Sleeping With the Enemy
by Rufus Griscom

Here at Hooksexup we've been accused of everything from pomposity to peversity, and we have to admit that we kind of like it. What can we say, attention is attention, and a good spanking is a good spanking (and a bad spanking is better). So when we discovered an entire website, AreFriendsElectric.com, dedicated to "confronting the commercialization of personal relationships and exploring the idea of online identities" on the Hooksexup Personals, we couldn't resist engaging in a little friendly joust. I sat down recently with artists Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Jeff Gauntt, Josh Jordan, and Mark Masyga of Are Friends Electric to talk about irony as a defense mechanism, the nature of art, and the commodification of dating. But mostly, I just wanted to get them to admit that, in the centuries-old history of the art world, the only artist who can honestly claim that he's not in the creative field to get laid is Bob Ross.