mimics disease in its theft of control, and not feeling like I have any to spare.

But despite my best efforts, I’m confronted with my unchangeable mortality every day. moreso now than ever as people insist on telling me I “look good for my age,” reminding me that my body will fail me eventually. That I’ll bloat and leak and deteriorate like every other animal, despite my best efforts to topical-ointment my way out of things.

I was confronted with Johnson’s mortality, too, as I watched him looking small and waxy under the unflattering overhead California Science Centre lighting. Later that evening, I sipped a tequila cocktail and tried to shut out the voice reminding me that alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen.

Being a hypocrite is, in a way, holding the line against my most cowardly, avoidant desires to circumvent death- and with it, life.

When I do have sex, I like it to be messy- physically, emotionally. I want to be scared that I’ll fall in love or- worse- that I won’t. Sex is about the journey, sure, but it’s more fun when you finish, and I wish everyone the pleasures of a little death.