Google’s got the dirt on the the diets you’re testing, the meals you’re cooking and the skills you’re honing (stay far away from Delaware). In short: Google knows all.
But the search engine’s watchful eye doesn’t stop people from Googling freaky porn at breakneck speed. Now, someone is revealing all of those searches.
His name is Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. He catalogues and analyzes porn search terms (among other online data) in his new book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, and recently caught up with Vox.
There’s a lot to unpack in the interview, but here are a few statistics that will help you feel validated in your late-night NSFW inquiries:
- 1% of porn searches are for the elderly
- In India, searches for “how to breastfeed a baby” are about equal to “how to breastfeed a husband”
- Over 10% of searches by young Japanese men include “tickling”
- Gay porn searches are about the same everywhere in America, even in places where far fewer men say they are gay (ie., states where it’s less acceptable to be gay)
- 20% of the porn watched by women is lesbian in nature
The takeaway here is that we all like get a little little freaky deaky, but the combination of its immediate accessibility and taboo nature keep us all in a constantly repressed state.
Stephens-Davidowitz has an answer, but it’s a tough pill to swallow: “Sometimes I think it would be a good thing if everyone’s porn habits were released at once. It would be embarrassing for 30 seconds. And then we’d all get over it and be more open about sex.”
One giant, collective release … he’s onto something.
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