I’ve written about porn a couple of times — here and here — and while I try not to write about it a lot, lest this start being viewed as spam, I do believe it’s an important topic to touch on here and there. It exists in society, people look at it, and there are various reasons why that happens. We should discuss it as opposed to ignoring it, no?
As for the whole “people look at it” concept, check this out. Here’s the average monthly search volume for the word “porn” via Google Keyword Planner across the past 12 months:
If you can’t tell, that’s about 124 million monthly searches.
Now, for comparison’s sake, here’s the monthly search volume for “revenue,” which seems like an important word since all businesses need it to stay afloat:
That’s about 246,000 monthly searches.
Now, there are empirical flaws in what I did above, sure — “porn” is a pretty baseline word, and “revenue” probably needs a few things added to it, like “generation” or “management.” But just on surface, the popularity of the search term “porn” is about 496 times more popular than the search term “revenue.”
Now look at this in terms of a micro-level. Take Sienna West, a popular pornstar but, by all accounts, a retired one. (She appears to be married to this guy, who is also some type of doctor for the Broncos.) Here’s her search volume:
That’s about 201,000 per month — and remember, she’s retired.
Now here’s the search volume for “millennials,” a topic people seem to always be discussing these days:
That’s about 165,000 per month.
So … while the methodology is highly imperfect, you can generally say that 36,000 more searches per month happen around a retired pornstar than an entire generation coming up as heads of families and workplace owners. Interesting, no?
In the same vein — not she does porn — here’s the monthly search traffic on Kate Upton:
That’s about 4.1 million per month, and yes, this post I wrote on Upton is one of my own most popular of all-time.
Bottom line? The Internet still seems like more of a place to find cheap titillation and thrills as opposed to really doing rock-hard research (you like what I did there?) on major topics.
Well, for some porn is the only reason for the Internet. But look on the bright side, your Kate Upton gets you some new readers, right? And she isn’t a retired porn star!
We’re still just animals. I tend to think of this in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Besides our obvious needs like food, water, and shelter — there is pleasure. Without getting too philosophical, if we didn’t have pleasure we wouldn’t have much (if any) motivation to live. Sex satisfies part of our basic needs, so it follows that we’re innately curious about anything related to sex — hence porn.
And let’s be honest, most people live pretty boring, unfulfilled lives and don’t get to experience their most satisfying desires due to typical obligations like work and family. Porn allows people to live vicariously through actors while using imagination in tandem.