Okay, I’ll admit straight away that computers have come on a long way since the old days of staring at manuals for weeks, wondering whether you should have taken that course in pidgin-English after all; when new toys and devices were less “plug and play” and more “plug and fuck around for three days.”

But the time and energy that it took to get this thing up and running... not to mention the conscience-wrestling dilemma of wondering whether you really want to give your credit card details to a company who know exactly what you’re spending your money on.... Well, let’s just say you have to really want to try it out, if you’re going to go through all that.

A friend whose “partner” is someone she knows only through Second Life (and I’ll say no more than that) tells me her Internet Rabbit has improved her sex life beyond all recognition, and that now they’re searching around for a similarly operated Fleshlight for him.

Me... I made sure my boyfriend was in clear view the whole time the thing was plugged in, which is probably very boring of me, but it also meant I could see what he did to... well, to make it respond.

I wasn’t impressed with the rabbit itself. Clearly, you are paying for the tech and not the texture, and jelly has never felt that alluring to me. The USB cord is distracting, the control panel feels like it's in the wrong place. And there’s also the matter of how the thing looks... a reasonable facsimile of a cock head that vanishes into a sci-fi construction that looks more ET than erotic. Are there any Doctor Who fans reading this? I bet Davros has one of these.

It’s loud, which the manufacturers own blurb admits, but to be honest even with a warning on hand, it surprised me just how much noise the thing made. There is also a lot of difference between the programmed variations, which makes it difficult to find the rhythm that feels right. And when the operator is a hamfisted dolt who doesn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between a rabbit and his favorite race game, it’s very easy to wind up feeling like your pussy’s just been pressganged in to an especially violent game of Tetris. Either that, or a human Rubik’s Cube.

Practise will apparently make perfect and I'm sure in future generations, they'll have ironed a lot of the bugs out of it. But, to be truthful, even if my partner was a thousand miles away and the net was our only means of communication, Skype and messenger offer far more possibilities than having him trying to fuck me by long distance dildo. I will retire my rabbit to the Great Hutch In The Sky, and spend my $10 a month on something with more of a personal touch.

A bumper pack of cock rings, I think.