A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire

by Ogi Ogas

  We’re grateful for the excellent research assistance provided by Jess Kamen, Jessie Sementelli, Kyra Smith, Lyndsey LaRiviere, Matt Feltz, Lingqiang Kong, Thao Nguyen, and Brian Wilder. Lauren Clark and Dan Schneider deserve special notice for their talent and effort.

  We’d like to thank anonymous individuals who shared ideas with us: Axay, Irlemochrie, countryadameve, xannate, pbjane, contractor72. We’d also like to thank the anonymous workers of Amazon Turk.

  We’d like to thank the following individuals for advice and ideas: Erik Larsen, Jeannie Larsen, Denise Leclair of the International Foundation for Gender Education, Anna Schwind, Gennady Livitz, Tom Standage, Alex Davis, Joe Rogan, Andrea Cendrowski, Chris Betke, and Eddie Ramsey.

  We’d also like to thank the scientists and professionals who answered our questions or sent us material: Debra Lieberman, David Buss, Roy Baumeister, Richard Wrangham, Leda Cosmides, Elaine Hatfield, Meredith Chivers, Nicholas Pound, Albert-László Barabási, Robert Boyd, Joseph Plaud, Anne Lawrence, Peter Brugger, Serge Stoleru, William Reiner, Joshua Greene, Elizabeth Hines of Project HAL, Peter Gray, Matthew McIntyre, Larry Cahill, Dominique de Quervain, Ernst Fehr, Daniel Kruger, J. Michael Bailey, Simon Lajeunesse, Sherif Karama, Irv Binik, James Roney, Margaret McCarthy, Diane Halpern, Gilbert Herdt, Ed Hagen, Carla Harenski, Jonathan Haidt, Tom Standage, Jim Jansen, Eujern Lim, Alan Said, Sam Gosling, Leonard Koziol, Dan Ariely, Melita Giummarra, Isabelle Henault, Benjamin Edelman, Yonie Harris, Alice Dreger, Elise Seip, Julie Albright, Peter Skomoroch, Lisa Ruble, George M. Realmuto, Daniel Kruger, William Tooke, Lindsay Weekes, Tyler Cowen, Andrey Anokhin, Joe Henrich, Henry Jenkins, Adam Wilson of Mira Books, and Raelene Gorlinsky of Ellora’s Cave.

  We’d also like to thank Jasun Mark of Straight Guys for Gay Eyes, Laurel of Literotica, Paul Morrisson, Randy McAnus, Collin Ireland, Xvideos, Mack Mack, Max the Cat, Twilight Wars Author, Sam Lawrence of Blackbox Republic, Doug of Rabbit Reviews, Kellie Barker and Chris Baker of Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network (AEBN), Wetlook model and producer TracieZ, Erik Elsas of eewetlook.com, Joan Irvine of ASACP, Bob Smart of Booble, Lewis at Viv Thomas, Steve Lightspeed, Mark Greenspan of CCBill, Monica of Monica’s Reviews, and Scott Rabinowitz.

  We’d also like to thank Dan Bullock and Barbara Shinn-Cunningham for their support at Boston University. We’d especially like to thank Ron Tanner for his literary guidance.

  We’d like to thank those who helped us with women’s literature, including Erastes, Bo Balder, Susanna Carr, Alla Kalinina, Brita Hansen, Sylvia Volk, and Caroline Seawright.

  We’d like to thank the publishing professionals who made this book possible, including attorney Gary Mailman, copy editors Rachael Hicks and Richard Willett, Jennifer Manguera, the magnificent Anna Sproul, editorial assistant Lily Kosner, Brian Tart, Christine Ball, and Gail Ross. Ogi would also like to thank Chris Castellani and Chip Cheek of Grub Street.

  We’d like to thank the following individuals for reviewing drafts of our manuscript: Heather Ames, Greg Amis, Arash Fazl, Meredith Wright, Nico Foley, Arup Sen, Sara Trowbridge, Chris Yeomans, Karen Ferreira, Rena Xu, David Mou, Nicole Sarofeen, Peter Crossley, Antje Ihlefeld, Arash Fazl, Arun Ravindran, Darja Djordjevic, Elizabeth Ricker, Max Versace, Rohit Nambisan, Sameer Vaidya, Bo Balder, Sylvia Volk, Jess Kamen, Peter Kouroubacalis, John LaVerde, Kevin Jiggetts, Jessie Sementelli, Diwakar Chada, Aishwarya Mantha, Paulo Figueiredo, John Ogas, Ajish Potty, Shubhakoti Srikanth, Sameer Vaidya, Seema Rao, Jayaram Iyer, Murthy Bhavaraju, Santiago Olivera, Robert Kozma, Harsha Vellanki, Thomas Heiman, Sara Al-Tukhaim, Robin Sherk, Diksha Kuhar, Mrinmoyee Das, and Polina Ogas.

  Special thanks to Eric X and Tiiu for sharing so much about their relationship and a mysterious world previously unknown to us.

  Special thanks to Chris Coyne of OkCupid, who generously supplied us with terrific data.

  Special thanks to C. Curtis Sassaman, who gave us invaluable information about running a porn site affiliate. His new Web site is poundedink.com.

  We’d like to thank the extraordinarily generous and supportive Alec Helmy, who shared so many contacts and granted us the opportunity to attend the Xbiz conference.

  Extra special thanks to Angie Rowntree and Colin Rowntree, who invited us into their home and shared so much precious data with us.

  Thanks to Paul Vasey, whose help was so meaningful. We’d also like to thank the brilliant and always-diligent Stephanie Ortigue. Very special thanks to Frank Guenther.

  We feel deep gratitude toward Steven Pinker, whose books, ideas, and research influenced us so profoundly.

  Titmowse is one-of-a-kind and we hope we get to meet her in person one day. We’d also like to give very special thanks to Perry Stathopoulos of PornHub, who provided us with so much useful data and gave us an illuminating tour of the Manwin Canada offices.

  We’d like to give outrageous thanks to Peter Kouroubacalis and John LaVerde, who showed us movies we never knew existed.

  The remarkable Stephen Yaglieowicz was unfailingly helpful and interesting. He’s a bright light in a murky industry.

  We’d like to give great thanks to Snake and Naif of Fantasti.cc, who invited us in and gave us the run of the place.

  We’d really like to single out Marta Meana, whose feedback was unparalleled. She is a role model for all female scientists.

  Of course, this book wouldn’t exist without the creative energy of Peter Morley-Souter and Rosa Morley-Souter—two Internet legends who may not be quite so anonymous after this book.

  We’d like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Stephen Morrow, who believed in this book from the start, and gave us the freedom and support to pursue it the way we wanted.

  We’d also like to thank the very best literary agent in America, Howard Yoon. You’re the grandmaster. Your support and talent mean everything to us.

  But one man deserves our greatest praise. His intelligence, erudition, and unstinting generosity affected every atom of this book: Donald Symons. We walk in his shadow and follow his light. He opened up a universe to us, larger than our imagination, that never stops growing. Though we believe he has found the true path, any flaws, errors, isinterpretations, or outright howlers are our full responsibility. If we’ve strayed from the path, it’s on us and us alone.

  NOTES

  PREFACE

  xii almost all of these people are still “WEIRD” Henrich, et al. (2010). The WEIRD paper was coauthored with Ara Norenzayan and Steven Heine.

  CHAPTER 1

  1 The study of desire Personal communication, August 12, 2010, based upon original in Meana (2010).

  “That researchers can distill sexual desire and separate it from its historical, cultural, and interpersonal context may be an illusion, but striving to be conscious of this complexity is a requirement. The study of sexuality, and desire in particular, has never been for the faint of heart.”

  1 Heinrich Hertz built the very first radio antenna Hertz stated, “I do not think that the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical application.” Photos of Hertz’s original setup can be found at http://www.sparkmuseum.com/BOOK_HERTZ.HTM . Also see Buchwald (1994).

  2 Psychopathia Sexualis The original is Krafft-Ebing (1887). We used Krafft-Ebing & Rebman (1906). available at http://www.archive.org/details/psychopathiasexu00krafuoft.

  2 “see what’s on the end of everyone’s fork” Burroughs et al. (2003).

  3 Many social institutions don’t want sex to be studied Phoenix (1961). “Research on the relationships between the hormones and sexual behavior has not been pursued with the vigor justified by the biological, medical, and sociological importance of the subject. Explanation may lie in the stigma any activity associated with sexual behavior has long borne. In our experience, restraint has been requested in the use of the word sex in institutional records and in the title of research proposals. We vividly recollect that the propriety of presenting certain data at scientific meetings and seminars was questioned.”

  Locating Strategic Research Fund
s for Sexuality Science: An Exploratory Guide http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Locating+strategic+research+funds+for+sexuality+science:+an...-a0154757389, retrieved on August 30, 2010.) “Investigators should ideally start with the question: ‘what is the sensitivity level of my particular research area?’ If a researcher wishes to investigate, for example, ‘health risks of engaging in BDSM’, searching federal, or state and even local health sources is probably not going to be successful. Such agencies normally do not fund such relatively sensitive inquiry. Conversely, a wide variety of private organizations and foundations may be quite interested in such research if it advances knowledge and safer practices among the population who practice such unique sexual activities.”

  Pfaus et al. (2003). “All too often our questions are obscured by scientific blinders and constrained by research review committees. with certain moral limitations imposed by ethics review boards and government agencies pressured to enforce ‘community standards.’ ”

  Farmer and Binik (2005). “There are far more graduate training opportunities in psychology departments for the study of depression than for the study of sexual disorders. This is surprising considering the high prevalence of sexual dysfunction compared to that of depression.” “Mainstream psychologists have not pursued sexology with the enthusiasm aimed at other areas of psychological research. Ambivalence is evident in the ideological marginalization of sexology by mainstream psychology.”

  http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article7060908.ece. “I always take it for granted that sexual moralising by public figures is a sign of hypocrisy or worse, and most usually a desire to perform the very act that is most being condemned. This is why, whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later he will be discovered down on his knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.”

  3 “But if you’re studying sex” Personal e-mail communication, August 12, 2010.

  3 only one scientist has managed to survey a large number of people on a broad range of sexual interests http://sexademic.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/before-there-was-kinsey-mosherdavis-and-dickinson-surveyed-victorian-sex/, retrieved on August 30, 2010. Dr. Katharine Davis worked in New York as a corrections officer and social reformer during the early 1900s. Sexual studies were not the focus of her career, but in 1929 she published the results of 2,200 sexual questionnaires filled out by educated women. Dr. Robert Latou Dickinson was an East Coast gynecologist and researcher during the early twentieth century. He studied sexuality in marriage, personal sexual histories of his female patients, and was one of the first doctors to use vibrators on female patients. In his survey of one thousand married women he found that they most frequently complained about failure to reach orgasm and that obstacles to sexual pleasure were primarily inorganic, i.e., not physiological in nature.

  http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2010/marapr/features/mosher.html, retrieved on August 30, 2010. Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher conducted possibly the first known female sexual attitudes survey in 1892 in the Midwest. Her study was meant to fill her own knowledge gaps for a married life presentation for the Mothers Club of the University of Wisconsin. She created forty-five sexual profiles that offer a peek into Victorian female sexuality, affirming that the public record of values often disappears in private conduct. The majority of women in the forty-five profiles reported enjoying sex and experiencing sexual desire.

  3–4 Alfred Kinsey Jones (1997).

  4 “Too darn hot” Lyrics taken from http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/e/ellafitzgerald1351/toodarnhot862082.html, retrieved on August 28, 2010.

  4 Kinsey was denounced Jones (1997). http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/about/Movie-facts.html, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  4 The eighteen thousand men and women The eighteen thousand figure is from the Kinsey Institute: http://www.iub.edu/~kinsey/about/photo-tour.html, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  5 many intellectual heirs of Richard von Krafft-Ebing have been pilloried Some examples: the reaction to J. Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen, Susan Clancy’s The Trauma Myth, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s A Natural History of Rape, and E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology. Also, the University of Illinois firing Leo Koch.

  5 The 1971 Stanford prison experiment Zimbardo (2007).

  5 The 1960s Milgram obedience experiments Miller (1986).

  5 “What do people do under conditions of extreme anonymity?” Gergen et al. (1973), http://articles.sun-sentinel.com./1995-11-12/features/9511100325_1_james-latona-computer-networkanonymous-internet/4, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  6 a much, much, much larger version of the Gergen experiment Cooper (1998).

  Anonymity is one of the A’s in Al Cooper’s “Triple A engine” (accessibility, affordability, anonymity) often cited as driving Internet porn use.

  7 Rule #34 Peter’s story was communicated through e-mail during 2009–2010. The original comic is visible at http://rule34.blogspot.com/2007/06/first-post.html.

  7 “Rule 34 Challenge” The competition is described at http://boingboing.net2008/04/18/irc-game-rule-34-cha.html.

  7 “ ‘Specify type of goat’ ” From Richard Jeni’s A Big Steaming Pile of Me.

  8 ninety different adult magazines Based on lists of pornographic magazines provided on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pornographic_magazines and http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/List_of_pornographic_magazines, both retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  8 nine hundred pornography sites Stack et al. (2004).

  8 2.5 million adult Web sites http://www.cybersitter.com/, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  8 sex-related online activities have become routine Doring (2009).

  8 you can see more naked bodies in a single minute “I can download 3 million vaginas in one minute.” Louis C.K, Chewed Up.

  8 We no longer have to interact with anyone to obtain erotica http://gizmodo.com/5316206/the-desperate-times-before-internet-porn/gallery/#pager, retrieved on August 30, 2010. Also worth considering: http://getahead.rediff.com/report/2009/aug/12/videos-sex-porn-top-kids-internet-searches.htm, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  9 an actual search someone entered on the Dogpile search engine Dogpile searches were collected by scraping displayed searches on http://www.dogpile.com/dogpile/ws/searchspy. Also worth considering is the following list of the most common Dogpile searches that start with “how to”:

  9 a popular term for unusual sexual interests: kinks See http://www.urbandictionary.com.

  10 David Reimer Colapinto (2001). http://www.slate.com/id/2101678, retrieved on August 30, 2010. http://reason.com/archives/2004/05/24/the-death-of-david-reimer, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  11 Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University Ogi Ogas previously interviewed John Money, though not about David Reimer, in Ogas (1994).

  12 a report on fourteen genetic males who underwent neonatal sex reassignment Reiner & Gearhart (2004). Also personal communication with William Reiner, April 2010.

  13 the Sambia Herdt (1982). Herdt (2006), Bancroft (2000).

  13 semen is the essence of manhood The idea of semen as male mojo was also expressed by Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts: “Masturbation prevents you from becoming the strong manly man you would otherwise be. You are throwing away the seed that has been handed down to you as a trust instead of keeping it and ripening it for bringing a son to you later on.”

  13 a Sambian woman The feminine mojo of Sambian women is believed to reside in their menstrual blood.

  13 “natural experiments” Diamond (1983). “Natural experiments permit one to examine conditions that cannot be created experimentally and reveal the end results of ecological and evolutionary processes.”

  13 some things we instinctively find arousing A biological ma
le preference for men or women is also supported by Lippa (2007).

  13 express precisely what they would like to pop up It’s important to remember that online porn itself may represent the practical aspects of pornography production, such as perceived financial returns, actor availability, ease of production, and other business factors unrelated to the ability to sexually arouse consumers.

  14 start by looking for patterns in these wishes “I will focus on the determinants of female sexual attractiveness, not on actual matings, because the former more clearly illuminate the design of the psychological machinery underpinning male sexual attraction. Who men actually mate with depends on many things (such as opportunity and risk) in addition to sexual attraction.” Donald Symons in Abramson and Pinkerton (1995), p88.

  14 400 million different searches that were entered into the Dogpile We collected 398,944,925 searches. We classified 55,170,457 of the searches as “sexual.” We scraped from July 10, 2009, to July 28, 2010. We missed some days in September, for a total of 352 days of scraping.

  14 some users are from India, Nigeria, Canada, and the United Kingdom Dogpile traffic from different countries is taken from Quantcast (www.quantcast.com).

  15 AOL released a data set You can view the AOL data set here: http://www.aolstalker.com/

  The scandal surrounding the release of the data is described in: http://techcrunch.com/2006/08/06/aol-proudly-releases-massive-amounts-of-user-search-data/, retrieved on August 29, 2010, and http://news.cnet.com/AOL-apologizes-for-release-of-user-search-data/2100-1030_3-6102793.html, retrieved on August 29, 2010.

  15 “101 Dumbest Moments in Business” http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/101dumbest/2007/full_list/index.html, retrieved on August 29, 2010.

  15 the search phrase “college cheerleaders” The expected number of overlapping searchers for “cheerleaders” and “porn” in the AOL data set: 50.3. Obtained: 382. The expected number of overlapping searchers for “college cheerleaders” and “porn,” assuming independence: 0.6. Obtained: 8.