What would it mean for a complete stranger to control something so intimate? Without your consent? And what if the person with the remote isn’t an unwitting kid, but an internet stalker or an abusive ex who’s hacked the vibrator? With the rise of “teledildonics,” or internet-connected sex toys, the risk of someone accessing an intimate product’s controls or the data it gathers is very real. Ten years later, a small group of security experts and sex-positive hackers are thinking seriously about the questions raised by Heigl’s scripted fiasco. It was funny, as long as you didn’t think about it too much. Heigl shivers into a semi-suppressed climax in front of her coworkers, totally unaware of her orgasm’s underage puppeteer. Over white wine and ceviche, the undies begin unexpectedly buzzing the controller has fallen out of her purse and a young boy at the next table over is playing with it. In one scene, Katherine Heigl’s character wears a pair of remote-controlled, vibrating panties to a serious business dinner after-bear with me-a coworker calls her prude.
The 2009 romantic comedy The Ugly Truth didn’t leave much of an impression, but, in a small way, it was prescient.
