Global pandemics are, objectively, not sexy, and yet sexy things keep happening. First there was the virtual sex parties taking Zoom by storm. Then there was Animal Crossing, through which – hear me out – people were going on dates, meeting up with their dominatrixes, and engaging in butt play. And, of course, there’s the people having virtual affairs in lockdown.

Now, something even sexier is happening: someone has created a vibrating buttplug that can be controlled by strangers on Twitter. Finally!

This invention is the brainchild of 31-year-old “Space Buck” (not his real name), who created the ‘Double-Oh’ – a WiFi-enabled battery which allows any device that takes AA batteries to be controlled via the internet. It was created using an e-cigarette battery and “some additional circuitry”, Space Buck tells Dazed, including “a WiFi module so it can communicate wirelessly, a USB bridge so it can be reprogrammed easily, and voltage regulation so I can change the output voltage at any time”. 

Instead of demonstrating this via, you know, an informative PSA, Space Buck decided to let his Twitter followers test it out. “Here we go,” he wrote on Twitter last week (September 11), “my open-source WiFi vibrator is in my butt again.”

Alongside a poll, which asked users to vote for “more intense” or “less intense” vibrations, Space Buck explained how to control the device. “Liking the tweet means 10 more seconds of vibration,” he said. “Retweeting means 30 more seconds of vibration.” At the time of writing, the tweet has 284 likes and 100 retweets.

“I’m interested in exploring the paradoxical combination of intimacy and distance,” Space Buck tells Dazed. “For example, this is an extremely intimate project – one that involves me telling people about my personal butt activities – but I’m presenting it via my fursona, which provides a little distance and really helps me open up about the intimate details. Teledildonics is all about being intimate and remote at the same time, and that’s what’s great about internet-connected sex toys.” Plus, he adds, “teledildonics is fun”.

So, how did it feel having strangers online control his buttplug? “The first sense was a mix of relief and excitement that the device was actually working as intended,” Space Buck reveals. 

“Each individual like and retweet didn’t turn the vibrator on for very long, so there were plenty of times when it shut off and then jumped back to life.” Space Buck says this moment was the most interesting part to him. “It gave me the same dopamine rush that checking my phone for Twitter likes would have given.” 

He continues: “Not knowing when it would turn on next was frustrating, but in a good way. It created a playful, teasing sexual tension that I really enjoyed.”

Space Buck says when he first tweeted his idiosyncratic request, “it mostly reached people in the furry community, which is generally quite sex-positive and geeky”, but it soon travelled further. His favourite response, he says, was: “This is the cyberpunk future I wanted, instead of megacorporations ushering global hyperfacism in the middle of environmental collapse and a pandemic.” Mood.

Find out more about the ‘Double-Oh’ battery here.