It’s happened to all of us: we’re settling in for a family movie night, decide to watch whatever is at the top of the charts on Netflix and have to sit awkwardly through a sex scene, trying desperately not to make eye contact with anyone else in the room. After a social media post from X user Soren Iverson recently, these awkward interactions were thought to be a thing of the past, as an image circulated showing Netflix including a “skip the foreplay” button.
In theory, if a viewer selected this option, then all of the sex scenes in a film would be cut so that it becomes family-friendly. The feature is definitely something that everyone will have been thankful for at some point; however, unfortunately, we can confirm that it isn’t happening.
It turns out Soren Iverson is a satirist and makes a lot of posts akin to this one, where he creates user-interface graphics that look real with comedic ideas on them. In a reply post to the “skip the foreplay” announcement, he revealed he was only joking with the image.
“I make unhinged stuff like this daily,” he wrote, “So if you lol’d at this (or breathed through the nose a lil at least), then pls DEMOLISH that follow button.”
The post went viral because people were drawn to the feature; however, part of that virality comes from the apparent ambiguity in the button. Many users rightly pointed out that if someone were to “skip the foreplay”, that would imply that all parts of the movie other than the sex scenes would be cut, not the other way around.
Some other joke features that Iverson has put forward in the past include a “race to location” feature on Google Maps and a Spotify add-on that blocks any Christmas music from being played before November 24th.
While it may be the case that Netflix sees the response to the feature and decides to add something that could work similarly, it remains to be seen; however, for now, we will just have to grin and bear those awkward sex scenes.