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Meet the creative visionary behind this USB butt plug

Sex and tech are merging in exciting ways on Etsy.

 

Jaya Saxena

IRL

Posted on Mar 1, 2016   Updated on May 27, 2021, 3:51 am CDT

Never have sex and technology been combined so seamlessly as with this USB butt plug, available for purchase from Etsy seller GlowFYourself for $30. 

“Back that data up like a boss!” reads the listing, which says that due to “breakthroughs in rectal data hosting, you don’t have to worry about anyone stumbling across those personal home movies, private photos or microfilms you snapped pics of, during that last undercover mission to Moscow.”

Obviously much of this is meant in jest, but honestly… this is a pretty good idea.

Total privacy is becoming increasingly unattainable online, and at this point few people would think to look to a butt plug for secret information. And, if you’re going to hide something in your butt, might as well get some pleasure out of it. We spoke with creator Jesse Lindsay about the creation of the USB butt plug, and what it means for sex toys.


When did you get the idea to make a USB butt plug? Was it meant as a joke, or as something people could really use?

A few months back I was working as a bouncer at a strip club here in Portland, where a bunch of the girls were wearing them onstage. I would get random commissions from them to make custom plugs. On a particularly slow day we were all joking around, kicking ideas back and forth about more practical applications for them, things like Swiss Army knife, flashlight, GPS locator, and data storage device popped up in conversation. A few drinks later I started putting these ideas together and the rest is rectal history.

How did you get into the business of making sex toys?

A mixture of partying, irreverence, personal deviance, and liking to push the bar for fun and funny antics. Before the whole butt plug thing took off, I was making lightsaber-style dildos, sparking the name “Glow Fuck Yourself.” We would take them to parties, the dancers would use them onstage, sword fights would break out at bars, and they’ve even been used in porn! Along with all kinds of other shit that I’m amazed hasn’t gotten me beat up or arrested.

How do you make something like the USB butt plug? What’s the market like for it?

They say that necessity is the mother of all invention… The secret ingredient, however, is love. We sold about 60 of them the first week they were online, and are receiving a ton of offers from adult toy shops, gag gift places, and fetish events who want us to vend them. My house at this point looks like a hoarders ball pit made of sex toys.

On your site you say that “art is about a lot more than designing shit.” If these products are art, what sort of statement do you see yourself making with them?

I see just about everything as art. I’ve been a freelance artist and designer my whole life, but I don’t really have any intended statement to make with these as a whole. There are lots of ideas and possibilities for them but overall, I just want people to have fun and laugh as much as possible, and if they can do it with something of mine in their ass, I feel like we have all come closer together.

Photo via the Daily Dot

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*First Published: Mar 1, 2016, 11:00 am CST