The pandemic has changed countless human behaviors, from the way we work, eat and exercise to how we meet, date and have sex. It’s no wonder, then, that the type of porn we watch has been affected, too.
According to an October 2021 survey from Sssh.com, a female-focused ethical porn platform, the most requested porn genres and preferences from its subscribers are “fantasy,” “period pieces,” “voyeur,” “forbidden romance,” “porn without violence” and “porn with character development.” Sssh — pronounced “Shush” — says 85 percent of those surveyed identify as women, while most if not all of the men who responded are part of a couple.
Compared to pre-pandemic survey data from Sssh, this represents a significant shift in desired genres. Sssh’s top requests in February 2020 included “sci-fi,” “post-apocalyptic” and “supernatural-themed” porn. Since COVID-19 showed up, requests for these genres have tailed off in favor of romance and escapism.
In light of this shift, Sssh founder and director Angie Rowntree tells InsideHook she believes porn-watchers are seeking lighter fare these days, as the stress and anxiety of the pandemic continue to wear our emotional thresholds thin.
“We’re in unprecedented times; [viewers] are looking for that escape from reality,” Rowntree says of her subscribers, particularly those who seek fantasy in their porn. Of those who’ve requested less violent content of late, she says, “Everything is so high tension that they just don’t want that anymore; they just want to relax and enjoy themselves.”
Historically, porn consumers’ thematic demands were reflections of popular culture trends, says Rowntree. So she thinks phenomena like the Harry Potter series, comic book movies and Game of Thrones influenced the genre requests filed by Sssh subscribers before the pandemic. When lockdowns started, Rowntree initially fielded an increased number of communiqués from users who asked for adult films about virus spreads, à la the mainstream flick Contagion, which itself enjoyed a second life nine years after its release thanks to the COVID outbreak. Porn-watchers in general also lusted after pandemic-themed content as they began sheltering in place, but the trend was ultimately short-lived.
Since then, however, a certain historical Netflix series infamous for its steamy sex scenes has entered the zeitgeist: Bridgerton. Rowntree speculates the series’ extraordinary popularity may have influenced her viewers’ requests for historical-fiction porn in recent years, which she notes was Sssh’s most popular genre back when the site was founded in 1999. “We’ve gone full circle,” Rowntree says. “I never expected that.”
But Rowntree is not surprised by the uptick in requests for films that feature voyeurism. With increased time spent online and engaging with social media, she says we are existing in a “perpetual state of ‘third-person viewer,’” as though always in a video game.
“We live so much of our lives now as voyeurs, whether intentional or not,” she adds. “So it makes sense that our sexual fantasies would mirror this reality.”
She adds that “forbidden romance” movies might be treasured today partly because people have been stuck inside with their significant others for such an extended period of time that they’re fantasizing about being with someone else for a change. But Rowntree says the genre also “has a way of transporting us outside of ourselves and our own hang-ups to witness the power of desire firsthand — and be moved by it.”
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Finally, increased demand for “porn with full character development,” reflects a “desire to have sex ‘mean something’ to the characters,” Rowntree says. It may also mirror “a desire stemming from real life” during the pandemic. “People are demanding connection,” she observes.
In an attempt to replicate connectivity, at least on a virtual basis, Rowntree and her engineers developed a video-viewing platform that allows couples to watch explicit films together, even while in separate locations. Dubbed Sssh Soirée, Rowntree is marketing the technology as a “Netflix Watch Party … but for porn.”
Meanwhile, Rowntree is not the only adult entertainment industry leader trying to find techy solutions to our collective craving for connection.
The recently launched audio-only social app MŌN facilitates conversations about sex led by various experts, thought leaders and its community of users. Bryony Cole, a MŌN adviser and global speaker on sextech, says the pandemic has not only made people more desperate for touch and connection, but the extra free time has given them space to expand their sexual horizons and be more vulnerable, seemingly with decreased stigma.
“Never have we ever seen more vibrators being sold on Instagram alongside face creams,” Cole says, adding that “people have become really creative in their intimacy, where they’re using super-connected sex toys or they are connecting to these audio platforms to consume sexual content.” She also believes the crisis has “been an era of self-discovery,” particularly for women, who have not only tried new sex toys, but are also consuming “less-vanilla content.” MŌN, for instance, has channels devoted to kinks like cuckolding, fetishes and BDSM play.
“It’s how we move a generation of women beyond 50 Shades of Gray, which wasn’t a great place to start for BDSM education,” Cole says of the app. “[It goes] a bit further along than the adult sexual education we’ve all had, the 101 stuff.”
While Afterglow, another digital video platform featuring sexual content, launched just prior to the pandemic, founder and CEO Lilly Sparks says pandemic times have given her company “different opportunities” to grow.
“We had to deal with production restrictions,” she says, “but also people were sitting at home and more down to talk to us as a brand new company.”
Like Sssh, Afterglow slings ethical porn. Its broader mission, Sparks says, is to normalize pleasure, making it as common and easy as reading the morning newspaper. Its users are taken on a “journey,” Sparks says, through a sexual topic such as cunnilingus, with ethical porn clips paired with articles and exercises people can try at home.
“We want intimacy, we want connection, and it’s been harder to get that during COVID, but it hasn’t changed what we want fundamentally as humans,” Sparks says. “We’re finding new ways for digital technology to enable that. We are sexting, we are having FaceTime sex, we are doing these different things to [fulfill] those basic human needs.”
But good ol’ porn hasn’t gone away completely, of course. Many people ramped up their consumption of adult films when the pandemic struck — though not quite at the rate you may have read about — opting for different genres and themes, perhaps reflective of these most wild, stressful times.
“It is about escapism,” says Cole, “and we see this mirrored in the content that’s on our screens right now.”
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