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What Google searches for porn tell us about ourselves
- AznHisoka 9y agoShouldnt the title be "Pornhub searches" not Google? as far as I know Google doesnt even show autocomplete results for porn related keywords.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 9y ago“Doesn't show autocomplete” doesn't mean “doesn't collect data”.
- js2 9y agoThe article indicates that he has data from both pornhub and google. The interview questions jump between the two, but the questions about porn are mostly based on the pornhub data. One thing I'm curious about is that the article implies he has demographic information (sex, income, etc) about the searchers and I don't know how google/pornhub would know that. I would imagine the majority of searches are anonymous except for IP and whatever the browser gives up. But maybe he's only looking at logged-in data?
- infogulch 9y agoTo be fair, "whatever the browser gives up" more than enough to reliably identify people.
- js2 9y agoI work at Yahoo (er, Verizon). We absolutely do not correlate logged-in and logged-out data. I am going to assume the same for Google. Regardless, based on things like OS and IP, I understand how you could infer, say, an income range from that, but how precise could it be? But even assuming google/pornhub has identified me based on my browser fingerprint, how do they know my income level? I've never given that info to Google, nor filled it out on any surveys, warranty cards, etc that I can recall. Maybe I'm not typical and people freely give up this information?
- MaulingMonkey 9y ago> Regardless, based on things like OS and IP, I understand how you could infer, say, an income range from that, but how precise could it be? A simple geoip query is pretty accurate when it comes to placing my neighborhood, which is already a fairly big indicator of income level I believe. And all the laptop advertisements google is showing me because I looked up my laptop recently show they know plenty enough about my shopping habits to make some fairly accurate guesses about my demographics, I'd wager.
- jononor 9y ago"Google for" has almost become an alias for "searching for", regardless of site used.
- sundvor 9y agoSo basically if Google treated shopping the same way it treats porn, it wouldn't have been hit by that massive EU fine. I.e. stay out of recommending / promoting results itself. (Disclaimer: Haven't read TFA).
- sergiotapia 9y ago>For example, I am certain a large number of men are more attracted to overweight women than skinny women but try to date skinny women to impress their friends and family members. That's quite a leap there Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.
- imron 9y agoClassic projection.
- theWatcher37 9y agoExactly. Clearly trying to justify his fetish.
- namelezz 9y agoI know I am not. Maybe his data only captures US audience.
- overdunk 9y agoThis neglects the porn-as-spectacle aspect of entertainment value extracted by viewers of pornography. But "large number" is a poorly defined qualifier. 10,000 individuals interested in an odd combination of diaper play involving amputees could be considered a "large number" (more than you might expect) but is handily dwarfed by three quarters of a billion vanilla viewers looking for consensual sex in the missionary position. Meanwhile, gore and racism searches do not, a sociopathic Nazi, make. How does one learn about reality, without investigating it? Everyone gets curious about how genitals manage to escape the undercarriage of a 450 lb. individual, just to understand how they manage to wipe after completing a bowel movement. The best source of insight into that kind of curiosity is satisfied by locating and viewing fetish pornography.
- imron 9y ago> Everyone gets curious about how genitals manage to escape the undercarriage of a 450 lb. individual Not everyone.
- Entangled 9y agoI get all my porn from /r/bustypetite, nothing special, low noise, nice boobs and pretty faces. That's all. Call me old style.
- tatfa 9y agohttp://bit.ly/2ug77rE http://bit.ly/2ug77rE
- onelildatapoint 9y agonot that it proves much overall, but the porn i masturbate to actually has little to do with what i enjoy sexually with a live woman. i'm sure i'm not the only one
- moredatapoints 9y agoSame here. Not to get too graphic, but sometimes I close the laptop and think, "would I actually like to do that?" And the answer is usually "no".
- 314 9y agoAlthough this does leave the reader worried about your preferences when with women who are not so live.
- look_lookatme 9y ago> I think porn is a pretty good measure of people’s sexual fantasies, even if they never act on them. I like watching Jason Bourne movies but that doesn't mean I have a fantasy of being a chronically embattled amnesiac clandestine operator engaged in half a dozen or so protracted car chases a week.
- cthulhua 9y agoMaybe not that, but I bet a lot of Bourne/Bond/? fans think super-competent badasses are cool.
- kakarot 9y agoWho doesn't think super competent badasses are cool? What's that got to do with porn?
- Mz 9y agoSome women think super competent badasses are hot? ;-)
- majani 9y agoThat was his point. You can just watch something edgy cause you think it's cool, not cause you want to experience it in real life.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoHaving a fantasy doesn't necessarily mean you want to experience it in real life.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoDifferent people have different criteria for their entertainment choices. Some just go for e.g. comedy value. Others seek something that resonates with them. Since you started with movie anecdata - while I'm not particularly fond of Bourne movies, I watch similar works and it is, in part, reflection of my fantasy of being an exceptionally skilled operative solving actually meaningful problems (as opposed to dealing with everyday real-life bullshit).
- Mz 9y agoI am reminded of discussions about how "credit card companies will soon know exactly what we all eat and be able to predict our health because of it" where people rebutted that with "I pay cash for most of my produce at the local farmer's market." There are people who aren't into porn at all. Porn watching tells you something about people who watch porn. It may tell you nothing at all about actual sex lives. As I understand it, most porn is consumed alone, as a substitute for sex with a partner. What people seek out under such circumstances may not be that representative of what works for them in a relationship.
- passivepinetree 9y agoWhat source do you have for "most porn is consumed as a substitute for sex with a partner?" That seems like a pretty big assertion and I'm inclined to disagree, but I'd like to hear your argument/reasoning/sources.
- Mz 9y agoI did preface it with "As I understand it." If you have a study or something that says otherwise, feel free to link it. That is my general impression as a human being who reads stuff online and talks to people and has had a sex life. (Edit: And spent 3.5 years in therapy for childhood sexual abuse and read a TON of books and articles on the subject because of it and, thus, tends to attract weird conversations from all kinds of people of various genders, sexual orientations, etc.)
- alex_anglin 9y agoDo the people you talk to discuss their porn habits? I'd venture to say that much is unknown, beyond sources such as google searches, about most societies porn habits as it's a taboo topic of discussion and research. Your comments paint with a very broad brush. A counter argument would come in the cases [1][2] of studies that had to be abandoned because of a lack of participants who did not consume it. [1] http://www.upi.com/Study-stymied-by-lack-of-porn-newbies/40171259794963/ http://www.upi.com/Study-stymied-by-lack-of-porn-newbies/401... [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261377/Porn-study-scrapped-researchers-failed-ANY-20-males-hadn-t-watched-it.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261377/Porn-study-s...
- mythrwy 9y agoIt may be (and I don't know) that a large group of people abstain from porn altogether. So the preference of people who visit Porn Hub may be just that and it isn't accurate to extrapolate this to society at large. The percentage of people liking "disgusting" porn for example may be higher among the group of people who habitually view porn. So I'm not sure it's fair to say that this desire translates into the general population.
- nv-vn 9y ago(Meta: why is this comment downvoted when it's saying pretty much the same thing as the top comment?)
- mythrwy 9y agoThat's an interesting question and since you mention it, my suspicion is that it's in response to a disagreement with one or more frequent poster's political views some months ago. I could be wrong about this, but almost every comment I have posted in a popular forum since that time has been down voted (usually this is overridden before long except in cases of comments that probably deserve down-votes which I do occasionally make). It's not a big deal obviously but I'd like to address the poster(s) doing this (should they exist) and express my contempt for the pettiness of their approach and possibly bring moderator attention should it be warranted. But in reality, the time it took to type this post is more effort than the action deserves. It is pretty juvenile though assuming I'm seeing correctly.
- dkla1120 9y ago> "Stephens-Davidowitz’s data suggests that there are more gay men in the closet than we think..." > "...that a lot of straight women watch lesbian porn" Why not a lot straight men that watch gay porn, and more lesbian woman in the closet than you would think? Or just people who are hyper-sexual? I'd be interested in understanding the methods used to determine the difference between homosexuality and hyper-sexuality, and simply curious. But I feel that both of those original statements evoke certain stereotypes, which makes me wonder what biases were applied to the study.
- marchenko 9y agoMaybe it's an artifact of this interview format, but the researcher's conclusions seem a bit undersupported. For example, given the fact that male-male erotica is very common in fanfiction, a female-dominated activity, it would not surprise me if the "excess" gay porn was consumed by straight women, a demographic that we know is attracted to males.
- pdimitar 9y agoI am that guy who was always in women company (ever since 16, and I am 37 now) and almost never did hit on them. I was just much more interested in what women say, think and do -- compared to 99% of my male peers who were nothing more than testosterone-filled stupid machos. My evidence is of course anecdotal, but from what I've seen, men have much less desire watching man-to-man action. It's related to many's fear of "turning gay without knowing it" (it's a funny concept but it's extremely common) and very often it's about them looking less manly if they don't show active interest in women... (A lot of men are really weird and kind of stupid in that regard.) That being said, me and many others who aren't ashamed of openly discussing sex are still not interested in gay action simply because it doesn't sexually appeal to us. As for women, and when I asked them why do they watch gay men porn, many have told me that they believe only a man can know how to please a man to 100% and that they want to better educate themselves on how to be better in their sex life... and they might actually have a point; I've heard from several gay men that no woman's blowjob can ever hold a candle to one that a gay man can do -- I personally believe that to be an exaggeration but I think they're on to something there. And finally, a lot of girls and women in my life have admitted to being interested in lesbian sex but are afraid due to social stigma and them being extremely vulnerable if they start actively looking for a woman sex partner. My own spouse openly admitted she'd f_ck a woman if she found one willing to do it. Strange thing is I wouldn't perceive that as cheating. I believe my S.O. is correct when she is saying that men think their girls cheat on them only if there's a penis involved. That, plus hundreds of convos and experiences I've had in my life makes me think that women are innately bisexual while men are, most of the time, hetero-sexual.
- sidlls 9y agoThis isn't very convincing. The conclusions rely on at least two assumptions that aren't well supported * That these searches are a proxy for honest expression of a sexual desire * That these searches are by the cohorts purported
- mythrwy 9y agoAnd that interests of people searching for porn are representative of the general population. Agree. Not convinced (although the data is interesting).
- Spooky23 9y agoThis makes Freakonomics sound like Nobel material. Completely vacuous. He uses the comparison that most men are looking to date skinny women, but that many men are "afraid" to act on their attraction to overweight women. Yet... nearly 40% of women are considered obese. About half are married or otherwise attached. Who is to say that the population of online daters strongly correlates with these terrified men?
- illnewsthat 9y ago> This makes Freakonomics sound like Nobel material. Completely vacuous. That's ironic considering he was a guest on an earlier Freakonomics episode: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/big-penis-things-ask-google/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/big-penis-things-ask-google/
- Spooky23 9y agoI had forgotten about the podcast!
- sctb 9y agoRelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14632004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14632004
- badprose 9y agoMan looks at what's trending on Pornhub: "What? Cartoon sex? Foot-sex to completion? I must write a book!"
- a1371 9y agoI find it hard to accept his conclusions. For example this: > Porn featuring overweight women is surprisingly common among men. But the data from dating sites tells us that just about all men try to date skinny women. Many people don’t try to date the people they’re most attracted to. Porn is a fantasy land. Many people find these stuff attractive because they are far away from their ordinary lives. Looking at the top views of the porn sites you can see strange titles like "Step-daughter punished by angry dad". What does this tell you? Can you really interpret the titles as what people want to do? Same goes for overweight women. Some of the interest in watching those videos could even come out of hate.
- throwaway47861 9y agoThis article is of USA origin, clearly. You guys are strange -- always be like "ohhh we're Homo Sapiens, let's be ashamed of ourselves and let's deny our nature until the end of time!". You're starting to rival the Japanese in self-shaming which really says something. Can't you just shout "I wanna f_ck any way I like and none of you can do anything about it!" and move on with your life already? Like, forever? People have all sorts of fantasies and they develop based on one's persona, needs and environment. If your dream is to be nailed in the butthole by a game warden, there are probably millions of people on this planet who not only won't mock you but they'll also indulge you (by being the real thing, or by roleplaying). Same goes for if you can't get a boner without your bed being filled with unicorn plushies, or scr_wing armpits, or whatever floats your boat. Drop the shame. Enough. Just go down the street smiling at the thought that nobody is oppressing your sexual needs, because in 99% of the time that's the truth.