Are you down to bang with a friend? The Evilest App Ever

Are you down to bang with a friend? The Evilest App Ever!

by Stan Faryna

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Do you secretly want to have sex with people you know in real life and/or people you’ve met online?

Now you can make that happen. Easily.

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Taylor Swift, Trouble

Bang With Friends

There’s a lot of buzz about a social sex app, Bang With Friends. And the buzz is going to get a lot louder. Because it’s social. Because it’s about sex. Because this is the kind of topic that gets attention and clicks.

Jure Klepic writes about Bang With Friends in the Huffington Post here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jure-klepic/bang-with-friends-app_b_2900671.html

There’s a National College Ministry warning by Adam Jeske here:

http://www.intervarsity.org/blog/evilest-app-ever

Mark Wilson of Fast Company wrote about Bang With Friends here:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671768/bang-with-friends-the-beginning-of-a-sexual-revolution-on-facebook

Social Sex is the new killer app

Watching the movie, The Social Network (2010), one gets the impression that Facebook was actually designed for the hook up. Zuckerberg’s own apparent sociopathic disempathy may (or may not) confirm such speculation. [grin] But if so, that only speaks to the high value of the Facebook business model. “Sin” as defined in a college human geography class (a long time ago) is always “good” business and the fact that porn has been the MVP in the Internet growth equation (since forever) is just more proof that sin makes money.

Note: I do not suggest that the sin business model has high moral, spiritual or cultural value. That said, Bang With Friends (BWF) is no surprise. And it’s going to get worse in the sense that social sex is going to become more visible.

Social sex, of course, will out compete less compelling platforms and services in terms of engagement. Just as porn always has and will continue to do so. Popular social sex participants will come to command greater attention, engagement and transaction than the tastemakers, thought leaders, cheerleaders, etc. for all the obvious reasons. It goes without saying that enlightenment doesn’t hold a candle to sex – nor can a revival of traditional values save us from the “license” that we are willing to pay for.

Here’s the problem – unlocked potential swings both ways: good and evil. And so long as the market and money is the ultimate arbiter of value, utopia will always look a lot like hell. Or Sin City,

Trouble, Trouble, Trouble

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble. 

– Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1

Is Bang With Friends trouble? Well, Britney Spears sings about it. Trouble – that is.

The trouble with BWF is that it reduces the ordinary challenges to our getting into trouble. Such challenges allowed some of us to exercise self-control. As I toured BWF, I felt the adrenaline, fear, shock, shame, and horror when I saw the “Down to Bang” button below pictures of…

1. Friends
2. Relatives
3. Lovers or Spouses of Friends and Relatives
4. Grown-Up Children of Friends

And I didn’t have to push any buttons.

Troubles and bad decisions often begin with a certain coy presumption of innocence: My being “Down to Bang You” is like a “like”, right?

I can see it now – the fun and “harmless” exchanges on Twitter, Facebook and beyond:

I’ll bang you!

Bang me PLEASE!

Bang me and I’ll bang you back.

The dark seed, however, is sown and the realization of trouble shall be decided more forcefully by interest and opportunity than conscience and consequence. With certain trepidation, I predict that 1 out of 3 friends will get into trouble – because the ordinary challenges to sin have been neatly removed from virtue’s armory.

Pray for us!

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Stan Faryna
21 March 2013
Fairfax, Virginia