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Opinion: Who Is That Vibrator Setting For?

Every woman knows there’s nothing better than coming home after a long day of work, changing into lingerie, lighting a Yankee candle, and going to town on your clit like you’re sanding a piece of sawn lumber. Sadly, many of us looking for a quick respite from the daily grind have our plans foiled when accidentally queuing up one of 16 different orgasm-destroying vibration patterns, leaving us naked from the waist down and asking, “Why? ”

The word “Why” has hurt more people than any other in the English language. It’s the gateway word to learning information you wish you hadn’t. From “Why did you cheat on me?” to “Why is my period late?” to “Why is my vibrator pulsing to the rhythm of the Pink Panther theme song?” “Why” highlights some of life’s most unanswerable questions.

With just one maladjustment to your vibrator’s control panel, you’ve crossed over from the pleasure zone into Morse code territory. Congratulations, your Sisyphean nightmare has just begun. You’ll be clicking through an assortment of senseless vibrations for what seems like days trying to get back the momentum you worked so hard to build watching that retina-burning amateur pornography, but it will be too late.

Sex toy engineers say the different settings are there to customize the experience for the consumer, but if you’ve ever met an engineer, I don’t need to tell you they’re not having sex. Relying on engineers to make sex toys is like asking a vegan chef to write a cookbook on hotdogs. It’ll be creative, but ultimately disappointing and kind of gross.

What might appear as kink-shaming is merely tempo-shaming. Market research yielded no demand for a vibrator that mimics a strobe light, yet here we are. Apologies to the three women worldwide who can only come while using the vibrator setting that syncs up perfectly with Lipps Inc.’s 1980 hit song, “Funkytown,” but the rest of us are trying to get off on something less reminiscent of the tap code used by Vietnam POWs.