CONSTRUCTING AND MARKETING SEXUAL FANTASY: ANALYZING THE SOCIAL MEDIA OF SEX ROBOTS

Abstract

Since the release of sex robots in 2017 by RealDoll, they have been marketed as companions and sexual fantasies. Social media platforms provide RealDoll and its affiliates the opportunity to justify and celebrate the creation of a responsive sex robot directly to the public and potential consumers. To expand the fourth level of abstraction of mass media within the social construction of technology theory, this paper investigates the Instagram and Twitter pages of the technological segment of RealDoll, Realbotix, and the most prevalent RealDoll affiliate, Brickdollbanger. Framed by Fairclough’s (2012) perspective of critical discourse analysis, I reviewed a combined 1,016 Tweets and Instagram posts to analyze the process of enrollment by key actors in relation to the design of sex robots and the sex robot industry. Results indicate humor and explicit images are utilized to market the sexual capabilities of the sex robots versus ideas of love and companionship. This paper adds to human-machine communication literature on the design of sex robots by exploring the sex-forward messaging not fully present in other marketing materials of Realbotix.