Not just pornography in the generic sense, but the entire spectrum of flavors. Soft, touchy feely couples sex with no penetration shown; hard core, line them up, shoot 'em down style; and everything in between. I can remember a good many high school nights finishing up my homework and rewarding myself with a good hour or two of flipping between sports and porno.

"Chris, honey, when did you start watching hockey?" "I don't know, Mom. Just seemed like an interesting game (and only a channel away from Triple Xtasy)."

Nowadays, people are taking it to the next level. With the influx of home computers, there has been an astonishing rise of cybersex. Researchers say 15 percent of Internet users have visited online sex chat rooms or pornographic sites, and a study shows that nine percent of these Internet sex hunters spend 11 hours per week surfing for erotic content. Captain Ahab must have his whale. And another whale. And another.

The draw to cybersex is that every kind of sexual deviant can find a friend. People can engage in the ultimate "safe sex." Housewives, closeted gay men, S & M boys, business men, dominatrix ladies, and lonely, lonely, lonely people. Everyone is invited. Of course, the two sexes still have different ways of going about their surfing. Researchers say men prefer pictures while women enjoy sex chat rooms. Will we ever get these two groups to think the same way?

Pornography has always be at the forefront of technology. First came nasty books with dirty pictures. Karma Sutra everyone! Then came the photograph. Then film. Then nudie bars. Then video. Then porno channels. And now, the Internet. Who do you think is pushing the hardest for Virtual Reality? My goodness, she even feels like a real woman!

Researchers are warning about the Cybersex addiction and how it can ruin people's lives. I agree that artificial sexual gratification has its detrimental effects. As a teenager with access to porn, I didn't feel it very necessary to go out and get a girlfriend. The girls in high school were too difficult, too moody, too annoying, too many issues, too much work. You know, they were too real. Why go to all the trouble of getting Susie to notice me when the Royals are playing the Angels tonight and Ginger Lynn is starring in Beverly Hills Cox?

Engaging in cybersex is pretty much the same mentality. Once a person gets used to the quick fix of talking the nasty talk or viewing the dirty pictures, it can easily become the primary option for sexual appeasement. Why face rejection? Why take the time to discover what screwed up idiosyncrasies another real person has? LONGJ12IN really knows just what to say, and DOUBLEDDTT presses all the right buttons.

Personally, I've never really gotten into cybersex. My modem is slow and pictures take entirely too long to download (ha ha, puns are fun), and being a writer, I'm very disappointed by the poor grammar used by the chat room gals. Of course, how well can people type with one hand? Call me old fashioned, but I still go for sleazy videos.

So what do we do about the dangers of cybersex? Pretty much what we've always done with anything containing sexual content. Throw a warning label on it. You can't stop it. The first amendment will always defend sex. Even if it didn't, the funny thing about humans is that they will go to great lengths to appease their sexual cravings. If the government comes up with a sex block for computers, someone will sell a deblocker. If the Internet obliterates all sex chat rooms, there will be a new version of the Speak Easy all across the web.

The sex is out there, and there's nothing you can do about it. God Bless America. And the Internet.

Chris Jungle maintains that the best sex still occurs when two individuals are in the same room and have an uncontrollable love for each other.