Rich Lee is a cyborg and self-experimenting body hacker. He implanted headphones into his ears. He edits his own genes using CRISPR. Now, he wants to turn himself and others into human vibrators using a device he’s named the LoveTron 9000.
“The LoveTron9000 is a vibrating implant. It’s a clitoral stimulator, designed for your partner’s pleasure,” Lee tells me. With this tiny vibrating device implanted on the man’s pelvis just beneath the surface his skin, both partners will feel a mutually pleasurable buzz.
“It’ll have multiple vibration options that you can shuffle through with a magnet, and if you want to sync it to music, it can convert the beats into vibration,” Lee says. This can give users something even better than an orgasm — a “cyborgasm.”
Lee is a grinder, a member of a niche community of garage geneticists, chemists and biohackers who experiment on themselves. For years, the grinders have been pushing the limits of their senses and capabilities with DIY enhancement, innovating a future of bodies that are part-human, part-machine.
Lee’s big dream of creating bionic men with pulsating penises had humble beginnings. “I first had the idea years ago, and I was working on it casually, making it in my garage for myself only,” Lee says. “I’d made some prototypes and been close to implanting them, but then I’d have some kind of road block or technological failure send me back to the drawing board,” he says.
Lee all but abandoned the project until a couple years ago, when a woman who worked in sex therapy re-invigorated it. “She encouraged me — told me it could help a lot of couples,” Lee says.
So Lee brought LoveTron back to life. Now, he’s enlisting the help of professionals for design work and manufacturing prototypes; he’s going to conferences like BDYHAX Austin to give speeches about LoveTron and the future of sex tech; he’s showing up at adult novelty expos to showcase LoveTron beside other cutting-edge sex toys.
“Some people in the adult toy industry see me as competition, but I don’t really consider myself a competitor. It’s a completely different market.” Lee says.
Still, Lee believes LoveTron could overcome a major hurdle the adult toy industry hasn’t been able to — the stigma against men buying sex toys.
“Men have all kinds of weird hang-ups, like, they worry they’re not as good as the toy,” Lee says. “But if your partner has this device implanted, you don’t think of it as an external device… It’s just part of them.”
Some men may say the device seems too invasive, to which Lee responds, “Women get all kind of invasive procedures done for their partners, like IUDs or breast implants, for example. So I think it’s fair that men might consider the same.”
Lee plans to start production of LoveTron prototypes within the month. He’ll be the guinea pig, and although he doesn’t have any medical background, he plans to perform his own implant procedure. “I’m fascinated with the surgical experience, so I want to give it my best shot,” he says.
Then, a handsome friend will have his chip implanted by a body modification artist. “He looks better on camera, so when people want to see what it looks like, he’ll ‘drop trou’ and be the model,” Lee says.
There are plenty of test subjects in line behind them. “A lot of people in the kink community and body modification community are already on board,” Lee says. “Just gotta get it made and make sure it doesn’t blow up.”
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