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The Sex Blog Of Record
Friday, August 19th, 2022 -- by Bacchus
There are two highly separate developmental tracks, I think, that advance in parallel as we all wait for the sexbots of the future. Highly-functional gynoid sex toys are coming, so to speak; of this there can be no doubt. It’s just a matter of time and development. A sufficient sexbot will combine visual attractiveness, pleasantly tactile materials, and enough complicated robotics, backed up by algorithmic competence, to operate the “pleasure interfaces”. (Yeah, that’s mostly a fancy way of saying “holes”. Sorry not sorry.)
Right now, the components of a sexbot comprise two separate market categories. There are sex dolls, which mostly don’t move, and which feature (again, mostly) what we might call “dumb holes” — not much animatronics, not much action, not really all that advanced from rubber dolls of the distant past. In the sex doll business, most innovation seems to be in durability and appearance and materials and in cost-cutting and in improving realism while avoiding the uncanny valley.
Meanwhile, the other track of developmental innovation is the sex toy category usually (but not very attractively) called “male masturbators”. Artificial vaginas, if you’re feeling clinical; pocket pussies, if you’re selling rubber toys in the back of a 1980s porn magazine. For too long, they were not so very different from the relevant amenity you might find in a sex doll, just trimmed down to “that portion that appeals to man’s depravity”, as the poets say.
I suppose I should confess that I am not genuinely an expert in the most hypermodern and futuristic sex toys on the market in 2022. I never abandoned the editorial stance that ErosBlog adopted in 2002, which was in turn patterned after the print magazines of the time: I am willing to accept review merchandise that’s sent to me, but I don’t promise to actually publish a review unless the merch is interesting and strikes me as good. Long ago, sex toy manufacturers began to expect (and then to demand) more assurances than that; and thus ErosBlog stopped getting review materials.
With that disclaimer, I am free to say that I think the male masturbator category has enjoyed a recent ferment of development that strikes me as almost futuristic. Plenty of already on-the-market sex toys (like the Leten 708 3RD Masturbator for example) ship with functions that would have seemed like purest science fiction, even just a few years ago. Features like electric warming, pre-programmed erotic audio tracks that moan at you via Bluetooth, and wireless charging, are all pretty amazing.
It’s my expectation that sometime soon, these parallel developmental tracks will converge, as sex dolls become something more like fully-functional gynoid sexbots, complete with total-body animatronic motion and mechanically-complex “pleasure interfaces” that exceed the sophistication and pleasure of today’s most advanced hand-held sex toys. We’re not there yet, but it’s not far off.
Image credits, top to bottom: The clanky gynoid sexbot is by the artist Double Deck. The coin-operated handjob machine is by Tatsuro Karma. The fembot giving a blowjob is from Studio FOW. The simple sleeve masturbator with a couple of buttons is by Yoban. The fancy masturbator sleeve with many LED lights, buttons, and indicators, being deployed by an intent busty woman, is by Butcha-u. And the gynoid-on-top sex animation is by Sumiran.
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Thursday, October 29th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
Field-expedient masturbatory aids are not unheard of in male sexual experience. Indeed, this is perhaps an understatement. And just as in any other field of human endeavor, there’s always this one guy who goes all alpha-geek perfectionist.
In the realm of the home-made pocket pussy, that man is called Pafnuty Kingdom Shacknasty (well, he calls himself that) and Always Aroused Girl has found him, hunted him down, and forced him (delicious torments, I’m sure) to write an instructible worthy of Make magazine, complete with color glossy photographs:
Make Your Own Sex-Toy: A Pocket Pussy Polemic Part One
Make Your Own Sex-Toy: A Pocket Pussy Polemic Part Two
Like all true geniuses, PafShack (as I shall call him for short) labored in the wilderness for many years, perfecting his Promethean gift (and convincing himself of its perfection) before returning to share it with his fellow man:
I spent several years, from about 2000 until about 2004, working on the problem in depth, trying out dozens of designs. I tried polyethylene bags, elastomeric fire hose liners, foam rubber wrapped in various kinds of tapes, rubber surgical wraps, condoms, bicycle tire inner tubes, and probably things I’ve completely forgotten about.
I started out knowing nothing about what design parameters I should incorporate, and by sheer natural selection, discovered what worked, what didn’t, and why. I’ll save you the history of the Great Chain of Being and cut right to the chase; namely what I believe to be the design of the Perfect Pocket Pussy. After I demonstrate how to build it, I’ll compare it to what is widely hailed as the best commercial design, which is evidently still the Fleshlight.
First off, I discovered that two very important parameters are porosity and resilience. Foam rubber fulfills both of these needs nicely. Zip on down to the local big box hardware store and buy a length of foam rubber pipe insulation. Note that pipe insulation is also made in polyethylene. You want foam rubber. The difference should be immediately obvious both by looking at it and by touching it. I bought a 6 foot length for $5.77.
There’s more of this, quite a lot more, which you can read for yourself. I’m satisfied to provide a photograph of the finished product:
Just as interesting to me as the technical details, though, was the promise (quoted above) that PafShack would compare his PPP (“Perfect Pocket Pussy”) with the market-leading Fleshlight. I blogged about the Fleshlight almost seven years ago, but I’ve never actually seen one; nor, in that seven years, have I happened to stumble across any really critical review, in which the negative features of the Fleshlight were discussed along with its allegedly positive ones. (There might be a blog post in that fact alone, or even two; perhaps one about the rarely-violated taboos men observe in writing about their own sexuality, and another about the ways in which widespread affiliate marketing generates an ocean of bland one-sided marketing prose about products, mostly puffery that tends to drown out genuinely and useful writing about such products.) In any case, PafShack’s comparison of his PPP with the Fleshlight turns out to be the most useful review of the commercial product that I’ve ever seen:
First off, the Fleshlight is expensive. The base model I bought at the local sex emporium was $65. Compare that to the cost of materials for my version, which would run around $5… [T]he “breech” aperture is very small, resulting in a very “tight” feel. My first outing with the unit using Astroglide resulted in several realizations. First off, you need to be fully erect to even insert your penis into the unit. Not useful if you want to use it to help get you started. If your penis comes out of the unit, it’s hard to get it back in without using your other hand. This is a negative, as your other hand is usually holding a magazine, mouse, or remote. You don’t want lube all over those! The unit is so tight that lube tends to be pumped down, i.e. the Fleshlight acts as a sort of squeegee, or windshield wiper. In my case this resulted in the dreaded Lemon Song Conundrum, which I hadn’t experienced in years with my own designs. I had to constantly keep adding lube to the muzzle to maintain optimum lubrication. It caused pain in my urethra, and in fact resulted in a searing pain on orgasm.
On the upside, the material “Cyberskin” appears to be slightly porous, which is good. But the unit has to have a rigid plastic casing, because the Cyberskin is so intrinsically floppy that it won’t support itself, unless it was made much thicker all along its length. This means that the rigid plastic tube prevents any manipulation of the tube morphology. All you can do with it is manipulate the angle of attack and rate of oscillation. The Fleshlight is heavy. To maintain the tightness of the aperture, and the overall “feel” of the unit, a large mass of Cyberskin is packed into the first few inches of the breech.
I tried to weigh the Fleshlight; it’s beyond the range of my Ohaus student balance. It’s more than a pound and less than a kilogram. In contrast, my own PP weighs just 58 grams! While the Fleshlight is certainly slick, and has no adhesive discontinuities like my own design, it’s also “lifeless” in the sense that no fine manipulation of the shape of the tube can occur. It’s perfectly homogenous; twisting it does nothing, it feels just the same.
I suppose it could be made to suck, if one adjusted the rigid plastic top cap just so, I didn’t even bother to try.
My own PP is also built with a porous material; foam rubber. It’s naturally resilient, like Cyberskin. It’s able to be custom fit to the user. If it ends up feeling too loose, add rubber bands. If it ends up feeling too tight, just keep on using it; being foam rubber, it will tend to compact. The BOPP adds enough stiffness to where the unit will not collapse, yet is vastly less massive, and therefore allows a much greater range of subtle and sensitive control. Your control hand can alter the tube’s shape allowing continuous variation of stimulation. Held at the top, the tube can be closed off, and suction applied at will. Used with a 50-50 mixture of hair conditioner and water results in virtually no Lemon Song Conundrum.
The downside? As with all sex toys, you must wash and dry the thing. The inner surface will degrade over time, due to ordinary usage. The foam will become less resilient.
Yes, I know it’s a boast, but I believe I have developed the greatest male masturbation toy of all time: This is my lasting gift to the betterment of mankind. To masturbate with your hand is to revert to the Neanderthal.
Thanks PafShack for for your years of toil on behalf of all mankind. And thanks to AAG for coaxing the story out of him!
Update: AAG did a more diligent job than most of erasing all trace of her blog and its posts when she departed from the adult internet, so the links that were in this post were broken beyond my ability to repair. If she, or PafShak, or anybody else who for any reason still has an archive of PafShak’s tutorial ever sees this, please by all means drop me a discreet copy to post up in full!
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Monday, June 8th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
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.
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