The most popular porn category this year will surprise you

'Searches for “elf” go up 464% at Christmas time.'

So, there might be a chance that you know about a little site called Pornhub. For some (read: a lot) of you, a visit to the pornographic streaming service will be a more regular occurrence. Well, New York Magazine released ten years of Pornhub viewing data in their latest issue with everything from the most popular porn categories to what certain demographics are into when incognito mode is on.

Previous years have been defined by certain search terms, with stepfamily porn dominating in 2015 (‘stepmom’ was the most searched term that year) and ‘lesbians scissoring’ seeing a massive growth last year.

While 2017 is still young, Pornhub’s data shows that it’s set to be the year of hentai - with a healthy sprinkling of cuckolding thrown in. Here’s a little info on what's turning people on below.

What is hentai?

You may have heard people throw around the words 'tentacle porn' in passing and well, it all comes back to hentai. It’s essentially pornographic anime and a massive industry in Japan, where hundreds of multi-episode series have been made and streamed across Pornhub. The word itself means ‘transformation’ or ‘abnormal’, but also can be used to refer to a sexually perverted person.

While some hentai is translated into English, for the most part it’ll be in Japanese (maybe subtitled at a push). Due to Japan’s strict censorship laws, many videos will actually blur out the fun stuff. However, that doesn’t stop hentai creators from depicting everything from the comically insane to horrifyingly violent scenarios.

Common themes include women having sex with tentacles, schoolgirls, gangbangs, monster porn, suspiciously young looking girls, were-human hybrids, out of control body parts and train molestation. It’s a wild world out there.

This year, it has spiked to the fourth most searched-for term on Pornhub. Millennials were the most likely to enjoy cartoon genitalia, with search terms for the demographic seeing a jump of 190% for hentai and 131% for anime on Pornhub.

What is cuckolding?

Recently, the insult ‘cuck’ has entered popular lexicon and it comes down to this exponentially growing porn category. The basic concept boils down to a scenario where there’s a married couple, then one of the lovers (usually the wife) has sex with a person other than their partner and makes them watch.

It’s not a newfangled porn category, but it has been enjoying increased popularity recently. New York Magazine went as far as to draw a direct line between the fantasy and Donald Trump’s resurgence in the media last year.

Women weren’t big fans of cucking however, as it turns out men were 58% more likely to search for it. While younger men weren’t as keen, men aged 25 and upwards were big fans with the search term ‘husband watches wife fuck’ becoming a regular occurrence on the site. People got really specific about the exact kind of scene they wanted too, with terms such as ‘cuckold cleanup’ and ‘cuckold interracial’ frequently tagged alongside it.

What kind of porn do women like?

There was a lot of interesting stuff about what women were into, with surprises at every turn. For example, ladies prefer their porn to be portable and 71% of female traffic actually comes from smartphones - so you all better learn to scrub your app history fast. There were a few categories that were really popular though, the top three are ranked below.

1. Lesbian

It turns out that the ladies love the ladies, as lesbian porn was the most popular category with women. Beyond the search term lesbian, others like ‘lesbians scissoring’ (which was one of the most popular terms overall last year) and ‘lesbian seduces straight girl’ came in at second and third for the category.

They were also 906% more likely to search for ‘ebony lesbians eating pussy’ than men, 321% more likely to search for ‘lesbian squirt’ and 272% more likely to look for ‘lesbian strap-on’. Women in North and South America were the most likely to look for girl-on-girl porn.

YouPorn made a similar observation after releasing their women watching porn statistics. It turns out that for the 24,000 women surveyed lesbian porn was also their most popular category, with women more likely to watch it than men.

2. Gay (male)

Just over a third of gay-male porn viewers are women, particularly ladies aged 45 and over. In the US, the six most popular search terms within the category were ‘straight first time’, ‘big black dick’, ‘straight’, ‘straight friend' and ‘straight seduced’ in order.

3. Big dick

It turns out that the saying ‘it’s not the size that counts’ falls flat here, as women were 46% more likely to look for big dick videos.

It's worth seeing what was popular last year with ladies as well, as in 2016 Pornhub released a world map of the most viewed porn categories for women. Unsurprisingly, lesbian porn dominated the UK - just in case you were wondering.

The data dump by Pornhub is absolutely monumental and it’s just the gift that keeps on giving. Blink and you’ll miss statistics like these: millennials are 214% more likely to look for cosplay, video game parody porn is on the rise and Kim Kardashian’s sex tape is one of the most popular internet videos in history with 144 million views.

All this research has us a bit hot and bothered, excuse us for a moment while we go cool off somewhere...