Ask A Genius 1506: Beyond Desire: Tech Intimacy, Gen Z, and the Future of Sex

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/31

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner examine sex’s shrinking cultural centrality as Gen Z drinks less, dates less, and grows more intimate with technology. Rosner criticizes Altered Carbon’s hypersexualized futurism and expects tech to keep reducing sex’s social prominence, despite its unmatched, safe pleasure. They contrast generational behaviors, noting Boomers’ elevated STIs. Rosner recounts shifts since the Pill, the backlash after AIDS, and reassessments of coercion. They discuss Alien: Earth’s synth child Wendy, corporate hubris, and evolving identity, and xenomorph biology and design, linking H. R. Giger’s sexual aesthetics to 1970s unease. Comparisons span Severance, Fargo, and Peacemaker’s John Cena.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let us talk about the future role of sex. It is becoming less important. Gen Z is not as sexually preoccupied as earlier generations. Much of the desire seems to be squeezed out by constant digital immersion—at least that is one driver among several. Many young people lack social skills or are unwilling to make the effort. Add in pessimism about relationships, economic hardship, and reluctance to start families—it all reduces the likelihood of coupling.

Rick Rosner: There was a show I have complained about a lot, Altered Carbon(2018). It is about digital consciousness stored in “stacks” that can be moved from one body to another. It is set 300 years in the future, but everyone is still in human bodies—and attractive ones at that. Joel Kinnaman, a fairly standard actor, starred in the first season.

They put Kinnaman through a Marvel-style superhero training regimen—packed on muscle, got extremely lean, and showed him naked constantly. Altered Carbon turned into a hyper-sexualized show, which annoyed me. It was one of those science fiction series that does not try very hard to imagine the future. It makes one change—consciousness transfer—but leaves everything else the same. Three hundred years from now, people are still obsessed with being hot and having sex. That is not realistic. The future will not look like that.

Jacobsen: So what was your point?

Rosner: My point is that attitudes about sex are already changing and will change more. Sex will always have a place among humans because it is one of the safest ways to get an intense rush of pleasure—dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, the whole cocktail. It is probably the closest natural equivalent to the rush you would get from a hard drug like heroin, but without the same addiction profile or health risks, though it is not risk-free. It is the strongest, relatively safe pleasure hit humans have, short of drugs. However, its social prominence will continue to decline as we become increasingly intimate with our technology.

Jacobsen: Gen Z is not drinking as much either, which is a smart move. They are more responsible than older generations. Boomers, on the other hand, have seen divorce rates rise, and STIs are climbing among older adults; condom use in those age groups is often low.

Rosner: Really? Boomers?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: Especially in retirement and senior living communities, STI rates have been high. Creepy old bodies, bad decisions.

Anyway, it is not necessarily a bad thing that Gen Z is moving away from constant sensation-seeking. They are not as obsessed with sex, and that might be healthy.

When I was growing up, the birth control pill became semi-widely available in the early 1960s. Initially, only married women were eligible to receive prescriptions. A few years later, access expanded, and college women could get on the pill.

Before the 1960s, sex was tightly regulated and stigmatized. It was “for married people” or for the most popular high schoolers—cheerleaders and football players. The rest had a hard time, and many men went to prostitutes, though nobody talked about it. Sex was much less accessible.

Then the pill arrived and broke everything open. For someone like me, born in 1960, I grew up seeing that change. By the 1970s, the disco era brought widespread casual sex—and herpes, though people did not figure that out right away. I saw a trend of increasing sexual freedom.

Magazines reinforced it: Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler competed to push boundaries. Penthouse surpassed Playboy by being the first to show pubic hair. Hustler went further, showing explicit detail. Pornographic movies moved into mainstream theatres, where average people could watch them.

So in the 1970s, it seemed apparent that society would keep getting sexier until everyone was having sex all the time. However, then the 1980s hit, and we realized the fallout: herpes was everywhere, and AIDS emerged.

And then Nancy Reagan started saying, “Just Say No.” Cocaine use got out of hand in the 1980s—it went from being a club drug to a Wall Street drug, fueling aggression and arrogance. That whole shift led to a backlash against the hyper-sexualized culture of the 1970s.

Plus, by the 1990s and 2000s, people realized a lot of what had been portrayed as “harmlessly sexy” was actually coercive and predatory.

So sex has taken major cultural hits in the 21st century and will continue to lose ground to technology.

Jacobsen: Anyway, the ongoing Alien: Earth saga, what did you see in those five minutes of Alien: Earth, episode four?

Rosner: The main character, Wendy, is a synth. She was a dying child whose consciousness was transferred into a synthetic human body. Now she is super strong, does not need sleep, is intellectually enhanced, and can hear the aliens when they chatter.

Jacobsen: The big ones?

Rosner: The big, nasty ones—but I do not think there are any fully grown xenomorphs yet. There are maybe five or six eggs salvaged from the ship. She must be hearing immature forms. We have not seen this before—at least not in earlier films. Perhaps we have not observed every developmental stage because the facehugger implant is only a few inches long—similar to a tadpole or embryo.

However, she can hear them, and they make a high-frequency chittering sound. Meanwhile, the wealthy industrialist—Boy Kavalier, head of the Prodigy Corporation—controls the salvage operation. He is a genius but also an arrogant asshole, the kind of corporate villain we always see in Alien stories, and not unlike today’s tech billionaires.

He is thrilled to have these creatures, though one of his underlings reminds him of his prior goals. Kavalier replies that he does not want to wake up someday with an alien embryo in his chest. If he does not research them, he assumes some rival corporation will, and they could use that knowledge against him. So in his mind, he is studying them for self-preservation. It is a clever justification. That is where the plot stands now.

Jacobsen: Anything else? Oh, I just finished a novel by Gary Shteyngart. He was born in Russia and came to the U.S. as a teenager. His latest novel, Vera, or Faith, is an interesting companion piece to Alien: Earth.

Jacobsen: How so?

Rosner: Because in Alien: Earth—set in 2120—many of the main characters are children whose brains have been transferred into synthetic super-bodies. Vera, set in the early 2030s, also centers on a child protagonist, though it is less science-fictional and more literary. Both explore the future of childhood and the concept of identity.

Jacobsen: That is a neat parallel.

Rosner: And right now, as we are talking, you probably cannot hear it, but coyotes around here are howling. They had pups in March or April, so by now the young ones are five or six months old. The nights are full of their calls. There are three or four of them going off right now—maybe a couple of grown coyotes along with the pups. It is creepy. It is not really howling, it is yipping, and it is frenzied. Makes you fear for your pets.

The adults usually stay away—they have learned. However, the pups, who knows what they would try. Moreover, it is too early for them to be this noisy. Usually, they go off at three, four, or five in the morning, which is a creepy way to be woken up. You have been to our house—we have got a decent-sized yard. I assume it is coyote-proof, with the cinder block wall.

It is approximately five and a half to six feet tall. In a pinch, they could get over it, but so far, they have not tried.

Jacobsen: Okay, question: What do you think is a design flaw in the Xenomorph?

Rosner: In terms of being a scary predator, it is thoroughly designed. It is hard to kill, super fast, smart, and its exoskeleton is durable—almost metallic. Some bullets bounce off it. Additionally, it has acid in its blood and a tail that can cut someone in half. It is designed to be extra creepy, which makes sense for movies, but in real life, some things do not add up.

For example, it grows from a tiny chestburster to an eight-foot-tall monster in about 24–48 hours. Where does all that mass come from? What does it eat? The films do not explain. Moreover, if its blood is acidic and its body metallic, what fuel source sustains it? The movies never dwell on this, which is fine for drama, but biologically, it does not make sense.

Also, the films imply it evolved naturally, but I have always suspected it was engineered. Imagine some advanced species designing them as bioweapons to wipe out entire planets. Release a few xenomorphs, and they reproduce fast enough to annihilate weaker species. I do not think the films really went there, though; maybe I missed it—there are entries I did not pay close attention to.

Jacobsen: Do you have thoughts on specific design flaws? What is with the elongated head?

Rosner: You could argue the head works as a battering ram—durable enough to smash through barriers—, but I do not think we have seen that onscreen. The long, domed head actually comes from H. R. Giger. It is a design choice more than a functional trait. It looks unsettling and also somewhat sexual. You can read Giger’s work as weaving in sexual elements—elongated, curved shapes, suggestive of genitalia.

Giger was working in the 1970s, which was a highly sexualized time. At the same time, that cultural proliferation of sex was also becoming creepy—something people later reevaluated, once it became clear how much harm had been hidden beneath the “free love” surface.

By the late ’70s, people had infected each other with herpes, and in the ’80s, AIDS began spreading. So H. R. Giger’s vaguely sinister, vaguely sexual designs were a reflection of the creepiness and dangers of sex—its invasiveness and its risks.

It was the undercurrent of the disco era. Sex was not just fun; it carried an edge of menace.

Jacobsen: What do you think is a comparable series in sci-fi to this show so far?

Rosner: One obvious comparison is Fargo. The same creator has done five seasons of it, and each one is high quality. He assembles a strong cast, tells a different story every season, and it is consistently thoughtful. That is a solid benchmark.

Not as good as Succession, however. That show was deliberately trying to be prestige TV: excellent writing, strong characters, brutal social commentary.

I am considering other comparisons. I loved BoJack Horseman, but that is already eight years old and a very different kind of show.

Jacobsen: What about Severance?

Rosner: Yes—Severance is super high quality. Obsessive perfectionists made it. Every detail was thought through. They went way over budget because they reshot scenes multiple times to get the best possible version. Sometimes they would even throw out finished scenes when they came up with better ideas and rewrite and reshoot entirely new material. That level of care shows. That is the sort of thoroughness you want in a great show.

Your Friends & Neighbours with Jon Hamm was entertaining, but not as comprehensive or polished. Peacemaker, on the other hand—James Gunn’s show with John Cena—is fun but messy. James Gunn directed the new Superman, right? Moreover, he is co-head of DC Studios.

He is a funny writer-director, but his work is scattered compared to the meticulous productions like Severance. Peacemaker is not as high-quality as Alien: Earth, but it delivers entertainment because of its outrageous nature. There is a scene with John Cena—America’s sweetheart, basically. Did we talk about Peacemaker before?

Jacobsen: I do not think so.

Rosner: Cena was a hugely popular professional wrestler, almost always playing the “face”—the good guy—throughout his career. He was an all-American symbol of goodness. In Peacemaker, though, he plays a deeply flawed, morally compromised superhero. He kills way more people than you would want a hero to kill, and he has personal issues that make him unpleasant to be around.

The show is filthy, violent, and absurd—but fun, precisely because Cena is cast against type. In the latest episode, his character even interviews for what amounts to the “A-team” of the current DCU: the Justice Gang.

He does not cut, so he ends up back at his rundown house, sad, doing lines of coke. The scene cuts from him doing lines to suddenly being in the middle of an orgy.

Rosner: With John Cena?

Jacobsen: Yes—America’s wholesome hero, suddenly in this deranged scene. They cast 20 or 25 extras, all furiously having sex around him while he wanders his house in a depressed haze. It is so wild and so subversive.

Rosner: Is he in his underwear?

Jacobsen: Of course. They put him in tighty-whities constantly. However, because he is enormous, the underwear looks ridiculous on him. The whole thing is deliberately absurd: John Cena, this all-American good guy, wandering sadly through a chaotic orgy, drugged up.

It is not the same level of craftsmanship as Succession or Severance. Still, it is just as entertaining because it gleefully subverts expectations. Peacemaker is basically a Deadpool-style satire. It takes all the familiar superhero tropes and screws with them.

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