Author: Nate Freeman in the New York Observer

Length: 1400 words

Thesis: Young New Yorkers "no longer care about having sex."

Opening, complete with orgasm joke: "On a recent Friday night, a 22-year-old in his first year of living in New York hosted a late get-together in his Little Italy apartment. Everyone there would call it a good party, but it decidedly lacked a climax."

Investigation: "The Observer spent a few weeks at parties and gatherings fraught with abstinence but slack of any sexual tension."

Findings: No one was getting down at the parties Nate went to. As the sun rose, "attendees departed alone. They peeled off instead of pairing up. No one at the party got laid that night and, even worse, no one gave a fuck."

Why? “Twenty-somethings are wary of sex,” said one, a young man who works at a hedge fund. “It’s not 1998.”

How Facebook stops sex: "Social media networks, rather than bringing people together, encourage nothing so much as an orgy of self-congratulation."

How Twitter inhibits sex drives: "Platonic cliques spend all day tweeting at each other, forming exclusive @-reply feeds that appear only to them," making it "harder to go home with someone knowing that you’ll be seeing their avatar the next morning and every morning after that." Plus, "cocaine is again going around."

Please Explain: "Sex is antithetical to the way they socialize, disruptive to the larger plan, a gateway to chaos in a digitally ordered world."

Marx never thought of this: "'Capitalism has replaced sex,' the model said into our ear."

Observer readers, unite! You have nothing to lose but your virginity: "'My hours are so fucking absurd,' an office production assistant on the film told The Observer. “I work a minimum 12 hours a day and up to 14 or 16, and you don’t have time to bring anyone into the equation."

How to find hope in sexting: "THERE IS, HOWEVER, hope for these poor souls, sexless in the city; younger kids are poised to take their places." Their "texts are always sexts. They don’t seek to expand their persona within a scene, online or otherwise. The carnality is evident and, to some in New York, enviable."

Huh? "'Because all it comes down to, really, is whether he/she smells good and can wiggle around well.'"

Conclusion: "'I agree!' The Observer typed back."

To recap:

             Things That Inhibit Sex                    Things That Encourage Sex

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Erik Hayden