10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17331
Cybersex represents a particular, distinctive form of sexuality. Computer mediation enables the hic et nunc to be suspended thanks to processes such as deindividuation, self-disclosure and visual anonymity. These characteristics allow individuals to develop fantasies that recall the worlds explored by Sade’s universes in much the same way, i.e. through narrative practices. The article addresses these questions by presenting data coming from an ethnographic empirical research based on online sexual activities. Borrowing from the works of Akim Bay and Pierre Levy, the article introduces the concept of “Sadian collective intellectual” in order to interpret the evolution of extreme sexual interactions over the Internet. On the basis of this empirical data, the article argues that the use of technological platforms such as chat rooms amplifies the circulation of extreme sexual imaginaries and leads to the formation of microcommunities around them. Internet also enables the construction and circulation of symbolic material to be used in exploring and activating “extreme” desire. By means of this circulation, the boundaries between real and virtual are reshaped by those who define themselves as “amoral”, “perverted”, “evil”, the protagonists of narrations of rape, incest and violence. As in the relationship between Sade and the objects of his compositions, desire and pleasure can only exist in the absence of the other party.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17331
2
en
Renato Stella
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
temporary libertine zones
Circulation of Technology, Circulation of Desire. Cybersex and the “Sadian Collective Intellectual”
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
7
Essays
2017-01-24
2023-06-21
2017-01-24
2023-08-21
129-150
TS
Renato Stella
2016
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17331
129
University of Padova
2038-3460
2
temporary libertine zones
en
150
Circulation of Technology, Circulation of Desire. Cybersex and the “Sadian Collective Intellectual”
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17331/16181
7
                                                                               Essay
                                                                                      129




Circulation of Technology, Circulation
of Desire
Cybersex and the “Sadian Collective Intellectual”

Renato Stella
University of Padova (IT)



     Abstract: Cybersex represents a particular, distinctive form of sexuality.
     Computer mediation enables the hic et nunc to be suspended thanks to
     processes such as deindividuation, self-disclosure and visual anonymity.
     These characteristics allow individuals to develop fantasies that recall the
     worlds explored by Sade’s universes in much the same way, i.e. through
     narrative practices. The article addresses these questions by presenting
     data coming from an ethnographic empirical research based on online
     sexual activities. Borrowing from the works of Akim Bay and Pierre Levy,
     the article introduces the concept of “Sadian collective intellectual” in
     order to interpret the evolution of extreme sexual interactions over the
     Internet. On the basis of this empirical data, the article argues that the use
     of technological platforms such as chat rooms amplifies the circulation of
     extreme sexual imaginaries and leads to the formation of micro-
     communities around them. Internet also enables the construction and
     circulation of symbolic material to be used in exploring and activating
     “extreme” desire. By means of this circulation, the boundaries between
     real and virtual are reshaped by those who define themselves as “amoral”,
     “perverted”, “evil”, the protagonists of narrations of rape, incest and
     violence. As in the relationship between Sade and the objects of his
     compositions, desire and pleasure can only exist in the absence of the
     other party.

     Keywords: cybersex; chat rooms; Sade; collective intellectual; temporary
     libertine zones.

     Corresponding author: Renato Stella, Department of Philosophy,
     Sociology, Education, and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), University of
     Padova, Via Cesarotti, 10/12, 35123 Padova, Italia - Email:
     renato.stella@unipd.it.




TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
7 (2) pp. 129-150 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                2016
130                                                              Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

              Yes, I am a libertine, that I admit. I have conceived everything that
              can be conceived in that area, but I have certainly not practiced
              everything I have conceived and certainly never shall. I am a
              libertine, but I am neither a criminal nor a murderer.
                         Marquis De Sade, Letter to his wife, February 20, 1791

              I write some stories in this group, and I do not go out and rape,
              torture or murder people in real life. I write about women getting
              raped, but I would never rape a woman, I AM a woman…
                        ShadowMist, alt.sex.stories posting, May 18, 1995

1. Online Sexual Activities and Digital Media Circulation

    Online sexual activities (OSA; Shaughnessy et al. 2011; Byers and
Shaughnessy 2014) have seen a rapid growth and a capillary diffusion in
the last two decades, thanks to the technological innovations that have
shaped and changed their uses. Over time, various different means have
emerged in succession, from the bulletin board systems (BBS) and news-
groups of the 1990s to the social networks and role-playing games since
the turn of this century. The passage from one communication environ-
ment to another has engendered important novelties, making the asyn-
chronous written texts used by the BBS evolve into the synchronous vid-
eo images of chat services that rely on the use of webcams and micro-
phones. The individual and collective consequences of such changes have
attracted the attention of researchers, particularly as regards the most
widespread forms of OSA, pornography and cybersex, which have been
the object of a sizable body of studies in the last 15 years (Griffin-Shelley
2003; Döring 2009; Short et al. 2012; Stern and Handel 2001; Owens et
al. 2012; Manning 2006).
    Our interest in these technological developments focuses not on their
psychological fallout or the social alarm they have aroused (on these is-
sues, see Cooper et al. 2000; Schneider 2000; Young 2008 for instance),
but on the ways in which production processes, sexual content, and
modes of use have circulated from one communication setting to another.
We hypothesize that, if we analyze these passages, we will find a core set
of characteristics that remain constant, albeit adapted to the specific fea-
tures of each medium, old or new.
    We shall consider a particular type of cybersex that involves the col-
lective production of stories of “extreme” sex, developed mainly in chat
rooms, Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) such as Second Life,
or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) like
Sociolotron. The stories refer to actions and situations that are “extreme”
not just because they are unusual (bondage, dominance and sadomaso-
chism [BDSM], fetishism, transgenderism), but also and primarily be-
cause they go beyond the boundaries of what is considered ethically and
socially acceptable (rape, kidnapping, snuff). The radical obscenity of the
Stella                                                                     131
stories being told is such that it is otherwise only expressed in written
form, fictional movies or cartoons – and some of their violent features can
be seen in “real TV” or hard rock too, as Attwood (2014) pointed out.
    Even restricting the field in this way, the extreme texts to which we
refer focus exclusively on sexual settings and episodes intended for the
purpose of sexual arousal. They may contain descriptions of events and
circumstances on a level of intensity almost unknown to other communi-
cation media. If the writers are normal individuals describing their most
secret and violent fantasies (as happens with the web 2.0), the impact is
often even stronger than could be achieved by horror or splatter films.
Chat services, blogs, MUVEs, and so on also sometimes enable roles to be
interpreted in the first person, thus transforming the story into a genuine
performance in which participants become protagonists.
    We shall see that, even when the help of avatars is enlisted (as in Se-
cond Life), the verbal exchange remains the fundamental, essential means
for moving within these worlds (Waskul and Martin 2010). The written
text is consequently the only tool that enables someone to venture into
scandalous, excessive scenarios that would be impossible to reproduce in
any other way. This is the prerequisite that makes extreme erotic stories
irreplaceable in certain niche markets, even now that the market has been
saturated with photographs and videos showing every aspect of sex that
can possibly be depicted or imagined.
    The history of obscene writings goes back a long way (Hunt 1993;
Darnton 1996), but the prototype that possibly summarizes and symbol-
izes its content and its destiny over centuries of censorship is the work of
the Marquis De Sade. The constant core features of the material circulat-
ing between the various media whenever such “extreme” situations are
described that they verge on the limits of representability can all be found
in Sade’s models, and not only inasmuch as concerns their orgiastic con-
tent and excesses. Certain rhetorical tools must be used in order to speak
about the “unspeakable”, tools devised for printed books that the web
subsequently simplified and made accessible to anyone.
    It is surprising to see just how closely the content of BBS and news-
groups resemble the topics described by Sade, although there is no men-
tion of these latter-day authors having wittingly followed his example, or
even read his works. It is also surprising to find that BBS, newsgroups,
chat services and MUVEs reproduce the same conditions of segregation
and isolation in which Sade places his libertine characters. So, based on
these similarities, the idea that a “Sadian collective intellectual” exists all
across the web and the various modern communication media is not in-
tended as a metaphor, but alludes to the fact that, in order to speak pub-
licly and collectively of certain topics, there are preliminary conditions to
be met that have remained unchanged since Sade’s time.
    The term “Sadian collective intellectual”, introduced here for the first
time, is inspired by Lévy’s concept of intellectuel collectif (1994) – trans-
lated into English in 1999 as collective intellect: something that “pro-
132                                                          Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

motes the construction of intelligent communities in which our social and
cognitive potential can be mutually developed and enhanced” (Levy
1999, 17). Leaving aside the utopian approach that animated Lévy’s in-
terpretation, the concept is nonetheless useful for describing the process
of participation by means of which several thousand people have contrib-
uted collectively over time to spreading a body of narrative content re-
sembling Sade’s models using various digital platforms.
    The aim of the article is to show that the set of narrative artifices in-
vented by Sade in his novels (such as isolation, secrecy, unrealistic image-
ry, disinhibition) remained somewhat constant in new media sexual inter-
action and have recirculate from the printed media to latter incarnations
in digital world. To do this, we begin by identifying the original features
of Sade’s work that came to be reiterated in the various passages from one
technological medium to another. Then we take a look at the develop-
ments of platforms for extreme sexual activities (from the BBS to Second
Life) and how this evolution contributed to the circulation of sexually
“extreme” messages and content. We then present an empirical study on
the uses made today of chat rooms in the IRC network where Sade-style
conversations are still being held without the support of the latest tech-
nologies. Finally, in conclusion we discuss both platforms’ evolution and
ethnographic original data in order to address the process of circulation
of extreme sexual representations across different media technologies and
platforms along the time.


2. The Structure of the Sadian Text

     To understand how the “Sadian collective intellectual” takes shape in
the various stages of Internet’s evolution, we need to see which elements
of Sade’s works have subsequently circulated - virtually unchanged - in
the “extreme” stories told on the web by means of the various platforms
available. As mentioned earlier, this is a question of identifying a homolo-
gy not of content, but of production processes and modes of consump-
tion.
     There are two main characteristics of Sade’s writings that we should
consider.
     1. The first concerns the enormous lack of realism in the situations he
describes: the story he tells is deliberately excessive, not only because the
content is extreme (orgies, crimes, abductions), but also because of the
obvious lack of realism in its staging. Sade’s novels do not aim to be “real-
istic”, because comparing his portrayals with the real world would defeat
the main object for which they were written (and for which they are often
still read today), which was to arouse the reader’s sexual imagination with
infinitely exaggerated, and consequently “excessive” scenarios, wholly out
of proportion with reality. The separation between the story and real life
goes so far as to make the scenes of “extreme sex” essentially absurd and
Stella                                                                    133
abstract, since most of them would be logically and physically impossible
to put into practice. “(…) if some group conceived the desire to realize
literally one of the orgies Sade describes (…) the scene would quickly be
seen to be utterly unreal (…) all surpass human nature” (Barthes 1989,
136). What drives Sade’s narrative is the imagination, with its own partic-
ular “language”.
     2. The second characteristic lies in the need to provide a secret, sepa-
rate place where Sade’s heroes can create their own, entirely artificial
world, untouched by the laws and constraints governing ordinary daily
life. This element originates from a narrative pretext that is a constant fea-
ture of Sade’s novels, the prototype of which is the castle in Silling where
the libertines take refuge “hermetically isolated from the world by a series
of obstacles” (id.), in The 120 Days of Sodom; this is the model for every
other locus clausus where the adventures of Sade’s characters take place.
Their isolation is necessary for reasons of security (to avoid being discov-
ered, unmasked, and persecuted) and also to create a symbolic environ-
ment where scenarios and fantasies unrestrained by any moral, social or
legal limitations can be imagine and enacted. The reign of the libertines
must be one of unquestioned, self-sufficient dominion, where everything
conceivable is allowed, approved and practicable.
     These conditions are reiterated in instances of social segregation
known and analyzed long before the birth of the web. In the words of
Goffman (1990, 102): “Finally, there are back places, where persons of
the individual’s kind stand exposed and find they need not try to conceal
their stigma, nor be overly concerned with cooperatively trying to di-
sattend it”. The separation that generates half-hidden communities,
where individuals who share certain characteristics seek each other out
and come together, is not only a literary invention. Goffman foresees the
modern proliferation of digital “back places” provided for the benefit not
only of individuals who are stigmatized, but also of stigmatizing individu-
als interacting with one another, who find a safe place where they can
nurture their extreme erotic fantasies. What Sade’s castle and Goffman’s
back places have in common is their function: both provide an “other
world” where people can withdraw, a place where the rules governing
normal daily life are suspended and cast aside, and “abnormal” behavior
and actions are acceptable.
     The way in which these separate spaces can be imagined and managed
in the web has been theorized by Hakim Bey (1985) through the concept
of temporary autonomous zones. The idea of such zones as a virtual terri-
tory where there is no hierarchy, no social control, that is essentially a
figment of the imagination of a group of individuals and destined to a
brief and intense existence, is in itself rather extreme and might seem far
removed from Sade’s proposals and Goffman’s descriptive goals. But on
closer inspection, it appears to complete Sade’s isolationism by adding
the provisional and precarious traits of the rooms that can be opened and
closed in chat services or meeting places in Second Life. This is a concept
134                                                          Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

well suited to the object of our analysis - so much so that we might, with
some license and approximation, describe the Sadian back places of the
web as temporary libertine zones, where it is allowable to imagine actions
and situations that would be impossible in any other setting involving the
mutual exchange of messages.
    These Temporary libertine zones serve as containers for known effects
(already described in the literature) because they create the conditions of
anonymity, secrecy, and release from the rules of daily life that define
their autonomy. An opportunity for self-disclosure (Qian and Scott 2007)
and visual anonymity (Joinson 2001) thus triggers the deployment of vari-
ous online disinhibition effects (Suler 2004), which lay the subjective
foundations for these virtual back spaces to become established, ignoring
taboos and social norms: “Due to its mediated nature and the opportuni-
ties it offers for anonymity, cybersex helps to lower inhibitions and also
encourages particularly open communication. Sexual inclinations and
preferences otherwise concealed in the real world due to the fear of rejec-
tion can be acted out on the Internet” (Döring 2009, 1095).
    Having thus delineated the field of our analysis, we can proceed with
a detailed description of the steps that lead to the creation of temporary
libertine zones along the lines of Sade’s writings, but in the setting of the
new media. Beginning with the newsgroups, we then going on to look at
the MUVEs, and conclude with an empirical analysis of the usage of the
old chat services, that some users have yet to abandon in favor of the so-
cial networks or WhatsApp.


3. Step One: From Elite Literary Writings to Anyone’s
Writings

    The asynchronous computer-mediated communication born with the
BBS was used for sexual purposes (Wysocki 1998) right from the start,
but it was with the rise of Usenet that various newsgroups formed and
were organized by topic, leading to a specialization and rationalization of
their content. Among the latter, one of the most popular in the 1990s was
alt.sex (alternative sex), a discussion group on sexual topics that included
various subgroups (alt.sex.pictures, alt.sex.stories, alt.sex.blondes,
alt.sex.bondage, and so on).
    The alt.sex.stories newsgroup was officially established in 1992 for the
purpose of collecting “stories” of sexual content written mainly by non-
professionals: common people who put their own fantasies into writing.
The idea was an instant success, also thanks to the extreme freedom of
speech granted to the various authors.
    Sproull and Faraj (1997) reported that alt.sex stories had 120,000
readers in 1993, and a volume of 338 messages exchanged every day.
Most of the content, however, was not concerned with representing con-
Stella                                                                          135
sensual and conventional sexual intercourse. As Jekyll (2006) put it: “Sto-
ries include romances, sexual interludes, and loving, marital sex, but they
also include homosexuality, adultery, and such hot-button themes such as
sodomy, incest, kidnapping, rape, bondage, domination and submission,
sadomasochism, torture, scat (feces), watersports (urine), mind-control,
bestiality, pedophilia, mutilation, and snuff sometimes in complex com-
binations”.
    As of April 1993, all stories are attributed codes (see Table 1), in the
form of acronyms, so that potential readers are aware of what type of
sexual situations a story describes. This innovation has also made it easier
to produce quantitative analyses on the newsgroup’s content and obtain a
picture of the distribution of the various topics.


Table 1 – List of codes used by alt.sex.stories to classify the non-conventional and
non-consensual content in the various posts.
Abbreviation                               Description
b, g           Boy - Preteen (age 12 or younger), Girl - Preteen (age 12 or young-
               er)
best           Bestiality. Sex with an animal (see also zoo)
blackmail      Forcing sex through threat of exposure
h              A hermaphrodite under 18
inc            Incest
m, f           Boy - Teenager (13 - 17), Girl - Teenager (13 - 17)
mc             Mind control
nc             Non-consensual Sexual Activity
nec            Necrophilia: Sex with a dead person
ped            Pedophilia: Some participants age 12 or below
rape           Brutal non-consensual intercourse
reluc          Starts out as rape, but she loves it.
snuff          Killing for sexual pleasure
tort           Torture Severe non-consensual infliction of pain
va             Verbal abuse. Abusive and dirty language
viol           Violent, not always sad
vore           Eating (literally) someone or something alive
zoo            Zoophilia: Caring and consensual sexual relationship between a
               human and an animal


   As we can see from Table 1, the inventory of paraphilias described by
the codes includes the whole repertoire inaugurated by Sade in his 120
Days of Sodom.
136                                                              Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

    In 1997 Harmon and Boeringer examined a sample of 196 stories and
found that 40% of them involved non-consensual relationships. Barron
and Kimmel (2000) subsequently studied the levels of violence being rep-
resented, showing that alt.sex.stories contains quantitatively more vio-
lence and places a qualitatively greater emphasis on violence than the
pornographic magazines and videos sold by porn shops. So the realism of
the visual image is not enough to supersede the evocative power and im-
pact on the imagination of the written word. Proceeding with our own
investigation, we grouped the 2,661 files in the historical archives of
alt.sex.stories (http://www.asstr.org/) according to how the authors de-
scribing the various activities involved in the stories had classified their
content (see figure 1). We thus obtained the data shown in Table 2,
where a distinction is drawn between “non-conventional” and “non-
consensual” sex. The former includes sexual activities that are bizarre,
unusual or inspired by paraphilia, undertaken on the grounds of an
agreement between the parties involved. The latter refers to all forms of
sexual activity undertaken without the consent, or against the will of one
of the parties concerned, which thus implies some direct or indirect form
of violence.

          Title               Author            Category       Length        Rank
      1,000 Kisses            Marlissa        Slave/Master     Medium         940
                                               Consensual
      2 Time Story             Alun                             Short         850
                                                   Sex
                             Unknown
        3 Dogs                                   Animal         Short         300
                              Author
  90210 (Chapter 1           Watkins,          Television
                                                                Short         900
      Excerpt)                Michael          Parodies
                             Unknown
A Baby Pants Prisoner                         Humiliation       Short         100
                              Author
  A Better Insurance
                               POC            Slave/Master     Medium         700
        Policy
                                                Incest:
 A Big One For Mom        Mr. Strawberry                        Short         800
                                               Son/Mom
                            Unknown
 A Big Tit Breast-Play                        Breast Fetish     Short         500
                             Author
 A Blackmailed Wife         The Editor        Slave/Master       ling         700
            Fig. 1 – 2.661 files in the historical archives of alt.sex.stories
(http://www.asstr.org/) according to how the authors describing the various activ-
               ities involved in the stories classified their content.

    The proportions of non-consensual, non-conventional and other sto-
ries (including those reported as be consensual – see Table 2 on the next
page – are roughly the same, with one third each, so the interest of au-
thors and readers taking part in the newsgroup clearly focuses on forms
of non-ordinary sexuality, with the non-consensual and violent stories
taking the lion’s share (62.2%).
Stella                                                                                 137

Table 2 – Non-conventional and non-consensual stories.
Category1                                      Non-conventional             Non-consensual

                                                     N.            %            N.     %
Animal                                                                          80    3.0
Bondage                                              60           2.3
Breast fetish                                        14           0.5
Female domination                                    25           0.9
Homosexual/Lesbian                                  108           4.1
Humiliation                                                                      34    1.3
Incest/Kids/Family                                                              393   14.8
Medical exam                                          9           0.3
Other incest                                         42           1.6
Mind control                                                                    103    3.9
Pregnancy                                            29           1.1
Rape                                                                            159    6.0
Slave/Master                                        246           9.2
Slut wife                                            37           1.4
Spanking/Whipping                                   120           4.5
Torture/Death                                                                    68    2.6
Transgender                                          53           2.0
Voyeur/Watching                                                                  42    1.6
Weird/Unusual                                        32           1.2
Totals                                              775          29.1           879   33.2
Total Non-conventional + Non-
                                                  1654           62.2
consensual
Consensual sex                                     403          15.1
Other*                                             604          22.7
                                                  2661         100.0
Source: alt.sex.stories depository, Story list sorted by title, 05/30/98.


    Leaving aside the content, the Sadian characteristics on which we fo-
cus our interest concern the processes by means of which this content is
produced and circulated. In alt.sex.stories, the structure adopted for a
considerable number of the stories is the same as in Sade’s novels. The
newsgroup provides an isolated, secure digital environment. In order to
join, you need to be familiar with the computer procedures needed to ac-
cess the site, and you need to be sufficiently “libertine” to enjoy reading
or posting stories. After joining the newsgroup, people have the oppor-
tunity to conceive of convincing, but wholly unrealistic situations, placing
no limitations on their imagination and disregarding any ethical or practi-
cal constraints. The web allows them to fully and collectively enjoy the

     1
      Codes with at least 5 cases: Action/Adventure, Comics, Erotic Horror,
Fantasy, Halloween, Humor, Ideas, Interracial, Masturbation, Non-sexual,
Religion, Romance, Science Fiction, Unknown.
138                                                          Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

disinhibiting experience that was once a privilege of Sade’s characters.
    It is therefore hardly surprising that, at the start of the 1990s – when
forms of visual pornography (in magazines and video cassettes) were al-
ready abundantly available – computer-mediated communication provid-
ed material in the form of a story that the porn industry was unable to
“show” (Torture/Death, Rape, Incest/Kids/Family). Horror and pulp
films come closer to this type of content, but often in a rough and ready
fictional form that lacks the capacity to involve the viewer emotionally
and the evocative effect of written words. The underground market for
photographs and videos boasting “real” scenes of violence or pedophilia
remains prisoner of a brutal realism that is unable to stimulate the view-
er’s imagination, violating aesthetic as well as ethical and legal norms, and
destroying any opportunity for storytelling (Plummer 1995).
    The opening of Temporary Libertine Zones enables people not only
to voice their most extreme fantasies, but also to act as both author and
consumer, become fused in the figure of the prosumer. The newsgroup
allows for comments on the stories posted, thus giving users a concrete
chance to develop a “collective intellectual” that enables the circulation
of styles of representation, sexual scripts (Gagnon and Simon 1973) and
erotic scenarios of Sadian type.


4. Step Two: From Stories to Narratives Acted out in Chat
Rooms Interactions

    Chat sites began to operate in the same years when alt.sex.stories was
proving successful. Though still relatively primitive forms of communica-
tion, they were equipped with what the BBS and newsgroups lacked, and
that is the synchronicity of the messages being exchanged. Users could
now “speak” to each other as if they were on the phone, taking turns as in
a normal conversation. This is when the first research on the new phe-
nomenon of Internet used for sexual purposes was conducted. We shall
return to this more extensively in the last part of this paper, when we de-
scribe the study that we conducted in 2014 on several Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) platforms still in activity.
    Here we introduce the topic to speak about the resources that syn-
chronous exchanges make possible. Lamb (1998, 131), for instance, dis-
covered that people taking part in a chat under a false identity can be di-
vided into “those who told tales theoretically of their own experience and
those who related fantasized sexual experiences with my persona”. Some
of those interested in sexual experiences with minors were particularly
expert in the biographies of child-actors, who they offer to impersonate in
their exchanges of messages with other users. This marks a departure
from the inheritance of Sade’s novels (which still persisted in
alt.sex.stories) and a move towards an original elaboration of fantasies
Stella                                                                      139
that describe real people (the child-actors), or develop into role-playing
games during the course of which the participant “acts out” the child’s
part.
    The unreal dimension emerges here, as in Sade, because the toy chil-
dren constructed in the interaction are attributed sexual capabilities or
physical attributes that they could not really have: “In the final conversa-
tion, the individual began talking like an adult”. This leads to a two-fold
fantasticated simulation: participants pretend to be well-known actors,
and also attribute inappropriate characteristics to the pretend subject
they impersonate, along with a general “lack of knowledge and detail of
contemporary teen life: school, clothing, music and vocabulary”. In other
words, the representation of the roles is naive, conforming to a mecha-
nism typical of pornography since it concerns not a real individual, but a
“simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1994) generated by means of the exchange. As
in Sade, this reflects the all-powerful role that the authors wish to have
over their victims, but in this case they do not describe, they impersonate,
disregarding all biological and social constraints, in a domain where their
imagination reigns uncontrolled.
    This change identifies a radicalization of the chat users’ role: they are
no longer restricted to “reading”, but are almost bound to be asked to
take an active part in producing the erotic scene, in which they become
protagonists. The Temporary Libertine Zone generated in the chat thus
serves as a place for the collective creation of increasingly realistic stories,
especially from the point of view of the prosumer involved in the produc-
tion process. Readers of Sade could not possibly have such a role, nor
could readers of alt.sex.stories, even allowing for the fact that the latter
can post messages.
    This completes the developmental cycle of the Sadian imagery circu-
lated by means of computers. In conditions of social segregation, in the
back places made possible by chat sites, individuals can meet and com-
municate with one another for the purpose of establishing a place for ex-
pressing their most hidden desires, totally detached from the social rules
of daily life, a place where they can treat the bodies of their victims in
ways that only Sade could describe. A new type of realism comes to the
fore: instead of telling stories, this is theatre; participants become in-
volved in the first person, they “act as Sade”, instead of quoting or read-
ing him. The narration is ultimately replaced by the performance.
    This changes the meanings and the erotic usage of chat sites and is
alarming some observers, who have predicted the birth of new “patholog-
ical communities”, triggering much debate among the experts (Quinn e
Forsyth 2005; Durkin et al. 2006; Schwartz e Southern 2000). Some em-
blematic events had already hinted at this evolution2, but had prompted


    2
      For instance “in 1995, Jake Baker, a University of Michigan student, was
arrested and prosecuted for a story on Usenet about kidnapping, raping, and
140                                                          Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

discussions mainly of a political and legal order, relating to the limitation
of freedom of speech (Bilstad 1996; Faucette 1995).
    The styles used to construct the dialogue in chat sites necessarily differ
from the stories on alt.sex.stories, because they demand the use of short
sentences being exchanged in the context of a conversation. Some Sadian
characteristics nonetheless remain the same, while others are perfected.
In The 120 Days of Sodom, the four libertine protagonists pay four fe-
male storytellers to “inflame” their senses with obscene stories. Aroused
by what happens in the stories, the four men then try to take the same
sort of action on their own victims. In chat rooms, modern-day libertines
have a similar experience by “enacting” their own fantasies by means of
an imaginary interaction with another user who accepts the rules of their
game. This begins with the idea of impersonating someone or “construct-
ing” someone as a designated victim of their own desire in a scenario in
which they are actors, authors and stage directors at one and the same
time.


5. Step Three: From Written Words to Avatars

    The third step in the circulation of the elements comprising the narra-
tion/construction of extreme fantasies in digital environments has to do
with virtual worlds where a person can move with the aid of an avatar.
These graphic representations of the visitor may have the appearance of
human beings or of imaginary creatures. They “visually” stand in for the
individual controlling them. Using their avatars, people can take action
on themselves or on others, and remarkably convincingly with the current
levels of development of the technology. In dedicated digital environ-
ments, avatars can perform an extraordinary number of actions, like go-
ing shopping, visiting places, holding a meeting, going to university, even
getting married, and much more, including flirting and having all kinds of
sexual intercourse.
    On the topic of Second Life, Waskul and Martin (2010) wrote:
“straight sex, gay sex, trans sex, incest, orgies, masturbation, furries, sex
toys, consensual rape, BDSM, sexual torture, bestiality, water sports, ex-
otic dancing, prostitution, nudism. Any and all possible forms of sexual
activity, some of which—not unlike Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom—are fan-
tastically beyond the realm of what can be done in the flesh” (pp. 299-
300). We are not very far removed from the sexual activities described in
the alt.sex.stories codes, and Sade seems to have an important role in Se-
cond Life too: the success of the erotic games played by its Residents was
so great that the founder, Linden Labs, decided in 2009 to develop an is-


murdering a woman with the same name as a UM classmate. The prosecution was
ultimately dismissed by a Federal judge” (Jekyll 2006).
Stella                                                                         141
land entirely dedicated to “adult” activities called Zindra. It seems un-
necessary, at this point, to say again that every time the web offers a suit-
able Sadian environment (isolation, secrecy, unrealistic imagery), this has
disinhibiting effects and attracts people inclined to experiment (albeit in a
simulation) with extreme sexual deviations.
    The aspect of interest to us in the way Second Life works lies in that
the written word continues to have a leading role, given the poor quality
of the avatars and the virtual environments in the world of “cartoon sex”
(Waskul and Martin 2010; Boellstorff 2008). Although it allows for a
body to be built with made-to-measure sexual traits to match anyone’s
desires, by “buying” genitals and sexual capabilities from special shops,
the Zindra red light district ultimately works like an illustrated chat ser-
vice, where unrealistic, clumsy images of the self- accompany the written
content of instant messages that are needed to describe sensations and
emotions, and to give and receive instructions.
    It is not only the Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) cre-
ated for other purposes - like Second Life - that offer the opportunity to
create virtual worlds dedicated to sex. Some MMORPGs have already
been designed for this type of use, such as Pangaea, Evil Dead, F.E.A.R.,
Phantasmagoria, The House of the Dead: Overkill, World of Warcraft.
Some contain scenarios in which extreme forms of violence can be perpe-
trated (torture, mutilation, even cannibalism), while others are used for
staging episodes of rape and incest. But the environment that condenses
in a single game many of the characteristics only briefly hinted at else-
where is Sociolotron.

         “We wanted the player to be able to do things that are also possible in
     real life, although he would probably never want to do them in reality, be-
     cause they are evil and would cause punishment outside the content of an
     adult game. (…) the Sociolotron adult game contains sex, politically incor-
     rect behavior, blasphemy, and lots of other things which are not accepta-
     ble to many people. This game allows you to bring out your darker side”
     (http://www.sociolotron.com).

    This is a perfect Sadian place where the characteristics that we have
discussed so far come together in a single virtual environment and are ad-
vertised to attract customers (the fee for Sociolotron users is in the range
of $8-$10 a month). “Iron rules” are imposed: it is strictly forbidden to
create scenarios or refer in any way to the realms of pedophilia, and it is
not permitted to draw any kind an advantage from the game in real life.
    The whole course of our analysis thus comes full circle and returns to
the starting point. Sociolotron is the universe described in Sade’s novels
made accessible to anyone willing to pay the entrance fee and take part
as a co-author. Within this fictitious world, avatars who cannot be perse-
cuted for their actions dedicate themselves to the experience of abuse, vi-
olence and extreme sexuality, just as Sade did with his characters. Socio-
142                                                           Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

lotron can be seen as a Libertine Zone that is no longer temporary like
the chat sites, however, because it has become institutionalized, a clearly-
defined, specific “place” à la Augé (1995). With time, it has built up its
collective story and gives users the chance to develop a dense network of
often conflicting relationships: “You can be permanently killed. You can
be put away into prison for some weeks! You can even be forced into
prostitution or drug abuse” (on the emotional and behavioral effects of
the game, see Whitty et al. 2011, Gutiérrez 2014).
    We have come a long way from the stories filed on alt.sex.stories,
however. Although Sociolotron has the structure and constraints of a
game, with previously-written scene plays that can be interpreted using
avatars, the types of behavior suggested and inspired in this environment
go well beyond what many players might have ever expected to be able to
virtually experience.


6. Back to the Past: Revisiting the Chat Sites

     At this point, it is useful to conduct a further test our original hypoth-
esis, i.e. that the set of artifices invented by Sade in his novels (isolation,
secrecy, unrealistic imagery, disinhibition) are a constant feature of the
various modern media described here, from the printed matter to Socio-
lotron. Wherever the conditions are right for these resources to be pro-
vided, a more or less temporary Libertine Zone is created that is steeped
in the spirit of Sade, whatever the technical medium hosting it and ena-
bling it to develop. In other words, the succession of different environ-
ments (BBS, chat rooms, MMOGs and MMORPGs) does not necessarily
give rise to a hierarchy in which more modern media prompt the decline
and disappearance of the older platforms. It may even be that the oppo-
site occurs, that remnants of the past serve precise social functions, one of
which is provide a solution for those who lack the skills needed to im-
merse themselves in Second Life or other such virtual worlds.
     To test our hypothesis, we conducted an empirical research on several
sites in the IRC network during the months of July and August 2014, and
on other chat services elsewhere on the web, where users are allowed to
chat about whatever they wish. We gave priority to chat rooms that recall
Sadian topics in their names, even without any direct reference to BDSM
(e.g. blasphemy, extreme sex, amoral sex, incest), and to references to Sa-
tanism or neo-Nazism with explicit erotic objectives. This approach led
us to interact with a number of people and gain an idea of how Tempo-
rary Libertine Zones, created in the setting of “blind” chats (without us-
ing webcams or microphones), are used today. The chats considered were
all in the Italian language and explicitly erotic.
Stella                                                                        143
6.1 Method

    We conducted our empirical research in three separate phases.
    Phase 1: silent observation of the messages circulating in the public
part of the chat sites. Aim: primarily to become familiar with the jargon
and the meanings to which users’ nicknames allude (some chat sites also
include written user profiles) to establish the boundaries within which
participants represent themselves and their actions; and, as a secondary
goal, to gain an idea of their age, gender and sexual orientation. This part
of our survey was conducted of the course of one week, at three different
times each day, and for approximately an hour each time3.
    Phase 2: introducing ourselves in the public part as inexpert newcom-
ers, asking to be guided/initiated into the use of the chat room. Usually
after two or three attempts, we would find somebody willing to act as our
“companion” (there seem to be plenty of users of who find pleasure in
taking novices under their wing, providing the newcomer is determined).
The researchers naturally had to introduce themselves using an identity
suited to a novice. Aim: to examine the rituals of the interactions and the
classes of the proposed actions; to understand what types of fantasy are
described. In this setting, conversations can be struck up in which several
individuals spontaneously provide details about the main categories of
visitors to the site, the words and sexual situations that are allowable, the
ones that trigger negative reactions, and so on.
    Phase 3: pooling the information obtained from the various available
sources (the public part of chat sites, user profiles, and exchanges with
our “guides”) to obtain appropriate models and interpret our findings.
The three stages of our study were conducted adopting a “virtual ethnog-
raphy” approach, following the methodological framework suggested by
Hine (2000).

6.2 Ethical Issues

    As Waskul et al. (2000, 382) wrote, while it is true that “it would be
unethical to observe on-line participants engaging in cybersex without
their knowledge and permission”, it is equally true that it would be “un-
ethical to conduct on-line research in such a way as to overtly and know-
ingly disrupt the context of one’s research”. Since the privacy of the peo-
ple with whom we came into contact was never invaded and we have no
way of inducing them to behave in any unethical or hazardous way, we
believe that here (as on other occasions), we behaved in the best way to
safeguard the interests of the individuals with whom we interacted, and to
achieve reliable findings. In settings such as the sites that we temporarily


    3
      The chat service allows for several rooms to be kept open at once, and for a
user to take part in several public chats simultaneously using the same nickname.
144                                                                  Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

visited, if we had introduced ourselves as researchers we would not have
been taken seriously, or we would have been rejected. In both cases, this
would have been disruptive and we would have been perceived as trou-
ble-makers with the smooth functioning of the chat site. We consequently
feel that, by ensuring the anonymity of the people contacted and under-
scoring that the chat sites involved are open to the public, our working
method was ethically and pragmatically the best solution to adopt in the
situation – much the same stance was taken by Shoham (2004) and a simi-
lar study was conducted by Lamb (1998).

6.3 Main Outcomes

    As always happens with chat sites, the first exchanges of messages
serve to take stock of one another, to gauge who is on the other end of
the line, how much you can “reveal” yourself, and how far you can take
the conversation (Mills 1998). In our case, introducing ourselves as novic-
es with no knowledge of how the chat room functioned, but well aware of
the types of topic being discussed made it easier for us to induce process-
es of disclosure and disinhibition, and gain the trust of the people we
chatted with. Our “guides” were initially cautious, but soon became will-
ing to give us a broad idea of the chat site’s uses and customs, and the
topics most often discussed in the exchanges.
    This enabled us to collect the information we needed, interrupting the
conversation when we felt we had achieved our aim, or when the ex-
change tended to involve us excessively in any fantasizing.
    Our analysis of the “blind” chats confirms that Sade’s influence is still
very strong when various kinds of Temporary Libertine Zone are set up
so that the parties involved can feel free to talk to each other about their
fantasies. The fundamental ingredients (already mentioned several times)
circulated by the various media are always much the same: an isolated
“place” is prepared (the chat room) that outsiders and laypeople cannot
enter; users are assured of secrecy and anonymity, they access the site
with a nickname and revealing only their age, gender4 and erotic inclina-
tions; users create radical fantasies in their interactions with one another,
everyone acting as a co-author of the story; the sense of freedom and dis-
inhibition leads users to imagine extreme situations and construct ad hoc
victims, and speak of sacrificial homicide (Satanists), collective persecu-
tion (neo-Nazis), profanation (blasphemers), incest, possession and orgi-
astic exchange of bodies (depraved, amoral); and, finally, the physical-
anatomical and social unreality of the protagonists and situations de-
scribed gives rise to the representation of implausible, pragmatically im-
possible scenarios.
    This picture is largely consistent with what happened in the BBS and

   4
     Users can naturally lie about their age or gender, be it to protect their identity
and/or (as in our case) to achieve a particular goal in the course of the interaction.
Stella                                                                   145
newsgroups of the 1990s, which naturally leads us wonder why, given the
resources available today (from the worlds of virtual reality to role-
playing games), people are still using such old platforms as “blind” chats
to live an adventure that would essentially seem rather restrictive by com-
parison with what they can experience elsewhere.
    The answer focuses above all on the last of the Sadian traits that we il-
lustrated the earlier. More than anonymity, secrecy or freedom to express
erotic urges, the key element that seems to justify the choice of chat sites
is the individual’s substantial inadequacy when it comes to using other
environments. Although they defined themselves as “Satanists”, “neo-
Nazis” or “blasphemers”, many of our respondents said they do not be-
long to any groups, organizations or communities in the real world with
any connection to the roles they attribute to themselves in the chat room,
borrowing from what they have heard via the web, at the cinema, or on
TV. Even those who identify themselves as “incestuous”, “depraved” or
“abnormal” do so without being able to boast any real-life experiences of
such behavior. Sometimes they openly admit as much, and sometimes this
emerges from the implausibility of their stories, which are often all the
more unbelievable – taking on the features of genuine “stories” - the
more they are purported to refer to so-called personal life experiences. As
Lamb said in 1998, such stories are sometimes told, and sometimes im-
personated, so the theatrical function of the chat rooms remains, and
even seems to be one of their most appealing features.
    We might also wonder why someone should prefer to speak about a
given scenario in minute detail in a chat room if they really have the op-
portunity to experience it “in the flesh” (as chat users often claim to do in
describing their so-called experiences). Asking such a question directly
almost always led to the exchange being interrupted because it introduces
a heavy dose of realism in a setting where there is a tacit agreement that
anything imagined by anyone shall be taken at face value. Taking part in
the chat thus becomes the tangible sign of a two-fold limitation: on the
one hand, there is the inability to look at one’s own fantastications, and
acknowledge them for what they are, instead of presenting them as au-
thentic chapters of a person’s biography; on the other, there is the inabil-
ity to exploit more refined communication media to enjoy these fantasies
in a sophisticated virtual environment. It has to be said that chatting can
have an enormous expressive force in inventing situations and circum-
stances, whereas in Second Life or Sociolotron - despite the “physical”
use of an avatar - it is necessary to comply with constraints dictated by the
program. But none of the people we spoke to reported knowing of any-
body who used MUVEs or MMORPGs in parallel with, or instead of the
chat room.
    The paraphilias and militancies that we encountered were mainly im-
aginary, unrelated to any sects or real-life meeting places or organizations,
though the speakers referred to imaginary forms of them. Satanists, neo-
Nazis, blasphemers, amoralists and perverts interpreted their roles in
146                                                          Tecnoscienza – 7 (2)

their own self-referencing way. During the ethnographic work, we had
the impression that they were translating into stories or impersonations a
generalized condition of lurker (or voyeur of other people’s lives), already
living in a condition of social, sexual and technological segregation that
compounds the isolation permitted by the chat room. Their separation
from the real world, of which they seek to impersonate certain roles, par-
allels their active participation in Temporary Libertine Zones where they
can be transformed into ferocious torturers of their poor victims or (in ra-
re cases) even have a taste of being victims themselves.
    This description amply confirms the quotation from one of Sade’s let-
ters under the title of this article: the chat room users who spoke to us are
not there because they are unable to actually implement the excesses they
describe, but because they can only experience them intensely in the
manner permitted by the web. “To put it most simply, the sexual activi-
ties are imaginary, but the sexual pleasure is real” (Mills 1998, p. 43).
    While it is true that the topics and models in circulation retain the
Sade’s original pattern virtually unchanged from the point of view of the
recipients and the practical usage of the material, the switch from one
medium to another, from printed matter to the chat room, radically trans-
forms its meaning. There is much the same difference as between the 18th-
century aristocratic libertine book-writer and the 21st-century loners sit-
ting in front of a computer in their own rooms.


7. Conclusion

    “Extreme” erotic stories have been circulating in Internet since the
alt.sex.stories’s start in 1992, evolving over the course of two decades
from stories written and exchanged via Usenet to “theatrical” roles enact-
ed in chats or with sophisticated avatars moving in especially-designed
virtual environments. During the course of this evolution, the erotic pat-
terns in circulation seem to have remained much the same, with certain
common features (isolation, secrecy, unrealistic imagery) that enable their
reproduction using the various different formats. The technological ad-
vances (from the BBS to Sociolotron) have made Sade’s orgiastic fantasies
accessible to a much larger audience of users also making it easier from
them to come into contact and interact with one another. The latest tech-
nologies have contributed to this process of circulation in two directions.
On the one hand, the result of combining several types of platforms has
made the sexual encounters described ever more realistic (with the aid of
video cameras and microphones, and/or by developing the physical fea-
tures of avatars). On the other, the libertine forms of desire can be an-
chored to media that, in many other respects, have become obsolete (take
the case of “blind” chats, which provide the greatest assurance of ano-
nymity and personal protection.) These two paths coexist in the same vir-
tual time and space, but on the basis of our findings, they are now articu-
Stella                                                                       147
lated through several different ways and increasingly specialized uses.
    In both processes, however, the written word remains the primary
means of communication, capable of circulating from one place to anoth-
er, and from one time to another, persisting, increasingly consolidated,
and continuing to serve as the instrument of choice for mobilizing the
emotions and fantasies of the writers and readers of stories on alt.sex, and
of those experimenting with the avatars of Second Life or Sociolotron.
The “Sadian collective intellectual” consists of thousands of individuals,
engaging in their erotic practices, who unwittingly take part in collecting
and reproducing “extreme” desires and pleasures that remain much the
same, in terms of content, even if the form they take changes thanks to
modern technology. The process seems to go on without breaking away
from the past, apart from the jump from the well-protected secret diffu-
sion of a highly-cultured literary product in the 18th century to perfor-
mances enacted by ordinary people on the web. It is therefore the imagi-
nation, aroused by verbal accounts, that closes a centuries-old circle of
steps that lead from Sade’s fantasies and his characters in The 120 Days
of Sodom to modern-day libertines whose virtual environments revive
and renew the self-same pleasures.



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