SlutCon's second annual Berkeley gathering has prompted a debate about whether a venue's connection to an event amounts to endorsement—and what that association means for the AI safety community around it. The weekend offered lessons in flirting, handling rejection and interpreting a green wristband, but accounts differed sharply on who attended and how much they paid.
The San Francisco Standard described SlutCon as a three-day course in flirting, consent and interacting with potential romantic partners, aimed primarily at awkward heterosexual men. The event took place at Lighthaven, a Berkeley campus run by Lightcone Infrastructure, according to The San Francisco Standard. The Standard's headline said men paid as much as $18,000. A separate account on casualsex.substack.com described roughly 100 men and 100 women, with men paying between $2,100 and $20,000 and women paying nothing or receiving a few hundred dollars.
Organizers Aella and Chesed presented the weekend as instruction in consent and social interaction. In the Standard's account, a green wristband indicated that a woman was open to being approached, not that she had agreed to kissing or touching.
Consent was part of the curriculum
The Standard reported that one exercise involved asking to touch a volunteer's breasts. The host told participants that the volunteer might say no and that this was okay.
A late-September workshop titled “So You've Been Called a Creep” drew ten men and two women, according to the Standard. It was led by Gretta Duleba, described in the report as a Google engineer turned relationship therapist and AI alignment researcher from Berkeley. She recommended using character-driven movies to practice reading other people's feelings by pausing during emotionally charged scenes.
The Standard also reported rules against asking people in flirt-practice exercises for contact details, public explicit sexual activity and flirting with anyone without a wristband; loud noise outside was prohibited after 10 p.m.
What attendees say about sex at the event
Aella has said there was no orgy at SlutCon. A participant writing on casualsex.substack.com also said they saw no one having sex.
The Substack account described security guards and volunteer security at the event.
The venue question reaches beyond SlutCon
The disagreement has turned on both the event itself and its association with AI safety. As the Standard reported, critics questioned whether SlutCon made the movement look kooky or served as a front for prostitution or orgy recruitment.
Lighthaven is a Lightcone Infrastructure project.
The New York Times has described Lighthaven as the de facto headquarters of the Rationalists, whose ideas have influenced major tech companies including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, helping explain why a Berkeley flirting conference held on rationalist-adjacent turf can trigger a reputational fight within a movement focused on existential AI risk.
Attendees came with different aims
The Standard reported that attendees traveled from Massachusetts, Colorado, Canada and the United Kingdom. Glawk, a 33-year-old Canadian mechanical engineer, said he wanted to get better at moving from friendly conversation into flirting. Camille, a 24-year-old from Calgary, said she came to explore her boundaries and preferences. Vortex, a 33-year-old bisexual AI executive from the Midwest, said the weekend included kissing two women and two men.
Chesed said the name SlutCon may change because it suggests a convention organized around being slutty rather than its stated educational focus; organizers confirmed that a third event is planned, possibly under a different name. Aella described the event as an alternative to red-pill culture for straight men, telling the Standard, “There's nothing for straight men quite like this that isn't red pillish.” Chesed said organizers wanted to center human connection, with no AI safety talks or doomerism on the schedule.
The event's stated focus also sits against a broader change in reported sexual activity. A Slate report found that 9% of men ages 22 to 34 said they had had no sex in the previous year in 2013; a decade later, that figure had risen to nearly 25%. Slate also described the inaugural SlutCon as an exclusive retreat for sexually and romantically inexperienced men, with roughly 150 attendees and tickets priced from $1,000 to $9,000—figures that differ from this year's reported turnout and costs, according to Slate.
What the records show—and what they don't
The Woodhull Freedom Foundation's archive lists its “Am I Normal If . . . ?” session in Aspen on August 5, 2022, documenting an earlier example of sexual-freedom programming but not establishing that it shared SlutCon's format or purpose. Lighthaven says it has hosted the MATS AI safety fellowship, documenting an institutional connection to AI safety without establishing endorsement of SlutCon. Its website lists general event pricing of about $50 to $125 per person; that rate does not establish what SlutCon paid. Sources: Woodhull Freedom Foundation and Lighthaven. The Slate figures above track sexual inactivity, not online dating use. They offer one measure of social context, but do not show how online dating use has changed or establish what caused the shift—or whether that shift explains interest in an in-person event like SlutCon.
