Illustration by Eduardo Vazquez
Bang With Friends, a Facebook-linked website that took only two hours to code, has the potential to change sex forever. I would even go so far as to argue that Bang With Friends is the most innovative sexual outlet since the Internet itself.
The genius behind Bang With Friends lies in its form. You enter the site with a single click of a “connect using Facebook” button that is imposed over an image of a woman pulling her dress over her head. Next, you are brought to your preferences page in which you get to choose (almost inevitably) the “only I can view my activity” button, because God forbid your friends find out on Facebook that you couldn’t go out and get laid on your own accord. That’s it. You’re in. Ready to Bang, so to speak.
Bang With Friends is formatted randomly, displaying all of the individuals you are friends with on Facebook who have preferenced your gender in no particular order. There is no discrimination beyond that, essentially guaranteeing that as you scroll down the list of potential “bangs,” you will run into, say, your parents. The site lists everyone, and your part in this whole “exchange,” if you can even call it that, is as simple as a click of a button: Below every picture is a button that says “Down to Bang.”
So, go ahead, click it, because Bang With Friends is a way of pursuing sex without the consequences that come with actually having to take the chances. It is sex without the most difficult part: the pursuit. Whether or not you decide to use it, now there is the possibility of every Facebook member to have inconsequential sex, an opportunity that has never been afforded in this capacity before.
No Internet site has ever provided the kind of sexual outlet that Bang With Friends has. To begin with, it is the first time that sex has explicitly been linked to a website that doesn’t have an implicitly sexual undertone. Facebook as a platform is about creating a digital representation of yourself, one that connects you to a network of people. Facebook functions differently from dating websites, sexual hook-up forums or any site that matches people based on preferences. Bang With Friends is brilliantly simple. It is a place where you can bang your friends, click a button that stores this information somewhere and then alerts you if that person was “down to bang” you.
Bang With Friends changes the game of sex, and I would argue that it has missed our age group, because we all know how to function in a social setting where sex is rooted in the physical world. Yes, 20- to 34-year-olds clearly do and will continue using it, but it has the potential to completely shape sex for young adults now. If you were 13 years old, it would be nearly impossible to not be attracted to the inconsequential nature of sex that is provided by Bang With Friends. I truly believe that sex in this capacity has the potential to define the sexual lives of young adults today.
Bang With Friends removes the need for sex to be about the pursuit and just bypasses any sort of physical chemistry before intimate contact. But, it provides a unique opportunity for individuals to casually go about expressing sexual interest without any type of social repercussions. Bang With Friends is brilliant because it is merely a connector; coded in less than two hours, the application brings sex to the Internet profile of yourself, bypassing the consequences that are ingrained in physical sexuality. It has the potential to morph sexuality into something completely different.