What was the most popular search term for pornography in 2022? According to the most current Pornhub report, it was hentai. Since it was the most common term the year before, it seems to be becoming more and more popular. Why does hentai seem to appeal to so many people, and what is it exactly?
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Pornhub defines hentai as a kind of Japanese manga and animation that includes sexually explicit imagery and aggressively sexualized characters. It is, in other words, a form of pornographic animation.
I do have some facts that can assist explain why this pornographic genre is so alluring, even if it hasn’t received much scholarly study despite its seeming popularity.
What is the number of people who are anime or cartoon character fans?
As part of my survey on the sexual preferences of 4,175 Americans for my book Tell Me What You Want, I asked them if they had ever dreamed about cartoon or anime characters. According to my findings, 4% of participants said they regularly daydream about this, and 27% of participants had dreamt about it in the past.
Consequently, only a small fraction of people actually get hennai, even if a sizable amount of them appear to have dreamt about it. Given how frequently hentai appears in searches, this is an interesting topic to consider. When fantasies are less common, they could show up disproportionately in porn searches because they are more difficult to locate and need intentional searching.
In contrast, threesomes—a desire that almost everyone has had at some point—do not rank as high in searches, despite the fact that there is a lot more threesome porn accessible. Simply put, since it is more readily available and openly shared on pornographic websites, there is less need to search for it. I just bring this up to caution you against placing too much weight on the top search terms since they might not provide us as much information as we would want about the prevalence of a certain sexual interest.
Who Has the Most Hentai Fantasies?
According to my findings, there are significant differences in hentai-related desires across sexual orientation and gender:
Twelve percent of heterosexual women have had this experience in the past, and one percent say they dream about it frequently.
27% of heterosexual guys have experienced this obsession, and 3% say they fantasize about it often.
4.5 percent of lesbian and bisexual women say they think about this desire often, and 26 percent say they have it often.
39% of male homosexuals and bisexuals have had this desire at some time, and 8% say they have it frequently.
Eight percent of transgender and nonbinary persons say they have had this desire often, and forty percent say they have had it in the past.
As you can see, hentai dreams are far more common among men and those who identify as gender non-conforming than among women. In a similar vein, non-heterosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to dream about this.
People’s preferences for various dream themes vary greatly, which might be a reasonable explanation for the observed differences in gender and sexual orientation. For example, heterosexual women tend to think more about romance and love and to fantasize less about prohibited topics. They are also the most likely to acknowledge that they regularly appear in their own dreams, both as the object of want and as the object of desire. Heterosexual women may therefore find greater realism in their dreams about themselves and their real-life relationships than in fantasies about other groups.
The Reason Hentai Fantasies Appeal to So Many People
Furthermore, I found that a number of psychological traits and qualities were linked to hennai-themed dreams, which may indicate that these traits are well-liked.
Given that these individuals dreamt about almost everything, it seems sense that those with active imaginations often had more hentai dreams! Therefore, for some people, these fantasies may just be the product of a wandering mind.
Hennai fancies were also linked to lower levels of conscientiousness, or paying less attention to details, and extroversion, or being less social and outgoing. On an intuitive level, this makes sense. Your diminished desire for social interaction in real life may be reflected in your nightmares. On the other hand, if you are less concerned with details, you can access a wider range of fantasy content (people with high conscientiousness, on the other hand, generally have highly detailed fantasies that closely reflect the actual world).
Furthermore, hantai fantasies were linked to increased anxiety, neuroticism (i.e., high stress levels), and avoidant attachment style (i.e., uncomfortable with intimacy). For those who are anxiously connected and neurotic, daydreaming about a fictional persona may provide some solace by relieving tension and anxiety, while fantasizing about a fictional spouse may provide the emotional distance avoidantly attached persons require.
There was an association between having dentai fantasies and having more BDSM fantasies overall, suggesting that these ideas may occasionally be used to express BDSM wants.
These impulses were linked to more thoughts about nonconsensual actions (e.g., nonconsensual voyeurism and exhibitionism) as well as more nightmares about banned acts in general. Thus, hentai could give certain people a means of pursuing sexual desires that are risky, illegal, or impractical in the real world.
Lastly, and maybe not surprisingly, those who had hentai fantasies also tended to fantasize more about other fantastical situations, such as having sex in space or with robots or aliens.