The creator of a Web site that will purportedly depict two teens losing their virginity online insists the venture is neither a hoax nor a porn scam. Early next month, Our First Time promises to webcast two alleged 18-year-old high school graduates having sex.
"We're going to do this as tastefully as possible," said Oscar Wells, a Web designer based in Los Angeles who says he has no experience with pornography. "I know we're breaking a lot of eggs here."
Though Internet mailing lists and discussion groups are rife with speculation about the site, the teens – known only as "Diane" and "Mike" – and the creator's intentions, Wells said Our First Time is not a commercial venture. Rather, he said, it is an exercise in free speech and a lesson in sex education.
"We're not accepting any kind of advertising, because that would really denigrate what we're trying to do here. It's not a porn site," Wells said.
"Hopefully I'll get some design business out of it."
Wells said his wife is irritated that he's giving away his time and spending their money on the project.
The name of a retail and online condom outlet appears alongside keywords such as "teen" and "virgin" in the Web site's "meta" tags, which are designed to snare search engines. But Adam Glickman, the president of the Los Angeles-based Condomania, says there's no deal in place.
Wells said he contacted Condomania because Diane and Mike will go there to shop for condoms before their big day, and he wanted permission to record the transaction. He also wanted to link to their site.
In any case, Condomania's Glickman claims he isn't interested in sponsoring Our First Time, anyway.
"These guys ... asked if they could link to us, and we said OK," said Glickman. "We aren't prepared to get involved in any way with anything like this, other than to permit links to our site, even though on the surface it seemed like a noble association."
Meanwhile, Wells claims he's fielded "hundreds" of unsolicited offers from people representing adult sites, but has turned them all down. He said some day they may consider accepting ads or sponsorship from safe-sex oriented companies such as condom manufacturers or family planning clinics, but not at this time.
Wells says he conceived of the site when he met Diane in an online discussion of the recent, controversial live cybercast of a Florida woman giving birth.
"She thought that if having a child online could be educational and beautiful, why not making love, which is the necessary precursor to giving birth," Wells said, adding that Diane told him she and her boyfriend would volunteer to lose their virginity online to make her point. Neither teen was available for comment, according to Mark Vega, their attorney.
Adding fuel to the speculation about whether the whole site is a hoax is a forged email that has been circulating the Net. The author of that message, who is only identified as stopthis1@juno.com, claims he saw his grandchildren giggling over the site, and wants to start a petition drive to shut the site down.
The message, which appears to be signed by the Christian Coalition, has many of the hallmarks of a Usenet "troll" – a deceptive message crafted to whip up controversy and attract predictable knee-jerk responses.
A spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition said that she had not heard of Our First Time.
"That [ email is ] clearly not from us," said Molly Clatworthy. "Of course it's WHAT? not healthy and of course we don't condone such behavior. We think it's a sad commentary on society when technology is used to the detriment of young children. But ... we haven't taken a stance to take down Web sites."
A spokeswoman for Juno Online Services, which supplies free Web-based email, confirmed that the return address of the message was faked and that the stopthis1 email account was terminated by Juno "some time ago."
Citing privacy policies, Juno's Becky Yeamans declined to name the former owner of that account, or the reason why the account was terminated.
"Oftentimes messages like this come from the site owners themselves," speculated Yeamans.
But Wells denied having any connection to the outraged email message which, rather than inciting a protest, only served to draw a good deal of attention to Our First Time.
Wells also said he had no involvement with Our First Anal Sex and Our First Lesbian Sex (the link was not operational) – two apparent parody sites that have sprung up since Our First Time went live.
"We have absolutely nothing to do with them," he said. "Ours is out there enough without all of that. Things [already] look cheesy."
Wells said that Our First Time, while explicit, will not be pornographic.
"This is not a how-to," Wells claims. "It's about decisions and living with the consequences of your decisions."
Mark Vega, the attorney representing Mike and Diane, confirmed that there has been a great deal of response and interest in the event.
"This is the first potential free, open [event of its kind]," Vega said. "The first opportunity, like the invention of radio and TV and the telegraph, the first time the Internet community can really define itself, [in terms of] what is it composed of. [We will find out] who is the Net community, and what they will they try to be."
Wells says that the build-up to sex will begin to unfold on 18 July. Over upcoming weeks, the couple will be shown getting HIV tests, buying condoms, and sharing their plans with their parents.
"They're doing things that are responsible. We just hope this message comes through. People every day make this decision [to have sex]," he said. The point of the webcast is to show people by example, he said. "If you do make this decision, do it responsibly."
According to at least one industry insider, Condomania isn't alone in its reluctance to advertise on the site.
"The condom companies, not to mention most other companies, aren't going to be interested in that," said Marc Kraft, president of the Adult Chamber of Commerce, a Boca Raton-based organization that provides information and online hosting for adult Web site developers.
"Professional organizations that want to sell products to the public are not looking to get associated with references to recent high schoolers having sex," Kraft said. Numerous commercial porn sites, including Hustler's Barely Legal, and Just18.com, capitalize on the youth of their models.
Kraft predicts that the site's owners will instead attempt to charge visitors for access using one of the established "Adult Verification" services at some strategic point in the coming weeks, once users have been hooked.
