ON THE CYBERSOCIALIZATION OF HUMAN SEXUALITY: AND THE SOCIOCYBERLICIOUSNESS OF LOVE…

FORWARD:

Were it not for  the three revolutionary hallmarks of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century: The Sexual Revolution, The Technological Revolution and The Civil Rights Revolution respectively, I should not be writing this article save perhaps as a science fiction essay.  I am also amazed at how well the fusion of  technology Hip-Hop, cinema and sexuality has worked out in the coining of some freshly minted nomenclature which I have presented in the title of this article as, "Sociocyberliciousness", a concept which in my opinion is central to the subject of internet communication and social media in general including the hyper-reality of popular culture.  I find the first quarter of the Twenty-First Century to be fascinating if not only because for the very first time in all history as we know it human culture is simultaneously upended and uploaded.  The primary feature that critics of society and civilization are tracking is the logic effect of it all; they are all watching to see if anything essential to classical human civilization has been lost in translation as it is photographed, photocopied, scanned,  uploaded, downleaded, activated and assimilated into modernity. Prior to the twentieth century humanity enjoyed a rather anonymous existence outside of birth and death records.  Today every aspect of our lives is being silently tracked and even predicted by some sort of computer program.  The summation of this virtual dossier has come to define us as human beings although it consists of little more than a random collection of statistics and assumptions.  How close they come to quantifying the reality of the human being, the human spirit and soul, how near they come to realness is the geat question of our day.  As a commentary on popular culture and especially internet-infused popular culture I have proposed a humorous but i feel, culturally relevant replacement for the nonexistent nomenclature of society, simply coined as "Sociocyberliciousness".  Sociocyberliciousness is a term waiting for a more intensified definition but in the meantime quantified by likes, and hits, and followings, by credit ratings and lines of credit, by virtual shopping carts, personality profiles, passwords to virtual societies, by frequent flyer points, timeshares, email coupons and a seemingly endless field of data.  Like everything else in twenty-first century society Sociocyberliciousness is a hybrid of concepts derived from a broad range of human culture.  Let us say for the purposes of this article, we can define it as the quantity or condition of desirablity within an internet driven popular culture as assessed against a broad range of economic, social and political variables. Sociocyberliciousness has roots in the all American tradition of Mid-Twentieth Century Disney and the term, "Scrumpdellyicious", as well as Late Twentieth Century Funk culture in the tradition of Funkadelic who coined such whimsical terminology as: 

"Psycho alpha disco beta bio aqua do loop".  

To thedalliance of this term lets add the 1980's confection, "Bubblelicious" chewing gum and of course Snoop

Dog's original 1992 creation, "Bootylicious" made famous by Beyonce in  2001.  Internet culture posses the

unique ability to create a hyper-reality across time and culture, it approaches what Einstein envisaged in his

theory of relativity as a point of sublime timelessness or as quantum physicists suggest, a pseudo-tachyonic

existentialism.  The computer, and therefore the entire effect that this tool has had on both man and his

environment whether viewed from a microscopic or  macroscopic perspective is all about the human

experience lending itself warmly to the existentialist purview of the state of humankind in a cosmic reality that

he increasingly finds he cannot either comprehend or subdue.  Therefore, use this article as a crash course in

futurism written in the dialectic stylization of a new and yet undefined virtual culture expanding into the void

of perpetual cyberspace...

ON THE CYBERSOCIALIZATION OF HUMAN SEXUALITY: AND 

THE SOCIOCYBERLICIOUSNESS OF LOVE…

Because there are exceptions to every rule, internet dating, sex and romance included, the savvy of modern men must manage the option to virtually simulate or physically initiate social and/or sexual interactions as an alternative to an hermetic existence.  Should you venture to publish an opinion that it is impossible to find internet love, warning against the potential hazards, that premise will be challenged by dozens of brothas testifying that they successfully found love in cyberspace…

Internet socialization as a whole is more suited to younger men who have grown up immersed in a culture dominated by the computer.  Many mature men struggle more with cybersocialization in part because of a personal cultural lag including the probability that many of the men they desire to meet are only available through some sort of cyber-media.  We are smack in the middle of a huge sociocultural shift where centuries of traditional human customs are being uploaded and reformatted to suit the computer dominated twenty-first century.  The novelty of this not so new phenomenon detracts from the tried and true methods which some men might agree never really worked for them anyway.  Without a doubt the internet opens a broader domain of possibilities including the down side of this expanded range of options.  Life, it seems, is always a balancing act!

Perhaps one of the first rules of the game of cybersocialization is that there are none, not yet at least because they are literally being invented!  The volatility expressed by the transient morphology of modern technology necessitates that it will take some decades for any stable form of “Protocol” to be established, if ever. 

At the end of the day after spreading one’s self out over a multiplicity of cyber-sites  and profiles whether the pictures, stats and other fine details are accurate or not, there must come a time of reckoning where the virtual image has to stand up to the real McCoy!  Many of our frustrations with online dating, for example, stem from the fact that there is no alignment among cybersocial offerings indicating the individual we have encountered is heavily invested in the cyberization of themselves.  This is where our human instincts must take over and I can tell you that long before anyone ever imagined there might be a computer the discrepancy between human instinct and human nature presented one of the most formidable challenges to successful socialization.  So while the computer has afforded mankind more social options it still cannot solve the fundamental problems in human nature which obstruct the synergy of practical, human interaction on every level.  It might be argued that cybersocialization actually fertilizes and propagates dysfunctional caveats in human nature and socialization which might be more easily filtered out and identified under traditional face to face conditions.  Therefore, persons who hide behind a virtual façade may be thought of as having cyberized themselves beneath a cloak of unverifiable properties.  Now, I have already warned against speculation on the phenomenon of cybersocialization so my challenge is to stay my own vanity and leave it to history to be properly vetted out.  Let me say only, since I daren’t resist, the very obvious… that every man must fend for himself, evaluate for himself! In spite of the many testimonies proclaiming sociocyberlisciousness let me caution every gentleman that all which glitters in cyberspace or elsewhere on the common street where we live, is not gold!

Written By David Vollin

Administrator: For The Brothas Intellectual Salon

Look for more articles of this nature at: www.forthebrothas.blogspot.com 

GLOSSARY:

1.       CYBERSOCIALIZATION:  Of or relating to the process, state or quality in which the traditional methods of tactile human socialization have been replaced by virtual means of communication on all levels in internet culture.

2.       CYBERIZATION:  The process within internet culture by which a person invents a virtual personality to the degree that it no longer bears any resemblance to who they really are.  When a person has successfully crafted an alter-ego in the form of a spurious online persona they have been cyberized.

3.       SOCIOCYBERLISCIOUSNESS:  The the quantity or condition of desirability within an internet driven popular culture as assessed across a broad range of social, economic and political variables.