Many of us now flirt through screens, archive our lives and relationships through carousels and camera rolls, and spend more time saving memes and posts rather than meeting face to face. 

...Yet, folks keep reachin’ for the physical things. There’s a hyper analysis of analog summer coming this year. Tactile hobbies and workshops are growing in popularity for a reason, and we want to get to the bottom of tactile intimacy, sensory memory, and why everyone suddenly wants to touch grass 🖐️🌾

The internet flattened so many of our experiences.

With the digitization and access to powerful tools like smart phones and AI, so many experiences have lost the feeling they provided before. For all our technological progress, we still seem deeply attached to physical evidence.

Touch is one of the first ways humans learn safety.

Long before language, our nervous systems already understand pressure, warmth, texture, and closeness. Research consistently shows that physical touch can lower cortisol while increasing oxytocin (the hormone associated with calm, bonding, and emotional regulation). This explains why certain experiences feel grounding in ways digital interaction can never provide. The more “online” life becomes, the more obvious these differences can start to feel.

Objects absorb memory differently than digital media does.

Researchers studying affective touch have found that emotionally meaningful touch is processed differently than functional touch. Our bodies store it alongside emotion, memory, and safety. This may explain why certain objects become emotionally impossible to throw away, and why tactile hobbies are gaining so much momentum right now, like:

• pottery

• sewing

• collage

• cooking elaborate dinners at home

• collecting all kinds of physical media

• curating playlists for friends, family and lovers (and even putting them on analog media)

Making things together changes intimacy.
Collaborative, physical experiences do something very specifically to people and their relationships. Scientists are studying how bonding can occur faster through building, crafting, cooking, painting, or learning something tactile together - (Clone-A-Willy and Clone-a-Pussy kits are totally part of that as well!)

For more blogs reflecting on intimacy, sensation, memory, pleasure, and the cute rituals people build around them, explore more on the Clone-A-Willy blog or follow along on Instagram.