Entertainment
Lets talk WooHoo.
Gabby* was in fourth grade when her friend dropped the bomb.
There’s this game called Sims, the girl said.
you’ve got the option to let people do stuff to each other.
When her friends mom was around, theyd keep it PG.
But when she left to run errands, all bets were off.
It was a very forbidden fruit thing, says Gabby, now 28,referring to WooHoo.
WooHoo, for the uninitiated, is The Sims word for sex.
But WooHoo, well, thats too taboo.
I just remember thinking, yeah, that is something that no one should be doing, Gabby says.
She even avoided the topic with other friends at the time.
I’m like, Oh, okay.
I wasn’t a freak.
For people particularly girls who came of age in the aughts, The Sims offered something unique.
It was a living dollhouse, a virtual place where young millennials could live out their fantasies of adulthood.
We were super innocent.
I think we were just realizing we were having actual crushes on boys.
In her young mind, Jesus was watching over us do that.
I think at that stage we really weren’t talking about sex.
Our parents knew we were playing The Sims.
That sort of made it okay, but it was still very obviously sexual.
my own father said on a recent phone call, after I explained the premise of this story.
Some ended up making their Sims have sex before their parents had a chance to give them the talk.
I was like, What’s going on in there?
Gabby had a bit more knowledge, but not much.
All things considered, WooHoo was a pretty tame way for kids to explore their budding sexuality.
I thought it was an adult, very sexy bed, Becca*, now 32, recalls.
It wasn’t for sleeping.
The Sims 2, released in 2004, got slightly more explicit.
Thanks to its much-improved graphics, the hookup spots proliferated.
They were still under the covers, King says.
It didn’t help.
(Nowadays, if youre looking to watch your Sims get nasty,there are ways.)
In The Sims, she could see her avatar at ease with her dream boyfriend.
King had a similar experience.
I was the center of it.
For a prepubescent girl, that might mean imagining yourself as a beautiful woman with a happily ever after.
But for Hill, who first got obsessed with the game at 19, it was much later.
Something abouthim, not his Sims, purple or otherwise.
On a whim, I made my character a guy and used he/him pronouns.
Its still in early stages, but hes written a couple of the songs.
And youll definitely get to WooHoo.
*Name has been changed.
