cybersex can take on different forms

cybersex can take on different forms. For example, cybersex in online chat rooms often refers to computer-mediated, interactive sexual story telling (in real time). There is also virtual-reality cybersex, where people enter a virtual environment to interact with others by wearing special goggles and movement-sensitive sensors. Similarly, multiple user domains (MUDs) are used as virtual places where characters, objects, rooms, and actions are all created in text. MUD users often have cybersex in much the same way as Internet Relay Chat and chat room users do. They tell each other sexual stories.

Finally, there is an emerging area called cyberdildonics, which relates to interactive gear and toys that can enhance the online cybersex experience with actual physical sensations. Vivid Entertainment, the world's biggest producer of adult films, for example, has been experimenting with cyberdildonics. Proud of its reputation as a company that's been on the frontline of technology, it has a functioning $200 Cyber Sex Suit — a neoprene bodysuit with 36 electronic sensors in the chest, inner thighs, and other erogenous zones that transmit heat, cold, and vibrations. A person can send a signal to a DVD player via a remote, which then goes over the Internet, into the wearer's computer, and to the suit via a connector. Vivid Entertainment's lawyers, however, fear that someone might have a heart attack while wearing the suit, so the company has put it on the shelf for the near future.

But what really makes cybersex so appealing? Experts cite safety, anonymity, convenience, affordability, and escape as the five top reasons. Pornography used to require risks: a trip to the seedy movie theater or the scrutiny of a video-store clerk. Physical encounters require more serious risks, including disease. Virtual sex poses none of these problems.