“We definitely live in the worst timeline, but I'm glad I get to see things like this," my friend messaged me, along with a link to the Balldo. It took me a minute to comprehend what I was looking at. It's a sex toy, and that's about as clear as it gets. The company's site described it as a “ball dildo” that allows you to “penetrate your partner with your balls,” which not only raised new questions, but unanswered so many questions about sex that I thought I previously understood.

I had to know more.

For anyone who doesn't want to go down same rabbit hole, which includes multiple NSFW videos featuring both cartoon and real phalluses—the latter of which we won't link to–here's the short version of how the Balldo is supposed to work, according to its creators:

The skin of the human scrotum has a surprising number of nerve endings across its surface–an amount "comparable to the vulva," Balldo's marketing materials repeatedly remind the viewer. And yet, again according to Balldo's marketing, said nerve endings have gone underutilized in sex. What—an exuberant voiceover asks two excited cartoon scientists and one inexplicably more excited cartoon naked man—could be done to solve this egregious oversight!?

The answer, Balldo contends in its YouTube video, is a bullet-shaped sex toy that transforms the testicles into a penetrative member like a phallus. A person can slide their balls into this harness, as well as a pair of accompanying spacers, in order to form an object rigid enough to be inserted into an orifice. However, the Balldo also is intended to leave the scrotum exposed, at least on the sides, so the wearer can still feel stimulation.

This, Balldo claims, results in a form of orgasm “so new and different that it will take years for the possibilities of Ballsex and the associated Ballgasm to be truly understood.”

After trying out the Balldo, I'm convinced the utter nonsense of this sentence is the point. Or, at least, it's the point I'm choosing to take from the experience.

If you've ever had a conversation about what “art” is, Marcel Duchamp's urinal called Fountain has almost certainly come up. One of the most influential pieces of the early 20th century, the entire piece was a urinal, turned on its side, and signed with a nom de plume. It was initially set to be displayed at an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, an avant-garde organization that was ostensibly so open-minded, that it would not reject any artwork from its members. 

Nevertheless, the Society voted not to display Fountain, kicking off a debate over what even counts as art and where the lines of decency lie. A debate that, depending on who you're talking to, continues to this day. Regardless of where one finds themselves in said debate, Fountain had an undeniable effect: it held up a mirror to our collective artistic sensibilities and asked us to interrogate why we see art the way we do.

More broadly, the dadaist movement, of which Duchamp was a part, rejected logic and rationality and instead leaned more into nonsense and chaos, with a strong undercurrent of anti-bourgeoisie themes. Rather than adhering to the artistic standards that a small group of wealthy people decided on, dadaist works aimed to force the art world not only to consider what defines “art” but what role art has to play in the world.

Yes, somehow this is relevant to my experience testing the Balldo, a sex toy designed to use the testicles and scrotum for penetrative sex—but more on that later.

There are actually two experiences one can have with the Balldo: using it, and showing the YouTube video to other people. The latter I found much more fulfilling. Paying forward the gift my friend gave to me, I showed the videos and website of the torpedo-shaped ball cup to a few others. In every instance, the reactions were pretty much the same:

“What?”

“How would that even work?”

"What?"

“Who asked for this???”

“What???"

However, there was one much more specific question that every single person I showed this to had. At one point in the video, the cartoon scientists ask aloud, “But how can we use the balls to have sex?” In response, every person independently had more or less the same reaction:

“Do these people think penetration is the only way to use balls during sex?”

It's a valid point! It's also a challenge that sex toys designed for penises and testicles have always run into. Not only do we question whether a toy can provide some new form of stimulation or sensation, but is it really going to provide a better experience than a hand, mouth, or any other orifice can provide? Is it going to improve the time you spend with your partner, or is it going to be an awkward mess that's not worth the time or energy it's going to take to convince someone to try with you?

The Balldo is so confident in its assertion that penetration is the only way to have sex that it asks you to strap a hollow silicone dildo to your testicles to prove you agree, and fully expects you to pay $80 for the privilege. I had to find out why. 

After pitching it to my editor, who I can only assume approved my review pitch without looking too far into it, I had a sinking feeling. Now I have to use this thing. Worse, it's not designed to be used solo. So I needed to convince another human to use it with me.

This gave me a unique experience that I've never gotten from a sex toy before: an almost irresistible desire to do anything else. If I were having sex for fun, I could think of any number of ways to get the kind of stimulation the Balldo promises. Everyone who saw it wondered what they could do with it that they wouldn't enjoy more with a regular penis. (A common question was, “Would this be good for double penetration?” A question that, having reviewed it, I can confidently answer by laughing).

It was fascinating to hold the Balldo in my hand and feel not excitement or even curiosity, but an intellectual challenge. Like Duchamp's Fountain did to the art community a century prior, it forces you to reckon with the very concepts of sex and pleasure themselves.

It's not a sexy way to get started, but fortunately my partner who graciously volunteered to help me test the Balldo had a good humor about the whole thing. This, it turned out, was another fringe, possibly unintended side effect to using the Balldo: I couldn’t use it without laughing. And giggling with my partner about the absurdity of what we were doing was, in its own way, an intimate experience. 

Actually using the Balldo, however, was a terrible experience I can recommend to no one.

The rubber material is stiff, as you might expect it would need to be in order to form a phallus. The problem is, you're expected to not only pull the Balldo itself around your testicles, but also pull two spacers around your balls and the Balldo afterward. 

Anyone who's ever slipped while stretching a rubber band and snapped their fingers should understand the problem here. Worse, it's going to be extra slippery, since you'll need to apply lube to the Balldo to get it on. It's a challenge so cruel and unforgiving, it belongs in a Dark Souls game. But let's assume you understand the risks and want to proceed anyway: The problems don't stop there. 

For starters, the girth of this thing is tremendous. My partner told me that while it wasn't the most painful thing in the world, it was uncomfortably large. Once it was inserted, movement was easier on the receiving end but got a lot more difficult on the supply side, so to speak.

You see—and I am addressing the creators of the Balldo when I say “you” here—inserting any kind of phallus into any kind of orifice requires some amount of force or leverage. We use our hips, our core, our arms, etc. to provide the force necessary to perform the penetrative sex that the Balldo is so hyperfixated on.

But virtually no part of my body is less equipped for penetration than my testicles, Balldo or not. My hips were useless at providing any level of thrust at the angle they were asked. The instructional website the company provides says that once the Balldo is inserted, “light thrusting” is possible, which, as marketing overstatements go, is right up there with Red Bull promising the power of flight.

This is why I'm deeply skeptical of the claim that the Balldo can enable double penetration from a single partner—something that, I will note, literally any "standard" dildo can provide. While I didn't test this claim, even imagining it is frightening. The Balldo is simply too thick for any but the most adventurous to consider taking anally. Using the Balldo in a vagina while the penis is inserted into the anus would be a logistical nightmare.

Once again, I'm brought back to where I found myself before trying the Balldo: questioning everything. The fundamental absurdity of the Balldo's fixation on penetrative sex makes other, better alternatives painfully obvious. Even talking about this sex toy is a more engaging experience than using it, and the intimate moments I had bonding over how silly it was in the first place were the only highlights.

Maybe that's the message the Balldo has for me: that communicating, laughing, being vulnerable, and embracing the inherent silliness of sex is more valuable than trying to spend copious amounts of money to eke out the tiniest bit of extra pleasure from every nerve ending. 

Perhaps the Balldo is best interpreted as performance art about sex itself—the $80 overturned urinal of the erotic toy world. On the other hand, the company also sells a stuffed version of Chuck the talking balls for $20. So, maybe not.