After On

by Rob Reid

  This will let Phluttr nudge people to fish in the pools that they themselves belong in, which (sociologists assure us) greatly ups the odds of mutual attraction. So if you’re lucky enough to be a 9, you can now troll and flirt among your equals with no risk that you’re chatting up some troglodyte (very important, that!), yet without anyone having to show their face in the early flirty stages, which keeps identities secure until the deal is all but sealed.

  Then when you’re ready to give a teed-up mate that all-important visual check, it’s a two-way street, in that doing this means your face will also be exposed. But—and here’s the critical part—you’re only matched to people who lie multiple degrees beyond your own social network. And I predict that this will become Guttr’s killer feature! Because after the twin terrors of getting assaulted or humping a troglodyte, privacy and reputation risks are the main things that keep the iddish masses from going hog wild on hookup sites. And unlike other dating apps, where cheaters risk getting busted by their partner’s single besties (or, hee hee, getting matched to their own cheating partners), Guttr is virtually risk-free.

  So. How do we get from that, to this post’s shameless click-whore of a title? Well, Phluttr has an equally ingenious anonymous payment system that uses bitcoin as a backbone (called Cuttr—a shout-out to the slang term for “money” in A Clockwork Orange, which isn’t creepy at all). The services aren’t directly connected. But Phluttr’s clever engineers and cunning lawyers could easily “fix” this, and let users make secure, untraceable payments to sexy strangers on Guttr, while preserving Phluttr’s safe harbor as a hands-off router of bits with no (alleged) notion of how its network is being used.

  Now, do you remember Courtney? The hypothetical college knockout who we last saw raking in a fortune on Phluttr’s FlowDough system? Let’s imagine that she’s a rowdy young thing, and therefore finds her way onto Guttr…where she one day gets an unsolicited indecent proposal from a rich, handsome 30-something in a semi-distant city who’s offering five hundred bucks for a long night of screwing.

  Whoa! What’s a girl to do? Before you answer that, imagine that Courtney’s rebounding from an ex, which is why she’s on a flagrant hookup site to begin with. That the would-be John is completely her type anyway, which is why they got matched. Also, that she’s one of those rare-ish lasses who is highly comfortable with one-night flings, both emotionally and physically. That she could sure use the money, and getting paid to put out could be a naughty thrill or fulfill a dark fantasy. And on top of everything, Phluttr can virtually guarantee that this guy is harmless (to the extent that whoremongers can be) and is as remote from her social circles as, say, Vladimir Putin.

  I don’t know what Courtney does next. As a social-issue libertarian, I say it’s none of my business. As a sex-positive person (conceptually, anyway), I say that if it’s a thrill to her, then you go, girl. But modernista that I am, I’ll confess that my gut reaction is one of repulsion and horror. Which will of course have zero impact on Guttr’s spread, and pending (I’m almost sure of this) wild popularity. Online markets are as magically efficient as anything imagined by the classical economists. They often multiply both supply and demand by shocking integers—particularly when they eliminate the friction that dogs the nondigital world. Today’s prediction is therefore that GUTTR WILL DO JUST THIS FOR (let’s call it what it is, people) CASUAL PROSTITUTION. Yes folks, this is the UberX of Sex—call it SexX—and it’s gonna be HUUUUUUGE!

  Loyal readers know that I NEVER USE ALL CAPS. But sacred grammatical cows are preserved precisely to add drama to their butchery when something smashes the holy-fucking-shit barrier. AND THAT’S WHERE I AM WITH THIS CRAP! Now to be clear, I’m sure that a huge majority of women will still refuse to sell sex (I’ll leave it to others to opine on men). But I’m equally sure that it will be a somewhat less-huge majority than today. For one thing, sex work will cease to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Because rather than permanently ruining her name with that first fateful trick, Courtney can be wholly discreet. Having not, therefore, narrowed her career options to streetwalking, she can cap this activity however she wants. She can limit it to guys she finds gorgeous on the rare night that she’s looking for a wild, no-strings hookup anyway. She could do it just a few times a year, or a few times in a lifetime for the thrill, for the experience, for revenge, or to fund some out-of-reach goal, or a pursuit with a truly higher purpose.

  Let’s now turn back to the specter of an online hookup becoming an “SVU” episode. Anyone would worry about this as they consider their first paid toss in the hay (because they should). But Phluttr can make this way safer than your basic casual hookup, which plenty of ladies have braved on any given night from time immemorial (or at least since the sixties). The key fact is that while you may not know (or want to know) your partner’s identity, Phluttr will absolutely have that on file, along with the messages arranging your tryst on the Night in Question. So if you vanish or turn up in pieces, the perp can look forward to a lifetime of servicing BHMs with BBCs in San Quentin—which is not the trade-off facing the cute anonymous creep who sweet-talks you back to his motel after a drunken smooch at TGI Friday’s.

  Not that this will be the slightest consolation to she who turns up in pieces, obviously! But the near certainty of harsh consequences for brutal acts will steer 99.something-high percent of guys well clear of such mayhem. Particularly if Phluttr limits access to non-felons with healthy and normal online social patterns as promised, and screens out anyone on red-flag-waving prescriptions (what, you don’t think Phluttr knows what meds you’re on? Wake up, dumb-ass!). The inevitable reputation system will de-risk things further, and even inspire Johns to hold the door and say “Thank you, ma’am.” And before you laugh at that, consider all the born assholes out there who are nice to their Uber drivers because they don’t want shitty passenger ratings!

  There will still be lots of very sound reasons to never sell sex. But as the income-seizing pimp, the brutal anonymous customer, and the lifelong scarlet letter exit the scene, the nature of those reasons will change. It will be much more about a woman’s relationship with her sexuality, her body, and her own internal morés, rather than the standards of a society or future husband who will never be the wiser if she adventurously dips her toe, ankle, or nether regions into those taboo waters. And with these massive shifts, I guarantee that at least some attitudes will change, on both sides of this most intimate transaction.

  “Hey look, it’s Mr. SlutFinder!” Beasley bellows with all of his usual dignity as the next dude enters the pitch meeting. The guy looks oddly familiar, but Mitchell knows no one with that odd surname. “So, have you found any sluts, SlutFinder?”

  “Worked like a charm a couple nights ago,” says the new guy. He reaches out to shake Mitchell’s hand. “I’m Raj. And we’ve met.”

  Luckily, rage isn’t among the emotions that trigger Mitchell’s seizures. “Slut finder?” he all but snarls, recognizing the douchebag.

  “It’s just a playful nickname for an app we developed for these glasses,” Raj says, using the hand that Mitchell refuses to shake to pull the specs he wore on Monday night from his bag.

  “I’m not terribly fond of that name myself,” Jepson says sternly. “As for the hardware itself, it’s called WingMan.”

  “Tell me more,” Mitchell says, quietly contemplating the impact that maiming a co-worker in front of the CEO would have on his job tenure.

  “Raj is co-managing our highest-priority development effort, along with Tarek, who you’ve met,” Jepson explains. “It’s those glasses, and a suite of apps that goes with them.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen them in action,” Mitchell says, for now keeping cool. “He used them to harass a friend of mine in a bar a couple nights ago.”

  “Have you tried them out?” Jepson asks.

  “Not an employee yet,” Beasley bellows, before anyone can hand over the glasses.

  Jepson sighs, shrugging apologetically. “Beasley’s a bit of
a stickler,” he tells Mitchell. “We’ll expedite the paperwork to close the acquisition, so you can try these puppies on soon. They’re a triumph of display technology—years ahead of anything else! We pulled the bits and pieces together from five different acquisitions. Not acquihires, but damn pricey companies! In fact, almost half the proceeds from the latest financing’re earmarked for final payments on two of them and to get development over the finish line.”

  Mitchell’s rage is briefly derailed by shock. “You’re spending half a billion dollars on developing those things?”

  “At least. And it’s worth every dime! They’ll be bigger than the iPhone. And way bigger than the Rift, Vive, or any other VR platform we’re likely to see in the next five years!”

  “They’re augmented reality, right?” Mitchell asks.

  “Science fiction–grade AR,” Beasley booms.

  “Beasley’s rather fond of science fiction,” Jepson says. “In fact, he’s even writing some himself! You should check it out sometime.”

  “Only it’s classified,” Beasley snaps. “Also, mine’s speculative fiction.”

  “Anyway, WingMan glasses really are sci fi grade,” Jepson says. “The sorta thing you’d laugh at if you saw it in a movie. They write data overlays directly onto the user’s retinas. Using teeny little lasers that are quite unlikely to blind you.”

  “That definitely won’t blind you!” Beasley shouts indignantly.

  “Down boy, I’m just being playful,” Jepson coos, then turns back to Mitchell. “Anyway, you look around, and you see the world just as it is, only there’s a suite of apps putting information on top of everything, depending on your needs. A huge developer community’ll create these. But we’ll launch WingMan with a few core apps. Ones we’re creating ourselves, to make it functional right out of the gate. Like navigation. Tell WingMan you want to go to Starbucks, and it’ll paint arrows, distances, and directions right on top of your view of the world!”

  “Great. Now tell me about SlutFinder,” Mitchell says levelly.

  “SlutFinder. That one’s kind of a…dating app,” Jepson says.

  “More like a screwing app,” Beasley chortles.

  “I’d say Beasley’s got it right.” Raj smirks. “Although the public release will be rather…PG-13 compared to the version I’m running right now. And we’ll obviously come up with a very different public name.”

  “Tell me more,” Mitchell says icily.

  “It starts with facial recognition, which is one of the WingMan platform’s core functions,” Raj says proudly. “Thousands of apps will use it. We can positively ID 99-point-99-something percent of people, based on images we’ve found on social media. And, uh…elsewhere. Then different apps’ll do different things with the matches. In SlutFinder’s case, you’ll start out by entering your preferences, like on a dating site. ‘I want straight, single blonds between the ages of twenty and thirty who are shorter than me and went to college,’ or whatever. Then when you’re in a public space, it highlights everyone who meets your criteria. It kind of paints a little halo around them in your field of view. This way, you immediately know if you’re in a target-rich, or target-poor environment.”

  “Is that even legal?” Mitchell asks.

  Jepson nods. “We could discuss this for hours. But the short answer is that WingMan has a huuuge legal budget, and we’re building on decades of lobbying and legal precedent from various interest groups! The credit card companies’ve established our right to buy, sell, or swap the most intimate demographic and purchase-history data you can imagine. The celebrity press has seen to it that nobody has any privacy rights when they’re out in public—and I seriously mean none. And Google’s fought hard to get companies lots of leeway to display data pulled from the public Net in the course of a search. Which is key, because every time someone enters your field of view, they’ll be triggering a search, from a legal standpoint!”

  “And pretty much everyone’s accepted our EULA anyway,” Beasley adds.

  Jepson nods. “In the unlikely event that we lose a key court case, our fallback will be to only display data on folks who’ve accepted Phluttr’s End User Licensing Agreement—which gives us permission to do all of this.”

  “And given what you’ve told me about your adoption rates,” Mitchell says, marveling at the diabolical brilliance of all this, “that EULA will be accepted by everyone in the Western world within a year or two.” He turns to Raj, and his disgust returns. “So, you said the public release will be—how’d you put it? ‘Rather PG-13’ compared to the version you’re running now?”

  Raj nods. “Yep. I’m currently using the hacker version.”

  “We expect hackers to release gray-market enhancements for many apps,” Jepson explains. “Adding features and functionality that may not be…strictly legal. So we’ve developed ‘hacker versions’ of several apps that approximate what we think’ll eventually rise up.”

  “And again—that’s legal?” Mitchell asks.

  “And again—absolutely! Or at least, according to a very thorough written opinion from a highly respected law firm. The reason is that while we’ll never release illegal features ourselves, we have a legitimate business interest in understanding the full experience that our product’s users will eventually be able to access.”

  “Once some twisted people add some truly reprehensible features to them,” Raj says, bowing insolently.

  “Like what,” Mitchell asks, straining not to throttle the guy.

  “We’ve hacked into AdultFriendFinder, Lifestyle Lounge, and dozens of other casual sex sites, and know the true identities of everyone who’s ever used them,” Raj brags. “We’ve also ID’d pretty much everyone in the world who’s been racy or stupid enough to let a nude photo or sex tape of themselves end up online! We know who spends the night with people they meet on Tinder, rather than just texting with them, thanks to GPS; augmented with early-morning-ride data that we’ve swiped from Uber. We also know about all the old-school folks who post to Craigslist’s ‘casual encounters’ pages. And every escort who’s ever plied her trade on Backpage. You get the point.”

  “So your ‘hacker version’ of the app…” Mitchell says.

  “Is called SlutFinder because it flags the sluts in the bar, duh!”

  Mitchell jumps right for Raj’s throat. But then Beasley—Beasley!—just flattens him. He’s like a Secret Service guy protecting a head of state. In less time than it takes to sneeze, Mitchell is spun in midair and planted on his back. Having wrestled some in high school, Mitchell then heaves himself into a half-cunning move. This surprises Beasley, and almost dislodges him. But then he pins Mitchell violently beneath his torso, which feels like it’s made of steel.

  Jepson loses his air of wry detachment for the first and final time in Mitchell’s presence. “What the hell?” he bellows, glaring furiously.

  Mitchell musters all the emotional self-control developed over years of evading certain dangerous feelings. He will not let this incident occasion even a hint of frustration or embarrassment because he was right to lash out after that provocation! Yes, he was right. Because he cannot afford to have a cataplectic attack right now! And unlike frustration or embarrassment, righteous indignation will not trigger one! It might also help him plead his case during the thirty-ish seconds remaining before he’s fired, escorted to the door, and loses all connection to Animotion. Because he has a sole remaining card to play here. A desperate one, in that it involves appealing to Jepson’s decency (but the man seems to have some shards of that). “The person Raj harassed wasn’t just some stranger in a bar.” This comes out in a remarkably level tone for someone who is, awkwardly, groin to groin with the icky and overpowering Beasley. “But it was a Phluttr employee. Someone I believe you think very highly of. Danna Hernandez.”

  “Seriously?” Jepson says this sharply—and Mitchell hears a flicker of the proud, big-brother protectiveness that he himself feels for that amazing, tough gal who went through so much; throug
h so much more than almost anyone else in the Valley; to be where she is right now.

  “Yep. And no way she’ll want to keep working here after hearing about this.”

  “Jesus, Beasley, let the man up,” Jepson snaps. Beasley rolls off Mitchell obediently, and Jepson helps him right to his feet, while staring daggers at Raj. “So what exactly did you pull on your fellow employee?” he demands.

  Raj cringes and appears to physically shrink at least a foot. “She wasn’t an employee then,” he whines in a tiny voice. “And she’s not even an employee now because the acquisition hasn’t gone through yet, right? And I didn’t pull anything on her! Tarek and I were just road-testing WingMan in the wild. As we were asked to do! And I didn’t reveal anything about her, or even say anything mean to her face!”

  Jepson turns to Mitchell.

  “That’s more or less true,” Mitchell admits. “What set me off was that he obviously just called her a slut.”

  “And that was really low of me,” Raj admits earnestly, “and I’m incredibly sorry!”

  “Smashing, then let’s all be friends once more!” Jepson declares, right back in that wry, detached mode that suits him so well.

  “Seriously, Jepson,” Raj says, neither wry nor detached himself, just yet. “There’s no way I’d reveal any employee’s secrets, or any person’s secrets that I find through a hacker version! You can trust me.”

  “You remind me way too much of myself at your age to merit one iota of trust, young man,” Jepson says, and Mitchell wonders once more if his inscrutable new boss is being playful or serious.

  For his part, Raj is still entirely serious—although it’s unclear to Mitchell if he’s shaken up by the near brawl, by Jepson’s fleeting wrath, or the realization (surely not the first of his life) that he’s really quite a prick. “I mean, the whole point of hacker view is to see what’s possible with WingMan,” he says. “And to see what’s likely! And I think we just saw something a bit scary. I mean, this sort of shit’s gonna happen all the time after these things ship! And maybe we need to think about that!”