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A Truly 21st Century Job: Cuddle Party Facilitator

Around 1985, when I was in high school, I caught a lecture at U of T by

a futurist who was talking about careers in the 21st century. He talked

about jobs that already existed at the time — such as computer

programming and biomedical engineering — but he also made some

predictions based on technological and social trends and predicted the

existence of wacky jobs such as “android physiologist”. Someone in the

audience asked why the futurist didn’t use the term “android mechanic“,

and he replied by saying that it was because we would consider them

more as people rather than machines, sort of the way the Star Wars

characters interacted with C-3P0. It was a pretty interesting lecture,

even if his predictions turned out to be way off.

For example, he’d never have predicted this 21st century job: Cuddle Party Facilitator [this is a Google cache copy of a classified ad that’s since expired].

You too can make 40 grand a year getting people to do this.

“What, pray tell,” you might ask, “is a cuddle party?” Let me present the Wikipedia definition:

A

cuddle party is a non-sexual event in which adult participants are

encouraged to engage in consensual cuddling,

touching, caressing, and massaging. REiD Mihalko and Marcia Baczynski

founded the organization in New York City that throws regular Cuddle

Parties (they capitalize the events). They use a set of rules to set up

a safe space and keep things from heating up too much, such as no

nudity, hands under clothes, French kisses, dry humping, or other sex.

Erections (“Mother Nature’s way of giving us the thumbs-up sign”) are

not problematic, but should not be acted upon.

The

Cuddle Party promo material tries so hard to emphasize the

wholesomeness and child-like aspects that it ends up making the concept

seem creepy in that Michael Jackson sleepover camp way.

REiD

(yes, that’s how he capitalizes it) Mihalko and Marcia Baczynski, the

creators of the Cuddle Party concept, are such big fans of Ayn Rand

that they gave their company the clever-clever name of “Atlas Spooned”.

It figures that Randroids would find a way to monetize cuddling.

One wonders if ol’ Ayn would’ve approved. I can’t imagine her cuddling

anything other than a large canvas sack of money (just like in the

cartoons, with a big “$” on printed on it), and I’m sure she’d dry-hump