# cb: an idea for a weird twist on facebook
so the other day i was thinking about all these nudity and exhibitionism fantasies again. i am not sure what to do with this. i have been nude with other people but there is always something lacking which i cannot really put my finger on. i have not actually tried this but even if i were to upload pictures about myself naked, i think i would not feel any satisfaction either or it would be temporary. i think it is the same with other explicit fantasies as well. even if one could get some satisfaction, it is usually temporary and then they need to do something again. i think maybe if one could gamify this whole thing, it would keep people busy enough to trick them into satisfaction. so i have an idea. and obviously as a tech person my idea is to use more tech. and it only applies to this niche section of sexuality, the exhibitonism.
a sidenote first: i do not think the nudist lifestyle is an answer to this. for a nudist being nude is normal. with exhibitionism some of the kick stems from the fact that this is something forbidden or something that society disapproves of. there is not much sexual energy in pure nudism. also, one could get easily banned from most places for flaunting an erection.
so exhibitionism is about flaunting yourself in front of others potentially with some innocent sexual connotations. and i think one gets more kick out of it in real life than doing it online. however we shall not dismiss the power of putting oneself online too. there are two problems: where would one find a safe place for flaunting and what would be the point of flaunting?
my idea is to create a gamified social network site just for this! anyone can register there. the point of the game is to connect with the most people you can. there is a rule for establishing a connection with another member though: the two people must upload a picture of them flashing their genitals to each other. if they have the picture, they can become friends. in other words the goal of the game is to meet locally with as many people as possible and take genital pictures together! once they have a connection, they can chat with each other. as a bonus, all uploaded photos and the member graph would totally public for an extra kick. i'm thinking of naming this as "crotchbook". it would be a pun on facebook since instead of face you use your crotch as your profile picture.
totally crazy idea, right? who would ever play this game? probably not many people. i would totally think about trying it though in order to help myself to get rid of any shame that society imposes on us about our bodies and sexuality. to help me learn to ignore what other people think about me (writing stuff like this into this blog really helps with that though). to accept my body as it is and not to be ashamed about it (i already managed to do this though). i just assume there might be other people like this and as such i want a little corner on the internet for us.
i have seen some dating sites, hookup sites, nudist connection sites but usually they are very open ended and require a lot of effort to communicate what exactly you want and then find the right people. crotchbook would be laser focused on: 1. arrange a quick meeting, 2. pull down trousers and underwear, 3. snap a pic, 4. upload, 5. optionally put clothes back on. when the other person approves the pic, the pic and the connection goes public. 2 and 3 can be done in a secluded corner of a public place. there is not much place to second guess intentions or for worrying about what will happen because there is a script and it is very simple. one does the deed and it is over. it has a beginning and an end. one can feel some after satisfaction establishing a connection. the connection appearing publicly is the stimulating feedback one might yearn for.
it motivates reclusive people like myself to get out of the house because there is very little string attached to acquiring a connection. it also helps me build connections since in order to do this i need to meet with other, new people. as i explained above, one can only talk to people they already have a connection to. i would need to reach out to my existing connections in order to arrange meetups with new people. even this can be motivating in itself: if i arrange a meeting for someone else i feel like i am useful, that i am providing some value to someone else. i would probably add a helpful metadata for this though: i would allow tagging the pictures with "weak tie" vs "strong tie". one would have weak ties with people they do not know, they only met for the pic. strong ties mean that the other party is a friend, they talk and stuff. when browsing profiles, i could then see who could arrange a meeting with my target person: i would be looking for a 3rd party that has a strong tie with both me and the target rather than a weak tie.
a social network is worth nothing if there are no people on it. but i think it would be super easy to seed this site compared to other social networks. this site is not intended for building relationships or creating perfect profiles. it is solely about uploading semi-naked group pictures. crypto geeks have their "key signing parties", exhibitionists could have their "flashing parties". suppose there are several folks interested in the site, all living in the same city. i could find a small place for them where they could come to, snap a couple group photos and then upload the pics afterwards. now the network is seeded in that city and the members can start expanding the network via word of mouth.
and this would be even super cheap to run. i would only allow 1 pic per profile and 1 pic per connection. i would even aggressively downsize pics in order to fit like 200kb since hosting high definition pictures is not the goal of the site. furthermore i would delete all messages after 30 days so that i do not keep stuff forever. maybe i would even delete pics after 2 years so people do reconnect now and then. i would even delete profiles after 3 years of inactivity so that the site is not a ghost town. i think the data for all this would be peanuts, i could even run it on a free tier of a hosting provider. i should totally create such a site. or even better: someone should beat me to it so i do not have to deal with this all. this why i put all my ideas onto my blog but i do not think anybody would ever bother with my crazy ideas.
one more observation: i think i really like this idea because there is a script in it. i know what the game is about. i wonder if this could be generalized. have a website that contains all sorts of weird sexual scripts that could be acted out in a safe place. i am mostly talking about stuff that requires multiple people since otherwise it would be about dating and hookups for which there are a lot of sites. i talked about this in previous post but let me recap some ideas:
the website would contain various such activities in which the members can express interest. if there are physically close members with common interests, the site would match them. it would also offer a venue for the activity that the members could pay together in case they do not have one. something like meetup.com but for sex stuff.
maybe there is such a website but i did not find anything like that. i think there would be a dime a dozen of such websites if sexuality would not be such a big deal. things are getting better over time but i think there is still a lot of room for improvement.
edit: i was thinking a little bit about the usability of the website. one annoying thing is annotating the uploaded pictures. suppose a group of friends get together and they want to snap nudes of each other. now for each upload you need to tell the system which two users are on the pic.
to make this convenient, i'd use qr codes. each user would have a code associated that they can view on their smartphone or simply print it. whenever they are making photos, the code has to be visible next to their genitals.
now suppose you want to upload two people being on the same pic. in the pic upload page the site would split the image into two halves and run the qr code detection logic in the client on each halves. if it can find a registered user on both halves, it will allow an upload along with the metadata it collected. the pic doesn't necessary have to be of yourself, it can be of other users. that's handy when snapping pics of others, e.g. in a group. and when both parties approve the pic, the link is established between them.
this mechanism would allow the group of people in a meetup just keep snapping pics and all the annotation would happen automatically. such meetup could then be very efficient.
published on 2019-02-17, last modified on 2021-08-17
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