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

by Ogi Ogas

  16 we counted the search in the appropriate category Obviously, this means there is a near-certainty of overcounting the frequency of certain sexual search categories. Some people searching for cheerleaders are no doubt searching for nonerotic reasons.

  16 most popular sexual interests on Dogpile Here is a more complete list of sexual search categories from the Dogpile data set:

  18 The following tables list the most popular “erotic” Web sites Visitor information from Quantcast: www.quantcast.com. Rankings from Alexa: www.alexa.com.

  19 men prefer images. Women prefer stories. Women also enjoy reading erotica more than men do. It’s no surprise that the eleventh century Tale of Genji, the world’s first erotic novel, was written by a woman. But erotic stories on the Web were initially targeted toward men, who were far more prevalent on the Web than women in the early years. See http://www.asstr.org/~JournalofDesire/v3n2/JekyllSexStories.html

  Pre-Internet studies of erotic fantasy include Leitenberg & Henning (1995). “75% of boys and only 39% of girls responded yes to sexual fantasy items, whereas 36% of boys and 50% of girls responded yes to romantic fantasy items. In addition . . . explicit sexual scenes, as opposed to romantic scenes, produced the greatest physiological (genital) arousal, women did not rate these scenes as most arousing.” “Female participants were more likely to say that their first fantasies were stimulated by a relationship (31% of women vs. 6% of men), whereas male participants were more likely to have their first sexual fantasies in response to a visual stimulus.”

  Hamann et al. (2004). “Men are generally more interested in and responsive to visual sexually arousing stimuli than are women.”

  GENDER DIFFERENCES ON SELF-REPORTED PREFERRED ONLINE SEXUAL ACTIVITIES

  PRIMARY REASON FOR ONLINE SEXUAL ACTIVITIES, USA

  19 Preferred Online Sexual Activity Table from Cooper et al. (2003).

  19 different modes of stimulation Leitenberg & Henning (1995). “Females are more likely to say that their first sexual fantasies were triggered by a relationship, whereas males report having theirs triggered by a visual stimulus.”

  19 “In the male fantasy realm of pornotopia” From personal communications with Donald Symons and Catherine Salmon, August 2010. Based upon original text in Salmon & Symons (2003).

  19 Biological anthropologist Donald Symons Kinsey’s work parallels Galileo, who pointed a telescope at the heavens and was the first to document Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons. Kinsey pointed his survey at men and women and was the first to systematically document their true sexual interests. Symons is more akin to Charles Darwin. Darwin patiently synthesized biological data from a broad variety of sources in order to forge a unifying theory of natural selection which explained the design of all life on Earth. Similarly, Symons synthesized a diverse range of findings to offer something that was missing from previous inquiries into human desire: an explanation. Masters and Johnson also contributed to sex science by reporting on what they observed, with very little theoretical contribution.

  20 Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker Personal e-mail communication, August 26, 2010.

  21 our brains contain innate mechanisms designed to detect specific sexual cues Toates (2009). “Incentives and cues associated with them (conditional stimuli) impinge on the nervous system, which triggers sexual motivation.” Also worth considering: McCall & Meston (2006).

  21 “It is clear that human beings evolved psychological mechanisms” From personal communications with Donald Symons and Catherine Salmon, August 2010. Based on original text in Salmon and Symons (2003).

  22 men and women are wired to detect the same taste cues In fact, there is evidence that men and women do differ in their relative sensitivity to different taste cues. cf. http://carlacompanion.hoppress.com/2010/07/12/women-make-better-beer-tasters/, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  22 how an apparent infinitude of appealing stimuli can be reduced to a finite set of cues Also worth considering: language, which is infinitely expressive, despite a finite set of grammatical rules and a limited vocabulary.

  CHAPTER 2

  23 Researchers led by neurobiologist Michael Platt Deaner et al. (2005). Also personal e-mail communications with Michael Platt, March 2010.

  23 The most popular paysites featuring adult videos Personal communications with Perry Stathopoulos, chief technology officer for Manwin Canada, parent company for Brazzers; Steven Yagielowicz, senior editor for Xbiz; Colin Rowntree, owner of Wasteland.com; and Titmowse, webmaster for Cozy Campus.

  24 only 2 percent of all subscriptions to pornography sites Personal communications with Mark Greenspan, vice president of CCBill.

  24 The National Science Foundation (NSF) is http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/.

  24 a certain activity was stealing so many hours See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/29/workers-porn-surfing-rampant-at-federal-agency/

  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/29/workers-porn-surfing-rampant-at-federal-agency/

  http://trueslant.com/level/2010/05/03/bored-florida-state-senator-caught-viewing-porn-on-senate-floor/

  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/29/workers-porn-surfing-rampant-at-federal-agency/?page=1.

  In the NSF/OIG Semiannual Report to Congress, September 2008, that reports on the investigations, all investigated employees are referred to using the male pronoun. Example: “An NSF employee continued to store sexually explicit image files on his NSF computer, despite being previously reprimanded for downloading inappropriate files and peer-topeer software on his NSF computer. The employee also sent emails from his NSF account that contained numerous sexually explicit image and video files to users outside NSF. Based on our findings and his recidivism, NSF issued a formal Proposal to Remove followed by a Decision terminating the employee. After being terminated, the employee invoked his right to grieve under NSF’s CBA, and that process is pending.” http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/oig0901/oig0901_3.pdf.

  25 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/23/sec.porn/index.html.

  http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/23/

  evening-buzz-viewing-porn-on-the-job/.

  25 Department of Defense at the Pentagon http://www.dodig.mil/fo/Foia/PDFs/OperationFlickerReportsJuly2010pdf.pdf.

  http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/07/23/pentagon_workers_tied_to_child_porn/. http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100724/NEWS02/707249949.

  25 Minerals Management Service http://www.politico.com/static/PPM156_100524_mms_report.html.

  25 Men are so highly motivated to look at graphic sex “Is There Anything Good About Men?” Roy Baumeister, American Psychological Association, Invited Address, 2007.

  http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm, retrieved on August 30, 2010.

  “men recorded approximately 7.2 sexual fantasies per day as compared with 4.5 for women” and “men estimated they had approximately one sexual fantasy per day, whereas the women estimated they had only one sexual fantasy per week.”

  Leitenbergand Henning (1995).

  “Male university students were found to masturbate to ejaculation about every 72 hours, and on the majority of occasions, their last masturbation is within 48 hours of their next in-pair copulation.” If they’re not having intercourse every day, that is to say, men tend to pleasure themselves to completion no more than two days prior to having actual sex.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=one-reason-why-humans-are-special-a-2010-06-22, retrieved on August 20, 2010. Incidentally, male dolphins also have a very strong sex drive, and can mate dozens of times a day. They often try to have sex with inanimate objects and other animals, like sea turtles, using a penis as prehensile as an elephant’s trunk. When a pack of male dolphins happen upon a female, they frequently attempt to force her to mate.

  25 one out of every six 16.8 percent of all sexual searches.

  25 frequency of sexual searches on Dogpile that contain specific ages We collected 398,944,925
searches. We classified 55,170,457 searches as “sexual” searches. We scraped from July 10, 2009, to July 28, 2010. We missed some days in September, for a total of 352 days of scraping. The figure shows age-specific sexual searches. The mode (not shown) is age thirteen.When including searches for ages 16 and under, the median age is 15 and the mean age is 20.

  26 cluster of searches In the United States, all women in porn must be over eighteen. If you are looking at a porn site and don’t see “18 USC 2257 Compliant,” Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator will be asking you to take a seat faster than you can say “statutory rape.”

  26 “MILF falls into the 35–50-year-old category” Personal communication from Stephen Yagielowicz, August, 2010.

  27 single most popular search term users enter Perry Stathopoulos, the CTO of PornHub, supplied us with a variety of data about users’ activities on their Web site. One data set was a list of search terms that were most frequently entered into the PornHub search engine in February 2010.

  27 frequency of specific age-related adjectives We generated the age-related adjectives by reviewing the most common age-related terms in our sexual search age categories.

  28 became a profitable online niche in the early 2000s Personal e-mail communication with Stephen Yagielowicz, senior editor for Xbiz, August 10, 2010; personal e-mail communication with Colin Rowntree, owner of Wasteland.com, August 2010.

  28 An erotic online comic titled Savita Bhabhi The comic continues to be published on a different Web site and now requires a paid subscription. In homage to Savita Bhabhi, an online talk show, Jay Hind features an advice segment titled “Savita Bhabhi ke Sexy Lessons.” It contains racy innuendo-filled suggestions from an attractive female host who copies the cartoon avatar’s titillating look.

  29 searches for content they don’t immediately see Perry Stathopoulos, CTO of PornHub, supplied us with a variety of data about users’ activities on their Web site. One data set was a collection of all search terms entered into the PornHub search engine in February 2010.

  29 More than a quarter of all men Leitenberg & Henning (1995).

  29 a greater willingness to have casual sex Easton et al. (2010).

  29 know exactly what they want Personal communication, August 2010. The names of all individuals who shared personal information about their sexual interests have been changed to pseudonyms. Ages and professions are accurate.

  29 The “MILF-lovers” Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2254123384, retrieved March, 2010.

  30 one out of four people who searched for MILFs Number of MILF searchers: 3,405. Number of teen searchers: 22,103. Expected overlap for MILF and teen searchers, assuming independence: 114. Obtained: 812. Percent of MILF searchers who also searched for teen: 23.9. Percent of teen searchers who also searched for MILF: 3.67.

  30 one out of four GILF searchers Number of granny searchers: 942. Number of teen searchers: 22,103.

  Expected overlap for granny and teen searchers, assuming independence: 31.7. Obtained: 202. Percent of granny searchers who also searched for teen: 21.44. Percent of teen searchers who also searched for granny: 0.91.

  30 one granny fan, Mr. Playstation User #1183669.

  31 the Alexa Adult List We used the Alexa list of the million most popular Web sites from March 27, 2010. Of the sites in the top million, 953,702 were successfully crawled. We classified 42,337 as porn sites based on textual pattern matches. We classified Alexa Web sites by analyzing titles and keywords from the textual content of the Web sites. In ambiguous cases, we used independent raters’ evaluations. Here is a list of the top categories of Web sites on the Alexa Adult List:

  31 men prefer smooth skin to wrinkles . Symons (1979), Buss (2005).

  31 the grandmother is often the confidante Brockman (1997). Also see http://kisii.com/profile-and-coverage.

  31 might have been their first intimate contact Personal communication, February 2010.

  31 where he goes to pick up GILFs http://www.grannysexforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65655, retrieved on August 29, 2010.

  32 Youth is the number one sexual interest Russian data scraped by us from the Russian search engine Yandex in spring 2010, from http://www.yandex.ru/last20.html. India, Japan, and Europe data were calculated using Google trends and refers to searches entered into Google USA from those territories.

  32 “Legal teen content has been a consistent earner” Personal communication, February 2010.

  32 “fashion world sees toothpicks toppling” http://thefbomb.org/2010/08/its-not-all-skinny-love/, retrieved on August 29, 2010. “Essentially the fashion world sees toothpicks toppling under the weight of their false lashes as attractive. Arms must be willowy, stomachs trim and God forbid your thighs touch; but appropriate facial features must be amplified. We are trained as consumers, convinced we require powders to contour our features into submission. We as women are coached into painting ourselves like dolls—doe-eyed creatures with pillowy lips, meek in demeanour—and all for the convenience and pleasure of the male population.”

  Though it’s sometimes suggested that medieval Europe preferred a large, “Reubenesque” female body size, others argue that a broader analysis of art from the time reveals an average body size similar to that preferred today. See http://www.femininebeauty.info/medieval-body-size-preferences.

  32 pressured by the fashion and media industries to be skinny http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/02/9-in-10-teen-girls-feel-p_n_445630.html, retrieved on August 29, 2010.

  33 For every search for a “skinny” girl Number of sexual searches containing the word “fat”: 137, 324. Number of sexual searches containing the word “skinny”: 47,669.

  33 There are also more than 150 nonerotic BBW dating networks Counted and checked by hand from BBW links and Google results for “BBW dating.” We estimate there were between 150 and 200 English-language BBW Web sites on the Internet in the summer of 2010.

  33 BMI and weight of 202 popular American porn actresses We scraped biographies of all porn actresses listed on Wikipedia (See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pornographic_actresses_by_decade; retrieved July 2010). We further extracted biographies that listed weight and height information. A cutoff birth date for inclusion, January 1, 1980, was then used to create the final list of actresses.

  The porn actresses with the highest BMI include: Chelsea Charms (30), Lisa Sparxxx (25), Sunny Lane (23), SaRenna Lee (23), Vanessa Lane (22). Porn actresses with the lowest BMI include: Jenna Haze (16), Lela Star (16), Nikky Blond (15), Dominica Leoni (15), Meggan Mallone (14).

  33 bodies of mainstream European porn actresses Voracek & Fisher (2006).

  33 weights of these porn stars with other women Celebrity BMIs taken from http://diet.health.com/2009/01/08/surprising-celebrity-bmis/2/, retrieved on August 1, 2010. The healthy and average numbers are taken from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf.

  34 waist-to-hip ratio (.7) to be most arousing Singh (1993), Singh (2002), Furnham et al. (2006), Karremans et al. (2010). But also consider Donohoe et al. (2009). The average WHR of the top fifty high-fashion models as of March 30, 2007, was reported as 0.7. http://www.femininebeauty.info/i/top.models.txt. “It should be noted, however, that this finding is based in part on studies that included 0.70 as the lowest WHR in their stimulus materials, e.g., Singh, 1993; when participants are able to choose from lower WHRs, it is sometimes found that WHRs lower than 0.70 are considered more attractive, e.g., Gray et al., 2003.

  34 activated when a man views an ideal waist-to-hip ratio Platek & Singh (2010).

  34 no hip fetishes reported in the clinical literature A PubMed search for paraphilias and fetishes failed to turn up any hip-related obsessions. Major contemporary lists of paraphilias do not include hip paraphilias, including very extended lists, such as in Levine et al. (2010). Incidentally, many of the paraphilias presented in these oft-reproduced lists do not find expression in online porn. We wonder how accurately these lists re
flect actual clinical paraphilias, considering how different they are from the actual sexual interests people seek out online.

  35 biggest growth area in bra sales http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/fashion/dd-cup-runneth-over-for-aussie-women/story-e6frfn7i-1225699623920. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/16/womens-breasts-are-getting-bigger.

  35 the most popular body part in sexual searches Russian data scraped by us from the Russian search engine Yandex in spring 2010, from http://www.yandex.ru/last20.html. Germany, India, and Saudia Arabia data calculated using Google trends, and refers to searches entered into Google USA from those territories.

  35 the number of times she was approached by men Gueguen (2007).

  36 4,287 large breast Web sites in the Alexa Adult List See our description of our Alexa Adult List data.

  36 synonyms for “large” appear in sexual searches From our Dogpile data.

  36 “I like small breasts” Fatel, Miniskirts and Muffins (2004).

  36 “Delicious Flat Chest” or DFC See http://www.facebook.com/pages/Delicious-Flat-Chest/91503929877.

  37 a twenty-two-year-old’s breasts often resemble a Western forty-year-old’s Personal e-mail communications, Donald Symons, 2010. Also see Dixson et al. (2010).

  Out of the 55 million Dogpile sexual searches, there were 2,868 searches for “dark areola,” 423 for “brown areola,” and 305 for “pink areola.” The color of a woman’s nipples is an even less influential visual cue. There are no adult sites on the Alexa Adult List dedicated to dark nipples or light nipples. Overall, men seem to place much greater emphasis on the size of nipples and areolas (the bigger the better), rather than their color. Below is a list of the most frequently occurring adjectives with sexual searches for “nipple” on Dogpile: