Pornhub's latest roundup of insights from their trove of user data offers one conclusion: Gay America may not be eating what its porn studios are serving.
When asked to think of the Platonic ideal of a gay porn star, many picture the kinds of buff, vaguely collegiate guys that dominate studios. Like Sean Cody or Randy Blue. Guys on major sites like those tend to resemble a gaggle of (mostly) white Ken dolls who look like they just met up in the dining hall of Aryan University after ultimate frisbee and decided to rub their naughty parts together.
And that, at least studio heads seem to think, is what gay porn consumers want: mostly white, mostly hairless, mostly young bros. As a result, it's no secret there's a major racial disparity in the gay porn industry; according to one tally by porn industry blog Str8UpGayPorn (a NSFW link if there ever was one) just 2.8 percent of Sean Cody's lifetime roster of 1,024 models have been people of color. And though Sean Cody is the WalMart of gay porn, that studio is far from alone. Just like its dating apps, its media and its bars, the gay community's porn is pretty racist.
So why is black gay porn one of the most viewed categories on Pornhub, America's most popular porn emporium (empornium)? And why is it that, across the country, most guys are seeking out anything but your standard twink?
These insights are gleaned from, appropriately enough, the latest, gayest edition of Pornhub Insights, a regularly-released collection of data from the online porn juggernaut. According to Pornhub, in data exclusive to VICE, this year's most popular categories for gay content across the country are "black" and "straight guys." That's the same as it was last year. And a variety of other conclusions mined from the site's trove of user data may have you rethinking what you know about what gets gay dudes titillated.
It's well known that more gay porn is viewed in the South than anywhere else in the US, something this year's findings backed up yet again—Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia came in at numbers one, three and and four for states with most pageviews of Pornhub's gay content. But what's truly shocking are each state's most popular relative search terms, those that are disproportionately popular in certain areas of the country. For instance, "Mormon" is the most popular term in Utah and Idaho, where more Mormons live. "Cowboy" is most popular in Montana, where cowboy culture is alive and well. "Dominican" is most popular in New York, where almost half of the entire Dominican population in the US lives. "Asian" is most popular in California, which has the largest Asian population in the country. "Redneck" is the most popular term in Kentucky and West Virginia. I'm not making any assumptions about the people that live there, just stating a fact.
The trend seems to be that gay people aren't necessarily fantasizing about college-aged twinks—they're lusting after the kinds of people they see every day, whether that's guys who get on their knees to worship Joseph Smith, know how to ride a bucking bronco, or can neck a redneck. We all have crushes on our neighbors, no matter their color, creed, or culture they hail from.
You can draw your own conclusions about the people of Wisconsin, Michigan, South Dakota, and North Carolina, whose most popular search terms are "circle jerk," "BDSM," "furry" and "locker room," respectively.