At the start of this year I stumbled across an interesting article on the Techworld blog titled Do internet users really search for porn at Christmas?. The writer of the article was trying to come up with an alternative explanation to anti-virus company ESET’s claim that searches for ‘porn’ have been consistently rising around Christmas time since 2004. John E. Dunn, one of the co-founders of Techworld was in his own words fighting a “War on Error” proposing that the year-on-year rise was due to a rise in internet users worldwide and that people generally search more for almost everything during a holiday. He continued his argument by stating that looking for porn via a search engine does not necessarily mean that the user is intent on finding pornography – they might simply be researching a high-profile news story – concluding that porn is a perfectly legitimate theme in some contexts.
According to a blog writer on Channelweb on the phenomenon of the Blue Christmas ESET itself put the increase of internet searches for the term ‘porn’ down to “people test-driving new gadgets by seeing if they’ll handle a bit of astonishingly explicit depravity without compromising picture or audio quality”. The conclusion of the article is that ESET simply is trying to warn people of the high risk of attracting viruses whilst searching for porn and with a solution in hand is trying to attract more business.
Reliable statistics regarding the use of pornography or the amount of searches conducted for the term ‘porn’ during Christmas are difficult to find. What is interesting in light of some of the above comments however is that according to OnlineSchools.org the most popular day for searching for pornography in the USA is (any) Sunday with the least popular day being Thanksgiving. So much for the theory that people look for more of everything on the internet during holidays – this would imply that the type of holiday makes a difference too.
John E. Dunn’s comment that searching for the term ‘porn’ on Christmas is likely to be harmless as men were really just test-driving their new Christmas gadgets seemed too easy and convenient an explanation. It made me want to conduct my own research and thought it would be interesting to put his explanation to the test using Google’s new Insights for search (in Beta). Using the search term “nude” filtering for worldwide image searches using Google found that the highest number of searches of this kind was performed in the week of December 26th 2010 to January 1st 2011 with the highest total searches being done on Sunday the 26th of December. Conducting a similar search for the year 2008 showed that again the highest number of searches was around Christmas (in the week of 28th December – January 3rd) with other holidays not being quite so popular times to search for ‘porn’ images.
Now I know looking for nudity does not equal looking for pornography, but my point is that people searching for pictures featuring the word nude are not simply looking for the latest news item involving pornography. The top 10 rising searches in December 2010 featuring the word nude in image searches were:
1. crystal harris nude (+2,600%)
2. christina aguilera nude (+ 400 %)
3. olivia wilde nude (+ 130%)
4. kesha nude (+ 110%)
5. miley cyrus nude (+80%)
Changing the search term to naked instead of nude shows that searches for naked pictures of Nick Riewoldt (an Australian rules footballer – breakout rise) and Santa Clause (+ 450%) eclipse the rise in searches for naked pictures of Christina Aguilera, Kesha and Miley Cyrus. Crystal Harris and Olivia Wilde drop out of the top 10 for that search.
My guess about a reason for what seems a rise in naked portrayals of women and men around Christmas time is as good as anybody’s. I am aware however that as we progress towards Christmas, advertisers spend a lot of time and money reminding people of this “special time of the year” focussing on family and that “special loved one”. In the run up to Christmas it has become more and more obvious to me that there are a lot of adverts sexualizing the Christmas period, encouraging men to buy their girlfriends and wives sexy underwear. Not to mention ‘sexy santa’ outfits (Mrs / Ms Clause of course).
'Sexy Santa' outfits (pic by Banana Donuts, click pic for original)
Added to that is the fact that during Christmas there is a lot of focus on intimate relationships (with it seems at least one major romantic comedy released as standard). The Christmas period can be an unhappy time for people due to increased stress and increased time spent with family, which can be problematic. The time around Christmas and New Year is also a time when many people evaluate / look back on the year gone by – a time at which we think of our accomplishments as well as our failures and our plans for the future.
It seems conceivable to me that for some the expectations around Christmas, the focus on personal relationships, goals and accomplishments might well lead to difficult feelings. One way to deal with such feelings is of course to disconnect from them and to distract oneself. Lonely, bored, hurt, stressed or angry people may look to the internet and its vast array of pornography as a place to find distraction and to act out frustration. Others may perhaps, more innocently even be looking for some kind of connection via these ways over the Christmas period.
Christmas or no Christmas – I think what is clear from this is that more research into trends and motivations behind the use of pornography and pornographic material is needed in order for us to gain an understanding about why pornography has come to play such a big part in our society. Despite this however, we should not be blind to the fact that pornography has been unchallenged for too long and whilst more research on pornography is definitely needed, quick action is required to address the harms of porn and to untangle the association between sexual curiosity and the pornification of an entire generation.
No related posts.
This is interesting and I think the analysis given already leads to some credible reasons and motivations for seeking out porn at Christmas. What is important though, is that we separate those who are lonely etc. who may be “looking for some kind of connection”, but will inevitably find porn that can in fact reduce the potency of and potential for any real, actual ‘connection’, and those who seek it out because they are “hurt, stressed or angry people” looking to “act out frustration”.
Those men who fall into the latter category -possibly unlike those in the former- know what porn is about, and many use porn to feel they are getting back at the women in their lives that have made them angry or stressed.
Discussing motivations for watching porn, a porn industry executive is quoted in Jensen’s ‘Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity’ as saying:
“Essentially, it comes from every man who’s unhappily married, and he looks at his wife who just nagged at him about this or that or whatnot, and he says, “I’d like to fuck you in the ass.” He’s angry at her, right? And he can’t, so he would rather watch some girl taking it up the ass and fantasise at that point he’s doing whatever girl happened to be mean to him that particular day, and that is the attraction, because when people watch anal, nobody wants to watch a girl enjoying anal.”
At Christmas people spend more time with their families and so have a better chance of being irritated and angered by people they live with. The motivation to seek out pornography suggested by the porn exec therefore gives a plausible reason for the popularity of porn at Christmas.
Matt’s analysis of the personal reasons why a lot of men use porn seems accurate. It is partly about displaced feelings of frustration and sometimes loneliness. If you cut yourself off from those who you are close to you because you can’t voice your frustrations you will feel lonely. However porn does not resolve these problems. So porn sells the false dream of company or, as this writer says, some kind of displaced revenge on the woman in the porn users life but it does not resolve the problems.
It does not help build friendships or resolve marital and other relationship problems. It has at an attraction of excitement and illicitness but also a kind of safety. Safety because it is safer to look at porn rather than have those difficult discussions about the frustrations you feel in your relationship or to actually go out and find some friends or rekindle old ones.
Christmas is sold to us as a kind of sentimental dream of family joy. But for many it is not, it is full of resentments and past hurts. Very few want to accept how difficult a time it is. Forced jollity is the norm at this time of year. Yet domestic violence goes up at Christmas. So perhaps this explains the rise in Porn use at Christmas?
I was reading today about how porn has to be made by people who know what the consumers like. I’m not quite sure how to expand this point except that to know the market means that the producers must know these feelings too.
“I was reading today about how porn has to be made by people who know what the consumers like. I’m not quite sure how to expand this point except that to know the market means that the producers must know these feelings too.”
This is scary: It just shows how simple and vulgar most people are! Or does free porn follow different rules?
Hi
I wrote a blog about pornography a few days ago:
http://andrearossouw.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/the-capitalistic-pornographic-profit-system/
a related piece from Australia’s Gizmodo
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/12/will-christmas-defeat-porn-this-year/
Porn is probably also linked to obesity, which is also an effect of Christmas.
“In the run up to Christmas it has become more and more obvious to me that there are a lot of adverts sexualizing the Christmas period, encouraging men to buy their girlfriends and wives sexy underwear. Not to mention ‘sexy santa’ outfits (Mrs / Ms Clause of course).”
Are you saying this is always a bad thing? Some women like having sexy underwear bought for them buy their boyfriends husbands? Is buying your wife/girlfriend sexy underwear sexist…even if she asked for it as a present?
I’m not making a value judgment, but simply noting that around Christmas time companies add an extra pressure onto women to be sexy and titilating for their male partners. On the one hand Christmas is all about enjoying food and spending time with family yet in the run up to Christmas companies urge women specifically that they should not forget that they have to remain attractive to their male partners. This suggests that men want their female partners to be sexually available to them over Christmas and also for them to be attractive in a way prescribed by underwear and costume companies. I think this scenario mainly plays into women’s insecurities and is aimed at men getting what they want sexually over Christmas.