Let’s get digital

By Charlie McCann

If there is one thing Nikki Night knows, it’s her way around a vibrator. A former camgirl, she now coaches performers for Cam4.com, a site that hosts webcam models and welcomes the viewers who pay to watch them tease. Vibrators are an important tool of her trade and, like any professional, she’s tested a wide range. Her favourite is the Kiiroo Pearl, an elegant, ergonomic length of milk-white silicone which looks much like any other vibrator. Unlike most, however, the Pearl connects to the internet.

This means, says Night, that punters can “at any time make this vibrator go off and make the performer scream.” Viewers know they will never be able to touch camgirls in the flesh, but Kiiroo brings them as close as conceivably possible: the Pearl can be paired with a masturbator called the Onyx, a sleek, slightly forbidding rectangular box, the bottom of which opens into the snug, padded interior. Each is fitted with sensors that detect exactly where and how they’re being touched, and these movements are instantaneously relayed from one device to the other. Encircle the Pearl with your thumb and index finger, sliding from the tip of the vibrator to the base, and the ten rings in the Onyx’s “Pleasure Core” will contract one by one, at the same speed and with the same pressure. Press the Onyx’s touch pad and the Pearl’s motor will rev up; stroke it faster and the speed at which it vibrates will accelerate. “What he’s doing, she will feel,” says Toon Timmermans, the CEO of Kiiroo. “And what she is doing, he will feel.”