A new orgasm app is heading to a phone near you. Writer Georgia Simmonds says we need to embrace the tech invading our bedrooms...
Are you ready? Because there’s a new app that wants to own your orgasms. It wants to sync to your vibrator and help buzz you into oblivion. It’ll also urge you to tap the in-app smiley face icon – shorthand for ‘I just came’ – once you’ve climaxed so it can log your orgasms. Oh, yes.
Whether the existence of such tech intrigues or alarms you, it’s something we better get used to. So-called ‘teledildonics’ (sex toys that can be controlled by the internet) are the future. We track our exercise, food intake, body temperature, heart rate and sleep cycle. It was only a matter of time before the quantified-self movement turned its attention to our vaginas.
This app comes courtesy of OhMiBod, an American company pioneering the next generation of wearable tech. It creates connectivity-enabled vibrators that can be controlled by your smartphone (or someone else’s...). The app’s dashboard features five functionality modes: touch, voice, tap, wave and rhythm, which your vibrator recognises and obeys. You can take charge yourself and create customised buzz patterns, or hand over control to your partner, by inviting them to ‘play’ via the app. And there’s more. The special climax-calculating software will then turn your orgasms into an individualised graph that tells you what they look like over time. Spoiler alert: they look about as exciting as every other bar chart you’ve ever seen.
The benefits of remote connectivity are clear. And phone sex is suddenly looking pretty out of date. With this synced-up vibrator, a partner can turn you on anywhere, anytime. Er, provided you both have wi-fi or 3G access. So yes, this part
I understand. It’s fun, and sex should always be fun. But an orgasm counter? Surely that part is superfluous. For a start, orgasms aren’t the only goal of giving and receiving sexual pleasure – and this functionality isn’t sophisticated enough to tell me anything I don’t already know (in fact, I have to tell it I’ve had an orgasm,so effectively it just writes it down). The other slightly baffling bonus promised by the app is the discovery of your ‘oh zone’ (the time of day you’re most likely to come). Correct me if I’m wrong, but unless you’re subject to spontaneous orgasms at your desk, it’s not really going to be that illuminating. They’re happening in the relatively narrow window in which they happen.
But maybe I’m missing something when it comes to quantifying pleasure via your phone. Another popular sex app, sexily called Spreadsheets app, already has an impressive 150 country-strong user base. Spreadsheets tracks sex stats, logs duration, total thrusts and decibel peak. Seriously. You can browse performance, stamina and pleasure tabs and receive improvement-orientated feedback. It’s geared towards couples who presumably find spreadsheets arousing and subscribe to the louder-and-faster-means-better school of sexual satisfaction.
Like it or not, tech is invading our bedrooms. A slightly concerning survey conducted by Durex last year asked 2,000 British residents about their sex lives, and over 5% of them admitted to using Facebook while having sex with their partner. Excuse me? People are browsing their news feed and liking ‘Throwback Thursday’ photos while in the throes? Surely these people are doing sex wrong.
What does seem exciting to me when it comes to intimate tech innovations, are things that provide you with information you can’t deduce or intuit yourself. Eve, a sex-positive sexual health app (that isn’t all about reproduction), aims to fill in the gaps in knowledge your sex-ed classes left wide open. It provides a myth-busting, advice-giving community of support, lets you track your sex life and log key health information in order to identify patterns unique to you (it can notify you when your pain threshold is at its highest, ie when not to go hard at the gym or book in for a wax).
Should you try out these intimate apps? If you think it will improve your individual real-world experience, then I say yes, go for it. Technology is awesome when it serves to increase our understanding and connect us with ourselves and other people. And that should be the litmus test.