The future of sex is coming.

It’s easy enough to envision: partners remote-controlling one another’s cock rings and vibrators, masturbating while wearing VR headsets, playing with Bluetooth buttplugs, interactive porn, realistic sex dolls …

Some say the future of sex is teledildonics, interactive devices that offer realistic sexual sensations.

[Source: Camsoda]

In fact, “it has the potential to provide sensations that human beings can’t,” says Dr. Bryant Paul, professor at Indiana University and scholar of sexually explicit content and online pornography. “I’ve never met a person who can vibrate at 120 hz or whose penis doesn’t get tired.”

Thanks to teledildonics, horny folks in different places can cyber-fuck one another. In one room, a woman can give a blow job to a mechanical dick. In another, a man can stick his real dick in a connected fleshlight, and feel exactly what her mouth is doing.

In one country, a man with a five-inch penis could control the settings of 10-inch vibrator. In another, a woman with a synced device could lie in front of a webcam, recording her reactions to his every pulse.

This is sex toys meets social media — partners having sex over the Internet, communicating and controlling one another’s experiences.

“It offers the opportunity to augment the type of sex that people are having,” Dr. Paul explains.

And while it’s still a small market, plenty of people believe it's the future. That’s why some companies are investing serious bucks into teledildonic devices.

A number of camming sites, where users watch models perform sex acts while they chat with them, are now incorporating teledildonics to break down barriers between cam-girls and their fans.  

CamSoda, for example, recently gave some of its models Kiiroo Pearl vibrating dildos, in hopes that its customers would invest in synced “sleeves,” fleshlight-like devices that constrict and contract like a real woman’s vagina. This way, a man can be thrusting in Alabama while a woman is penetrated in New York City. Cybersex never felt more real.

The models adore their new toys. They finally have an answer for fans who lament, I wish I could be with you! Now, these men can literally feel what it’s like to receive a blow job from the model or to have sex with her. They can get intimate with women they’ll never be in the same room with (let alone inside of).

With teledildonics, camming comes that much closer to an escort service. Camgirls can offer the famed “girlfriend experience,” spending hours hanging out online with their biggest fans and allowing them to finally fuck their “girlfriends.”

However, the women enjoy an extra level of safety. “Prostitution is illegal, and the reason is that it’s a public health hazard. But when you’re having sex remotely, that takes the risk out,” Dr. Paul says. The chances of ending up with an STI or ending up in handcuffs are virtually eliminated.

Of course, teledildonics also have their drawbacks. A device averages around $100 a pop. Also, they haven’t been entirely normalized yet. Until haptic technology (involving physical contact between the user and the computer) becomes more mainstream, anyone caught with a fancy fleshlight will likely be labeled as a weirdo.

But the biggest flaw of all, as Dr. Paul points out, is that “using a teledildonic device is a lot more work than walking into your bathroom, pulling out your phone, and jacking off."

How successful teledildonics become remains to be seen. Even still, it’s exciting to live in a world where horny men can download blowjobs.

It’s a pretty new phenomenon and it’s not very prevalent yet, Dr. Paul says. But as sex tech becomes more interactive, it could have the potential to offer a level of pleasure that is even better than the real thing.

[originally published October 31, 2017]