I’m the Operator With My Pocket Vibrator: Collective Intimate Relations on Chaturbate

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of a remote-controlled vibrator on Chaturbate, a sexually explicit webcam platform. Looking at the complex arrangement formed by so-called human and nonhuman counterparts in networked settings, I analyze an intimate moment hosted by the selected erotic platform, observing how a sex toy that can be controlled by distance modulates the affective underpinnings of such “vibrant” assemblage and participates in this carnal activity by heightening and clustering different groupings of bodies to create an orgasmic moment. Drawing on Actor–Network Theory and theories of affect, I focus on the sociotechnical affordances that constitute this sexual setting and describe the movement of actants as they throb to develop senses of intimacy and presence in the unfurling event, thus showing how a great number of players, from varied scopes of intelligibility, participate jointly to develop visceral affect and body friction even though they do not share the same spatial frame.