Madison Williams: Teledildonics, A Crash Course - January 9, 2026
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Please be advised that the following program contains audio content that may be graphic and potentially triggering for some listeners. This content may include descriptions or sounds that some may find disturbing. Listener discretion is strongly advised. This is The Last Show with David Cooper.
Sex toys. Using them can provide some of the most fun on offer for all of humanity.
What is teledildonics and how does it differ from traditional sex toys?
But now we are plugging them into the internet, giving us things like, I don't know, long distance orgasms, app controlled pleasure. Is high tech sex the future of intimacy? Well, that is what we're going to discuss here with experimental psychology researcher from the University of New Brunswick, who's also a member of the Sex Meets Relationships Lab, Madison Williams. Madison, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me back on. I am so excited. Okay, last time we spoke, I told you about this word that you obviously know that I love, teledildonics. I'm going to let you define it this time. So in plain language, what is teledildonics? And how is it like fundamentally different from a regular plain old sex toy?
Good question. It is a fantastic word. Total Docs are types of sex toys that are connected to the internet that can be synced up with online pornography or VR or even with other people's toys to mimic the elements of actual human intimacy and can even replicate warmth. or orgasmic sensations or any other partnered sexual aspect without a partner being physically present. So in short, any kind of smart sex toy, whether you're using it on your own with additional stimuli or somehow using it with another person. When you first started studying these things, did anything surprise you about how people are actually using smart sex toys versus what we assume they'd use them for? Yes. In one study, we found that a lot of people are actually using their connected sex toys alone.
That most people who own one, like almost 100% of people who own one, use them by themselves. And then a small proportion are connecting it with another person's sex toy or incorporating it into partnered sex in some way. So it seems like even though these toys are connected, people are still using them on their own. I think they're advertised and communicated and when they're talked about to people who've never heard of it, it's often pitched as like, oh, something to use with your partner. I wonder if that's to kind of like normalize any stigma when in reality that's not what people are really doing. It could be. It could also be that it's just kind of complicated to sync them up with somebody else's toy where maybe we're not yet at a technological advancement spot where that's an easy thing to do yet.
So people are just using them as a regular. I'm remembering this old movie, maybe it's past your time, Demolition Man, where two people like have sex using VR headsets. It's a 90s movie. And then the guy takes off the headset. He's like, oh, I hate this because he's from the past, not the future. I'm totally derailing. When people first hear internet connected sex toys, I don't know, it sounds cold or robotic. Like what does an actual session look like? And did your findings on this stuff challenge this idea that it's super like unintimate? It could look like a lot of different things. What we think of a lot is like a long distance partnership where partners are actually physically unable to see each other.
They might be on a call at the same time. They might be texting back and forth. They may even be not actually partners, but rather chat room, like cam models or other types of sex workers who are connecting with these toys. But yeah, we don't know that much about it yet. And it would be great to know more. So who's using them? Like, I feel like there's this stereotype of a sad, middle-aged, kind of isolated, lonely person at home. And for whatever reason, they're the one deciding to really connect to high-tech stuff. I imagine that's a negative stereotype. I imagine it's not the whole story. Who is using these kinds of things?
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