It is a weird time for sex on the internet. We live in both an era of extreme sexual permissiveness and constant restriction. Formerly niche fetish terms like “gooning” have reached mainstream usage. The advent of machine learning has made deepfake pornography more common than ever, to horrifying effect. The release of the Epstein files has revealed how pervasive sexual exploitation is. Yet, ID-restriction laws have been passed in the UK and Australia, and several US states have floated or passed similar laws. Dozens of sexually explicit games were banned from Steam and Itch last year, in large part thanks to payment-processor pressure. Tomodachi Life exists at this curious intersection between permissiveness and restriction.
