Sex roulette: deadly trend or media rumor?

The dramaturgy of this game is explained by the presentation of its rules: similar to Russian roulette, you could meet a participant with HIV in a kind of arranged swinger party. But sex roulette: is this actually a widespread phenomenon?

This is how “Hefte.News” [ 1 ] describes this game:

Here, young people - mostly from wealthy families - meet for wild parties where they do it unprotected and at least one person is HIV-positive. Who that is is not known to the others. The young people are looking for the absolute thrill. The risk of becoming infected with the virus leads to an extremely high adrenaline rush, which combines with the orgasm to create a particularly intense pleasure experience.

But it's not just “Hefte.News” that has taken up this topic, it's just the website that is currently working on this topic.

This topic could already be read on many websites in May and June 2016, mainly carried by the tabloid press. They all have one thing in common: they refer to the statements of Spanish doctors, especially a doctor from Barcelona. German-language tabloid pages often picked up this topic at the end of May and June, the English “Yellow Press” already in May, especially in the middle of the month.

At the very beginning, on May 11, 2016, “Dazed Digital” described sex roulette, referring to “various reports in the Spanish media” [2]:

According to several reports in the Spanish media, the high-risk activity – more commonly known as 'sex roulette' – has been growing in popularity across the Catalan capital.

Different?

In the end, these “different” reports are one, namely a report from the Spanish radio station “Cadena” from April 18, 2016 [ 3 ]. The content here is that a clinic in Barcelona states that people are invited to a sex roulette game in which one of the participants is infected with HIV:

L'Hospital Clínic té constància que a Barcelona es fan ruletes sexuals on s'hi convida algú infectat amb VIH perquè l'experiència sigui més extrema.

It is also reported here that a Spanish clinic warns that these parties are leading to an increase in infections:

Les festes sexuals desenfrenades, sobretot entre gais, han fet incrementar les infeccions agudes per hepatitis C.

Problematic!

Except for this one single article, there are no cross-references, just articles that ALL rely on this statement. There is no parallel article that addresses this topic in its own way, nor any other statements from the environment. Furthermore, the Spanish broadcaster never took up the issue again, even after it was broadcast across Europe.

The only and original source refers to April 18, 2016 - at least as far as sex roulette in Spain is concerned.

Older finds

And now we come to an interesting part: the warning about a “sex roulette” is not new! Already on May 19, 2013 the Swiss website wrote “20 Minutes” [ 4]:

A new leisure activity is currently making the rounds among Colombian young people: sex roulette. The only rule: whoever ejaculates loses. But actually there are only losers.

The website referred to an article from the Colombian daily newspaper ADN, which - as it later turned out - had no real general validity and is ultimately no longer available. However, the focus in this article was more on unwanted pregnancies rather than possible infections.

Pregnancies among girls between the ages of 10 and 19 rose rapidly in 2012. Many of the expectant mothers later stated that they did not have a partner, but remembered taking part in “sex roulette” at some point.

It's just stupid: on May 28th there were statements to the contrary, apparently people in Colombia noticed that they had created a media hype that was so incorrect. The website “Latin Times” (an offshoot of IBT Media ) [ 5 ] then painted a different picture:

Despite the story, Ramirez said that people should remain skeptical of claims that the practice is “widespread,” as recent data reveals a rise in such casual sex and unintended pregnancies.

Here people tend to write about “rumor” and that one should be skeptical before describing the widespread use of the practice. Worse still, the Colombian newspaper to which “20 Minutes” refers appears to have circulated a hoax:

“There story was broken by ADN, a daily newspaper that circulates here in Medellin and it made its case by saying that the Secretary of Health had confirmed it. But we fact checked this and there was never an announcement like the one ADN reported,” Carlos Mario Ramírez of Salud, Inclusión Social y Familia de Medellín said.

In other words: it was stated to the Latin Times that this case described was not even known.

Even older find

Now it gets really funny: a forum entry from 2003 (!) reports exactly about the sex roulette model. This is what it says here [ 6 ] about Japanese schoolgirls:

“I've heard it's just amazing. Now high school kids everywhere are into it (Russian Sex Roulette). “It’s basically just an orgy with the same number of girls and guys, but the object is for the girl to have unprotected sex with every guy there to see if she gets pregnant or not,” a Tokyo schoolgirl tells Hanashi no Channel. “I'd like to have a go, but I'm a bit scared.”

The whole thing also sounds completely crazy: the participants are not afraid of unwanted pregnancies because some kind of insurance is taken out for these parties. If someone got pregnant, there would be money.

Even if participants do fall pregnant, they don't seem to see it as a worry. Partygoers have to pay “Ejaculation Insurance” of about 5,000 yen before they're allowed to take part. This money is all pooled and used to pay for abortions should any girl be saddled with an unwanted pregnancy.

Sex roulette: myth or to be taken seriously?

Well, someone must have organized some kind of orgy at some point. We don't know whether with or without HIV. Nevertheless, we somehow have the feeling that the report about a sex roulette is more of a tabloid story that has been dramatized and is now causing great astonishment - without it being practiced across the board. And the worldwide horror is more likely the result of inflated media articles.