TECH is permeating every aspect of our increasingly atomised lives, from education to shopping, to our social and work interactions. And more and more, we’re looking online for intimacy. Thom lives in Australia and considers himself to be in a relationship with Alice, a “camgirl” based in LA. When the pair meet in real life in an episode of new docuseries Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On, complexities arise.
A follow-up to the 2015 documentary film Hot Girls Wanted, which focused on teenage girls in the porn industry, the series, produced by Rashida Jones, Ronna Gradus and Jill Bauer, covers everything from the pitfalls of dating apps and the pressure to conform to the unrealities of porn sex. As Jones, best known for her portrayal of Ann Perkins in lovable mock-doc Parks and Recreation, recently told a magazine: “We just treat everything like these little icons. So you lose all that humanity that’s behind the person in the picture because it’s all designed to make us swipe through it.”
The episodes on the porn industry have recently attracted criticism for ignoring the economic realities and autonomous choices made by many performers to instead focus on those who’ve been exploited, but for audiences for whom “sex-tech” is the new normal, it’s an interesting exploration of some hot-button topics, more of which Jones wishes to investigate in a potential follow-up series.
Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On is available on Netflix
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