Media Falls Hard For "First Time" Sex Site

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July 16, 1998 (3:56 PM EDT)

By John Borland,

The biggest buzz on the Net this week isn't Yahoo's earnings, or Netscape's new browser, or the accusations that the Department of Justice is trying to prompt overseas lawsuits against Microsoft.

It's the story of two alleged teenagers who will lose their alleged virginity live on the Net. Although news of the Our First Time (http://www.ourfirsttime.com) website had been filtering through e-mail boxes since last week, the story made wire-service copy Wednesday, and immediately exploded into a media sensation.

Barbara Walters is clucking tongues on her show The View, and Larry King interviewed the site's Web designer, Oscar Wells. Wells said Rupert Murdoch's people are on the phone hourly asking to talk to "Mike" and "Diane," the two teenagers who are reportedly ready to lose their virginity as the world watches.

"You wouldn't believe how much they've offered for the first exclusive interviews," Wells said Thursday.

Wells has pulled off a media blitz. The product he's offering -- a daily journal chronicling the run-up to the pair's first sexual experience, then the act itself live on Aug. 4 -- isn't substantially different from the hundreds of self-declared "amateur" and "teen" sex sites available online.

But Wells and his pair of teens have provided a back story, which frames that commonplace Net activity in a new context, and he has earned himself headlines around the world. He said he met Diane in a chat room dedicated to discussing the live birth shown online last month. According to Wells, the teen said she would lose her virginity on the Net to make the point that sex was as natural as birth. Wells told her he could make that happen if she was serious, he said.

Staci Kramer, chairwoman of the Society of Professional Journalists' online task force, said the media's huge interest isn't surprising in the middle of a slow news season. "It's July," she said. "It's the middle of summer. It seems like a fun story."

And if it is real, the site does mark a new first, which nearly always draws media attention, she added. "This is what happens whenever anyone breaks a barrier," Kramer said. "It's what happens whenever anyone takes something to a new level."

But is it real? Much of the ink and airtime devoted to Mike and Diane's excellent adventure has been spent on this question. Pictures on the site show a slim, well-muscled pair many online critics said look more like porn stars than recent high school graduates.

Wells is based in an office suite in Toluca Lake, Calif., with a company called First Time Productions.

'That's our point, that this shouldn't be pornography. Pornography is prurient. We're trying to make this as warm and beautiful as we can.'
-- Oscar Wells
First Time Productions

The self-described Web designer said the stunt is real, not pornography. He said he is not making money from ad sales or subscriptions, and promised not to add adult-verification services to the site, though he said he is talking to publishers about a possible book on the event.

"That's our point, that this shouldn't be pornography. Pornography is prurient. We're trying to make this as warm and beautiful as we can," he said. "We are honestly saying you should not be aroused. You should be able to watch this on the A&E channel."

The interest prompted by the avalanche of news stories is overwhelming the small company hosting the site. At one point Thursday, company servers logged 1.8 million requests for the site waiting in queue simultaneously, said Craig Brittain, owner of Michigan-based The Entangled Web, which hosts the site. His company hosts small to midsized adult companies and cannot handle anywhere near that level of traffic, he said.

Brittain has encouraged Wells to take his business to another hosting site with the capability to handle the bandwidth required for the millions of page requests. "There's no way I can do this thing justice," he said.

Wells said he expected attention, but not on this level. "We've surpassed the Mars landing and the Heaven's Gate site combined," he said.

And all this before the show even starts.