The 5 Weirdest Products on the Web, One Disturbing Night

Somewhere between these two extremes, dwell I.

a complete personality backup from Lifenaut, an online service that uses extensive psychological testing, surveys, user uploads and monitored interactions to build a virtual avatar of you that lives on the Internet. Then I downloaded it into a custom built robot manufactured by Kokoro , a Japanese company that specializes in life-like robotic dopplegangers. They even use your own hair and eyelashes while building your replicant, and complete it with your own unique speech patterns and gestures. It’s all astoundingly accurate. For example, mine’s been outside all morning screaming obscenities into traffic and trying to bite passerby. And that's precisely what I had written down in my day-planner for today, until I realized I had to write this column. I don’t have to explain that I bought the robot doppelganger for a MMF clone three-way, right? I mean, some truths are held to be self-evident.

No, it's true: Literally every couple you see at Applebee's is comprised of one lonely man and one whore.

“You my date?” she asked, coughing with the utmost gentility into her armpit. “I sure am, beautiful. What’s your name?” I slid a platter of Rancho Poppers from the booth-bench, and motioned for her to sit. “I’m Twilight,” she answered. “Are you that vampire movie I’ve heard so much about?” “What?” She seemed dumbfounded; couldn’t even answer a simple question. Probably had a learning disability. “I heard you got terrible reviews,” I continued, folding a quesadilla into another quesadilla and struggling to force my mouth around it. “Listen, can we just do this? I got another job in two hours across town.” I reluctantly obliged, and we made our way outside. She didn’t quite know what to make of my Chariot Skates, and muttered something quite rude about the kind of man that tries to pick up whores on Training Rollerblades, but after taking only a handful of intense beatings and two major accidents, we safely made it the three blocks back to my apartment.

"A hero, Twilight. That's what kind of man."

Even though I had politely asked Doug to leave for the night by repeatedly spitting in his face until he ran for the chemical eyewash, he was still there when we walked in the door. I gave him the evil eye and the double finger, and escorted Twilight to my room. “Now, this is going to sound odd,” I cautioned her, “but I’m doing a little experiment here…” “Honey, you can ‘experiment’ all you want, but after the game of dickhead roller-derby you just lost to the world out there, you’ve only got about 45 minutes left. I'd get a move on.” “Cool,” I replied, slipping into the bathroom. “I'll admit: I was worried this was going to weird you out a little bit…” “There’s nothing you got that I haven’t seen twice today, baby,” she yelled from the other room. Though I appreciated the professionalism of that statement, she didn't do a very good job following through on it when I wheeled back into the room with my giraffe-skate legs and over-sized leather jacket.

Pictured: Your sexual arousal, if I know women.

“Oh god, I’m going to die tonight!” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees in what I hoped was sexual awe, but honestly looked a lot more like regretful prayer. “Well, come on now, we don't have to do anything you don't want to,” I tried to put my arm around her reassuringly, but the wheels slipped out and I ended up stumbling head-first into the television instead. “No. No, it's OK,” she began, though apparently speaking mostly to herself. “I can do this; I'm a professional.” “Excellent!” I took the momentary collapse to get a quick sense of the dong-strength we were dealing with. “But I’m only registering a Yellow on the Boner-scale here, and I’m telling you right now that if we don’t get to at least a green, I'm not giving you a positive Yelp review.”

“All right,” she declared matter-of-factly, clearly regaining some composure. “What are the logistics here? Do I just… how do we work this? Is this like horses do or…?” “Whoa there,” I began, stumbling to my feet by angling one stilted wheel against the door and leveraging the other against the bed frame. I towered awkwardly above her, uncontrollably drifting in concentric circles, just trying to keep my balance, “slow down a second, darlin'. We’re not quite ready yet. Do me a favor and open up that closet.” She did so without hesitation. She seemed fully adjusted now, even slightly amused by the circumstances. That all changed when the doppelganger wheeled out of the shadows. “Why Ebert is Wrong,” it squealed, its limbs jerking at impossible angles as it tried to flip her the bird with its hand firmly encased in the stilt-wheel prosthetic. It fell, scrambling and flailing across the room like a wounded spider, “IN DEFENSE OF GAMES AS ART.” She seemed to have temporarily forgotten how to make sounds with her mouth, but I could see the quizzical expression on her face. “Oh, no: It’s cool. That’s just my doppelganger. I mostly fed it my old column titles to establish its personality matrix. I was a little short on time. And fairly lazy. And incredibly high.”

Saved by the Bell, Quantum Leap, nipple clamps, drug abuse and the Internet: Yep. That's pretty much Robert.

The doppelganger struggled to its side and got a half-mount on her calf, “my field trip to the Large Hadron Collider,” it cooed seductively. My phone pinged, registering activity. I had synced the cock ring up to my cellphone, so that the experiment wouldn't be compromised if I got called away. “Ha,” I laughed appreciatively, watching the robot do its thing, “we’re gonna set some thrust-count records tonight.” “I don’t think I can deal with this on... on any emotional level,” she pleaded. “Shit. Seriously? Ever since we got the doppleganger in play I've been at Erection Alert Purple over here; that’s not even supposed to be on the scale! Look at this thing,” I said, offering her the dong monitor, “I think it’s developing god damn stripes.”

“I just... I just need a minute.” She was trying to kick her leg loose from the robot's sex-grip. “Well, that's probably for the best,” I conceded, clapping a reassuring wheel on her shoulder, “this is going to get worse before it gets better.” At that, she snapped. She struggled free from the doppleganger's mount and pushed her way to the door. The robot flew into an immediate frustrated fury, and began clumsily scrabbling to its wheeled feet. I tried to roll after Twilight, to console her, but here was fucking Doug again, blocking the hallway. I tried to swing past his right, but he moved left. “I'm just trying to get to the bathroom,” Doug explained. I darted left and he blocked right. Right and left again. “Goddammit, Doug!” I screamed, my naked-from-the-waist-down Wheeler costume beginning to chafe. “You are the worst room-mate ever!” I finally headbutted him aside and made my way down to street level, where Twilight had caught a cab and was quickly speeding away. It was vital that I know what she thought about the experience, so I held up my phone as she drove by to get a read on her recent social activity. She had just finished tweeting “I cant do this shit no more I got 2 get my life 2gether” to somebody named BigTito, and was now signing up for a site called SeriousSisters.com, which I gathered was some sort of extreme Siberian nunnery.

I stood on the corner, watching her car disappear into the night, and tried to assemble my thoughts: How could I call this endeavor? Obviously the night was a pretty dismal failure overall, so I couldn't exactly recommend any of these products. Although, perhaps some fault could be more rightfully assigned to the inferior resolve of today's fearful prostitute communi- My phone chimed, interrupting my inner monologue; in the upper right hand corner, I could see the counter on the ACR climbing dramatically--faster than I had ever managed in the control tests. In the distance, I heard Doug's muffled screams of pain and terror. Jesus, he was probably going to leave me another one of his fucking passive aggressive notes about this.

---

You can buy Robert's book, Everything is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead, or find him on Twitter, Facebook and his own site, I Fight Robots or you can buy everything on this list, head down to the Chuck E. Cheese and just absolutely ruin somebody's birthday party.