I started writing about my sexual adventures when my marriage broke down a few years ago, and I found myself in the uncharted world of Tinder dating.
It was as much a form of therapy as it was an income. Writing about my life as a newly single 30-something in Sydney gave me perspective, and feedback. Readers started writing in offering me their 20 cents-worth on my love life and opening up to me about their own sex lives.
It was oddly validating, and empowering.
Before long, I was being asked to guest on TV and radio shows as a "sexpert".
I was quick to remind everyone I didn't have a degree in sexology or any kind of clinical training in sex, but no one cared.
They were eating up what I had to say, perhaps because by sharing my own experiences, I was a relatable voice on a typically intimidating, stigmatised subject.
In the meantime, I wasn't focusing any attention on my Instagram. At best, I'd post the odd group selfie of my friends and I out for drinks, but for the most part, my feed was largely neglected, and my following, unremarkable.
That was, until I woke up one morning mid-last year.
"I think my Instagram's broken," I told my boyfriend, as we lay in bed absent-mindedly scrolling through our feeds.
"My follower numbers have gone up tenfold overnight. It can't be right. There must be a glitch," I continued.
My boyfriend typed my name into his search app. Hundreds of results came up.
"It's not a glitch," he said, holding up his phone to show me.
"You've gone viral."
Actually, a throwaway line I'd written in a column had gone viral. It was about buying my first vibrator. I'd jokingly mentioned "breaking my vagina" from overuse and became an internet sensation.
To be more precise, my "broken vagina" had become an internet sensation.
It was on the front page of just about every internet news publication there was, and my inbox was overflowing with emails from media outlets wanting to interview me about my bizarre experience.
A few days later, I received a handful of packages in the mail. They were vibrators, from sex toy companies, eager to score a mention in one of my next columns. On a whim, I decided to put together a video review of one of the products, and post it to my new followers on Instagram.
It went viral too. So I posted another, and another, and before long, adult toy retailers were offering me lucrative deals to promote their products on my feed.
A few weeks ago, I signed an ambassadorship deal with a US sex toy brand, and was flown to LA on an all-expenses-paid trip to promote their new line. It's times like this — as I'm sipping a latte in a posh cafe on Rodeo Drive, all thanks to being "The Vibrator Girl" — I'm reminded what weird, wonderful things the internet has made possible.
Only in 2019, online, could you become Insta-famous for talking about your sex life.
