Contemporary Porn Trends, Explained
11 Saucy and Confusing Trends in Modern XXX Content, Explained
11 Saucy and Confusing Trends in Modern XXX Content, Explained
When you go to watch porn, you’re often confronted with videos that aren’t mere clips of two (or more) people having sex — they’re stories.
Lots of people see porn as having a greater erotic cachet, as being simply more thrilling, if the people involved are playing characters — things like a teacher and a schoolgirl, for instance, or a bored housewife getting it on with the plumber.
But while some of these narratives are seemingly ancient and timeless, other aspects of porn crop up seemingly out of nowhere to take the internet by storm.
Oftentimes, they may seem self-evident — it’s a response to a particular cultural or technological development; for instance, the popularity of video games likely played a big role in the rise of porn video games.
At other times, these porn trends may be less self-evident. Where did the explosion in step-incest porn come from, anyway?
In order to help you satisfy your curiosity about some of the most popular trends in mainstream porn in the past few years, AskMen spoke to a host of people who produce, watch, and think about porn. Here’s what they had to say:
How Do Things Become Popular in Porn?
“Trends are fascinating and how they stem from a moment in time during someone’s life and then grow into a category on the Search bar is awesome,” says Stacy Lyle, owner at Blush Erotica. “I think part of the appeal for many trends is the idea that whatever it is could happen in ‘real life.’”
According to Lyle, some of the trends are born from specific demands from fans catching on.
“Porn content and adult models are more accessible now than ever before with the advent of fan sites and social media, and consumers are able to ask in detail for what they actually want versus just receiving whatever type of content is made for the masses,” Lyle says. “This allows for many unusual requests to be fulfilled which can lead to others realizing that they are also into whatever it is, and a trend starts. The possibilities are endless and wonderful!”
Porn star Lexi Luna chalks up some trends to the creativity of the performers and creators, however.
“When it comes to mainstream porn, a lot of the trends come from a ‘what can I do next’ mentality in shooting,” she says. “So we try things and see what the fans like. Some become almost comically fun, like the stuck porn, and others become tried-and-true tropes, like step-mommy. Then we can make tweaks where step-mommy is stuck and have fun with it.”
Porn scriptwriter Maddy Barton, for her part, has a more technological approach — she thinks that some porn trends are driven by “the idea that high-volume users dictate the algorithm of the major tube sites.”
“A small percentage of people who watch the most porn seek out increasingly ‘taboo’ topics,” Barton believes, “which shifts the algorithm of the home pages and search results. After a few years, this ends up informing and shaping the taste of the average porn user. So it’s a bit of a cyclical thing.”
Regardless of how they come to be, however, here’s a closer look at some of the top trends in porn today:
Popular Porn Trends, Explained
Stuck Porn
If you’ve watched any porn in the past few years, there’s a good chance you’ve stumbled upon some stuck porn — videos where a character (typically female) gets ‘stuck’ in a bent-over, Doggy-Style-like position.
These are typically not ways that people can or do easily get stuck in things — think stuck in a washing machine, stuck under a coffee table or a bed, stuck halfway out a window, etc. — but that’s hardly the point. The point of stuck porn is watching a male actor be presented with a vulnerable person whose orifice(s) he can penetrate, without having to otherwise subdue them.
Typically, the stuck person ends up consenting to what is done to them to some degree, but the fact of their being stuck undeniably renders them helpless — in this way, stuck porn plays with aspects of consent that might feel erotic or problematic, or both—depending on your perspective.
Free-Use Porn
Free-use porn is a sort of evolution of stuck porn — it takes the prior genre’s concept and turns it up a notch, creating a context or fictional universe where the male porn actors get to interact with people who consent to any sex act being done on them as a matter of course.
So while they’re not stuck in any physical sense, they are simply available to be penetrated whenever the performer in question desires, leading to at-times absurd scenes like a man fucking a woman while she performs household chores or talks to a friend, seemingly unbothered by his thrusting.
“Some of those types of porn seem like they could be problematic,” says porn performer Rae Richmond, “in that in the case of ‘stuck’ and ‘free use,’ although blanket consent may be given — it seems like it could still imply a lack of consent to the viewer who may enjoy the idea of someone ‘performing’ against their will.”
Step-Incest Porn
Another big one — perhaps the big trend in contemporary porn — is the popularity of step-incest, or faux-incest storylines.
“There are many reasons why things like faux-incest are so popular,” says Barton. “It’s a shorthand for a universal taboo; what is forbidden is always more titillating.”
Though it’s super-common today, the taboo of incest isn’t a newcomer to the production of sexy materials, she notes.
“There’s also a long history of incest porn or erotica; even in the video porn era, one of the most popular porn series of the 1980s was Taboo, about a son and his stepmother,” says Barton. “Go back to classic erotica; it’s there too: George Batailles has written extensively about incest.”
And while there may be deep erotic intensity for some people in the transgression of incest, it’s also an easy storyline for porn producers to shoot: “I’ve heard some writers and producers argue it’s just about convenience, an easy way to get two performers in the same scene quickly,” says Barton. All you need is a home — no special props or locations.
However, she notes, in order to get around legal and ethical questions related to incest that might be imposed by the credit card companies who allow porn sites to make money via user transactions, things like adding the fact that they’re actually just step-siblings is a must for many production companies.
Cuckold Porn
Speaking of transgression, cuckolding has been a popular porn topic in recent years.
“Often, porn has fictionalized the role of the husband who shares his wife as an inferior specimen, which subsequently turns a lot of men off from exploring their sexuality and the hotwife dynamic in fear of being labeled as a ‘cuck,’” says porn performer John Legendary. “This social construct, likely fueled by the dramatization of porn, fails to demystify the true essence of what the hotwife lifestyle really is.”
Cuckolding porn, Legendary says, is vastly different from properly done cuckoldry in real life.
“Porn also doesn’t appropriately address the power exchange specifics of the dominance pecking order between the wife, husband, and bull,” he says. “Typically, in cuckolding porn, you see a beta husband role in the corner or nearby while he watches his wife getting fucked in a humiliating way.”
“However,” Legendary says, “you don’t often see the enjoyment the husband is having while watching his goddess getting pleased. You also don’t see the moment after when the bull leaves, and it’s just the couple alone, and it’s time for aftercare and their moment of reconnection.”
Porn Games
If you’ve watched any porn on a tube site in the past five years or so, you’ll almost certainly have encountered banner ads for porn games. Frequently, these ads claim in some way that the experience of playing a porn game is superior to merely watching a porn video — that you’re engaging in your erotic pleasure in an interactive way.
And while this may be true for some or even many people, it’s also fair to argue that many people simply prefer to watch rather than to engage. Even when a game presents a player with choices, it’s still the people who produced the game determining which options the player has to choose from.
Still, as technological advances make it possible for more people and companies to produce computer games, it’s no surprise that some will use this ability to produce sex-themed ones. The gamer market is a significant section of the population, and appealing to them in the hopes that they’ll be interested in playing games as part of their masturbation habits, too, is evidently a lucrative choice.
Tesla Autopilot Porn
In recent months, porn where two actors are in a Tesla supposedly driving on the highway on autopilot has become something of a hot trend. While it is a compelling premise that pairs a newsworthy technological development with the storied practice of car sex, not everyone finds it purely exciting and entertaining.
“When it comes to fan site porn, some trends are good — like personalizing videos and each creator finding their own brand,” says Luna. “But, the stuff that is not good is when individual creators (because a studio would never!) do stupid things like public porn or Tesla autopilot porn. This makes us all look bad, is illegal, violates the safety of the actors and other drivers, and is flat out idiotic. A lot of these trends are for shock value and not a good idea.”
VR Porn
Like porn video games, VR porn is a trend born in no small part from technological developments rather than erotic ones. However, in addition to porn that’s developed for people to watch using VR headsets, VR porn now has another, secondary meaning: porn in which the use of a VR headset is a plot point.
Even if they’re not developed for optimal VR watching, these videos take place in a world where VR headsets are increasingly common, and like the autopilot porn, seek to find ways to make their newsworthiness a part of the erotic storyline. In the case of VR porn, the headsets seem to function as a sort of high-tech sexy blindfold, allowing for the age-old story where a character thinks they’re having sex with one person, but are in fact having sex with another.
Condom-Removal Porn
With the rise in popularity of creampie porn, it’s no surprise that porn performers are seeking new ways to spice up this erotically charged act. One way? Clips where the penetrated performer insists on the penetrator removing the condom before continuing.
This not only means the video has a compelling screenshot of a condom being pulled off an erect penis to use as a thumbnail, but it also addresses the erotic charge of deciding whether or not to use a condom. Putting the decision in the hands of the person being penetrated, unlike the practice of stealthing, implies an intense desire on their part, which can be very erotic.
But, in a country like America where abortions and reproductive healthcare is increasingly hard to access, condom-removal porn could also be teaching viewers the wrong lessons about the role and importance of condoms in safer sex.
Futanari Porn
Futanari, or simply futa, is a Japanese term for women with penises. And while futa porn is significantly associated with hentai and other animated types of porn, in recent years, trick photography has enabled studios to produce futa porn using real-life actors, using a male stand-in with shaved legs, for instance, wearing the same outfit as the female star, to portray her bottom half in close-up shots.
While this can lead to a compelling and erotic final product, it does raise questions about the way people think of futa porn in relation to trans porn. Functionally, trans women in porn are real-life futanaris; what does it mean when studios cast cis women and cis men to represent a woman with a penis onscreen via selective editing?
Possession Porn
“Trends in modern porn have developed hugely just over my lifespan; I think a lot just generally came naturally,” says porn performer Sugar Love. “There’s everything from incest porn, to CNC [consensual non-consent] porn, sadism porn, all the way to possession porn.”
Barton sees possession porn — when someone loses control of their body, either to an alien parasite, a demon, or via a magical body swap — as another aspect of the erotic potential of transgression.
“The idea of the ‘corruption’ angle is that it’s giving up power to a greater authority, giving up your ‘bad’ desires to something out of your control because you’re stuck, or it’s free-use or something more nefarious (parasites, aliens, etc.),” she says. “I think people harbor a lot of sexual shame, and that shame can be rendered into an ecstatic pleasure through transgression. It’s more exciting because it’s forbidden.”
Mature Porn
“Mature porn (over 50) is incredibly popular,” says Richmond, who says she shoots what is known as GILF porn — Grandma (or Grandpa) I’d Like to Fuck. “It’s very different from the broadly defined MILF, many of whom are still very young.”
“It seems surprising to a lot of people that my content, for example, is so popular with 20-40 year olds,” Richmond says. “I’m 57 and my partner is 37, which seems to appeal to them being able to visualize themselves filling his shoes, so to speak.”
However, in a high-tech world actors, porn or otherwise, have more tools than ever to slow the march of aging, the sexiness of a 55-year-old shouldn’t come as a surprise. While sex drives and sexual responses may be impacted by aging, they do not disappear once a person hits a certain age — so why should porn by and for them?
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Source: AskMen
