The Giveaway, The Breakdown

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As of the moment I publish this, winners have been selected. Check your email and respond! If I don’t hear from these first picks on any prizes within 3 days, I’ll move on to the 2nd-chance winners. Please check your spam folder before emailing me to ask if you won.

At some point in the first week of the contest people on Twitter started a ball rolling by talking about “Teenies”. I knew I wanted to report back after the contest with stats and such on the answers people gave to questions I asked but then it occured to me that I could use those to have a giveway-within-a-giveaway. I have 10 sets of mini teenies to give out and I’m giving them out based on singular answers that delighted me the most or to those who did really well overall answering the questions.

Count the Cats!

Let’s start with what ended up being the most difficult: Count the cat posts on Instagram. I ended up having to specify *actual cats* – not cats on products or me in cat-ear Snapchat filters. I did specify *posts* – and a single post can contain a picture, a video, a collage, or numerous pictures. So if the post had 10 cat pictures, like my tribute to our late cat in May, then it counted as 1 Post. There were also videos that weren’t as obvious by the thumbnail that they contained a cat, but that’s what made it a little less than easy. Between those things many more of you were wrong than right. The correct answer was 26 posts. If you’re super curious about the correct posts, click here to view a screenshot of my entire IG feed with the 26 posts highlighted.

Top 5 Disliked Companies

Over the years, I’ve been salty about a lot of companies both here and on social media. What do you think are my personal Top 5 Most Disliked Companies?

The top 5 that were picked most are Lelo, Pipedream, Jimmyjane, Shiri Zinn, and NS Novelties. I wondered why those, in particular NS Novelties because I’ve never written a specific post about them. Turns out it’s because they’re the first 5 companies listed on the Blacklist. I don’t have them listed in order of hatred, though!

It’s actually hard for me to quantify the Top 5. Sure, Lelo, Pipedream and JimmyJane are the Top 3. But those other two? As some of you pointed out, cases could be made for many to be tied.  Do I go with the smaller companies who’ve consistently been bad – bad products, shit ethics – like Shiri Zinn? Or companies who are widely known with a number of smaller infractions, creating a slow burn level of bullshit and lies but who aren’t 100% bad? I personally can’t choose between Shiri Zinn; Bad Dragon for their hideous ethics, mistreatment of others, and design theft; Screaming O, and Kiiroo. Or Fifi for those months of disgusting social media posts and their poor handling of it (and half-ass product).

The lube question was pretty easy and self-explanatory.

The Saltiest Review

Here’s another one that doesn’t have a clear winner for me: Which of my sex toy reviews is the saltiest? Let’s face it: when I’m mad about a product, I’m pretty fuckin salty. The landslide winner according to you is the Lelo Sona Cruise – is that because it’s the most recent, or because of the Effinbirds images? Many of you cited Effinbirds! Tracy’s Dog Flirt Rabbit was in 2nd place, but I personally consider that more of an investigative piece than a review since I didn’t actually use the product; I was just proving a point about their lies. A large number of you listed the post about my breakup with Lelo, or the post about the Lelo Hex – those are salty, for sure, but they’re not product reviews. Same with Can’t Buy My Love or my missives against Pipedream, Doc Johnson for their Sil-a-gel, or the post about Amazon.

Third place, nearly tied for second, is the Shiri Zinn Cupcake vibrator, fourth place is quickly followed by the “Supremely Offensive” Lovehoney Rockbox Finger. Fifth place is pretty much a dead-even tie between the Jimmyjane Form 3 and Form 4, the Dame Fin, the O Wand, the Hot Octopuss Queen Bee and the Fiera Arouser. There were overall 28 reviews that got votes, but one person stated that, after looking around, they felt my reviews were all so “nice” and not salty! I’m not sure they’re reading the same reviews as many of you were!

Some choices lines from various salty reviews:

  • Vibrators are my CEO, President and Head Bitch of the Orgasms Department. I am not willing to pay $145 for TEASING. I get that for free. (review)
  • If you’re going to proclaim “best”, “the most powerful” and other comparative statements in marketing, can you at least try to make it true in some way? (review)
  • It couldn’t even bring me within a mile of an orgasm. I have determined that it is nothing more than an overpriced gag gift. (review)
  • If you’re basing your entire opinion of the sex toy market from your experience shopping at Amazon? And mostly battery-powered vibrators, at that? You don’t know enough to make vibrators. (review)
  • The orgasm was a bit like a failed July 4th firework – You see the trail going up up up into the sky, you hold your breath and wait for the bang and burst but it never happens.(review)
  • If you hold the handle lightly enough while it’s inserted, then the handle is bobbing away ferociously outside your vag, with some weird rattling vibrations going on inside. It’s flat-out ridiculous.(review)
  • The people under the dome had a better chance of escaping than these poor, strangled vibrations. I’m not an engineer and even uneducated lil old me can see that this won’t work. Yet they did it anyway and you’re going to waste your money and they’re okay with that. (review)
  • I’m relieved that I can finally write this review and get it off my mind because I just don’t want to ever turn on, much less use, the Queen Bee again. I shouldn’t have to try this hard to get a sex toy to work for me. (review)
  • “Is tonight Ring-worthy?” will be a thing people will wonder. They will start to carve hashmarks in their nightstand to keep track of how many times their rings have been used and every 5th hash gets a new ring. It will spawn Lords of the Rings joke in the more geeky of couples. (review)

Which Myths Do I Talk About The Most

Next let’s talk about which sex toy myths I spend the most time fighting – and there are a few! I think the most common one is how people assume that silicone sex toys can’t be stored together and if they are they’ll “melt” – TPR and PVC will, but silicone will not. Ever since realizing more and more that the “cover it with a condom” thing is problematic and complicated at best, I spend a lot of time correcting people on it.  I do also have to correct flame test readings because people will think something is not silicone when it is. If I were on Reddit more (and I’ve basically vacated that toxic place) I would definitely say that the “there’s no ‘best’ sex toy” myth would be high up there – I have spent a lot of time and energy over the years bringing that one down and I have to touch on this more than I expected to with regards to manufacturer’s ridiculous claims.

Which Sex Toys Do I Hate Recommending

First up I hate recommending rabbit/dual-stimulation toys because of how many variables need to be met to ensure the sex toy is a good match for someone. I personally hate recommending vibrating cock rings because many are too weak or buzzy to be of much good to most people’s clitoris, or they won’t line up with the clitoris during sex for most people. They’re complicated and fraught with if/then statements that just make recommending them quite difficult. I also hate recommending “couples toys” that are specifically marketed as such because of many of the same reasons as I hate recommending rabbit vibes. And finally I hate recommending remote-controlled vibrators because quite frankly most of them fail to meet the qualifications that would make them “good”. All of the other options listed were simply things I don’t personally use much or review but CAN and will make educated recommendations.

Thank You!

Not everyone took the time to comment, or go a little above and beyond with their answers. For those who did, I especially thank you – it meant a lot! Thank you to the folks who so blatantly and hysterically tried to cheat – you made it easy to spot, and disqualify, you. Cheers! Thank you to the ones who shared posts and gave great insight on why that particular post mattered to them – it gives me a lot of insight into my readers! I’ve learned a lot from this giveaway, and I’m committed to slowly plodding on this blog for a little while longer. I may never return to the semi-regularity of posting that I once was able to do, thanks to working 45 hours a week at my day job, but I’m not closing things down just yet.