The Virtues Of Robot Sex

After the post Faustus made yesterday, it is perhaps not surprising that a bit of marketing for a “robotic blowjob machine” caught my eye this morning.

The actual product, when I saw pictures of it, was the inevitable disappointment you would expect, which is why I’m not linking to it. (Well, that, plus a reluctance to recommend untrusted vendors of products that combine electric motors with holes for insertion of tender, fragile, and oh-so-precious penile tissues.) For a hundred bucks plus shipping, you get a “robotic” pocket pussy, which is to say, you would get a pocket pussy that’s been enclosed in a harder plastic cylinder that contains “beads, attached to a small motor” that “grab your cock and suck it”.

Brrrrr.

I shouldn’t scoff, I suppose. We do live in a world with toilets that know your anus position and can offer you a touchless wash-and-dry. But I’m skeptical, nonetheless.

Pocket pussies themselves (or “male masturbation sleeves” if you want to be formal) offer no serious competition to flesh-and-blood pussies (with non-optional — and yes, that’s a feature — real women attached.) But the pocket variety do come in a wide array of models at a wide array of prices. I suppose adding some motorized jerking beads to the expensive ones could quickly get you to that magic hundred-dollar price point. But, to be honest, the pictures on offer from the robotic blowjob machine vendor looked like they were starting with the cheap one, then MacGyvering it up with some leftover Jack Rabbit innards.

So, why have I gone to all this length to give you my impressions of a device that I wouldn’t touch with {pauses, points to random male in the audience} your dick?

Because I’m fascinated and impressed by the sociology of the marketing prose. It turns out that overpriced sex toys are dirt cheap compared to real women:

“If you go to a prostitute, a blowjob can run you between $50-$150, just for a single shot! If you have a girlfriend, the customary pre-blowjob activities (dinner, drinks, movie) can easily run you $100, just for the single shot! And if you have a wife…you have to be married and the costs involved in that are enormous.”

But wait, there’s more! We’re not talking mere economic savings, here. Apparently your robotic blowjob machine delivers an actual superior experience, by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t complain when you ejaculate into it:

“When you are ready to blast, just do it. It can’t complain! No fancy dinners, no carrying its purse, no PMS.”

To be fair, as I suppose I ought to be, what this prose reveals to us are the views about women that the “robot” manufacturer ascribes to its prospective customers for the device. That might be a fairly narrow subset of men, as viewed through some rather milky glass. (High technologists of plastic are not necessarily decent sociologists, or even competent marketers.) Nonetheless, I’m struck by the divergence between the men this advertising is aimed at and the men I think would be the natural market for the product.

Men who think real blowjobs are too expensive (and too fraught with potential feminine complaint) may be out there. But really, I’d expect there are more men — or, at least, more men willing to invest $100 bucks in a sex gadget — whose only objection to real blowjobs is that they aren’t currently managing to get ’em. Is sour grapes marketing (“Better than a real blowjob, because real blowjobs come from demanding women with opinions”) really the most effective approach here?

Fascinating to see that somebody thinks it might be.

Similar Sex Blogging:

• I For One Welcome Our New Sex Robot Overlords
• Pussy Power
• The Vibrator Double Standard
• The Fleshlight: Better Living Through Technology