Infographic maps the US by Porn Searches

We like to believe in the United States of America that regionality and socioeconomics don’t separate us, that the American experience is the human experience. The only real difference between us may be an accent here or there and maybe a predilection for regional cuisines.

Well, apparently tastes in pornography are just as much a regional dish as kringles, poi, and Cincinnati chili.

Pornhub recently published a rundown of the three most popular (erotic) search terms per state, and FlowingData’s Nathan Yau converted them into a series of stark maps.

You realize that MILFs are popular almost everywhere, except out West, where terms like “teen,” “Asian,” and “compilation” take the top ranks. But the anomalies are probably more interesting than the trends. Montana loves a “wife,” Idaho prefers a “parody,” and Wyoming, ever the cowboy state, has a thing for “smoking.” (Before I lose you–as crude as this whole topic may be, try to tell me that it isn’t a bit adorable that Hawaiians so loyally search for “Hawaii.”)

(source of data)

Are there any grand conclusions to be made from this simple visualization? Quite possibly. As invasive as the Googles and Pornhubs of the world having access to our most private searches may be, it does occasionally give us a wider, more accurate view of ourselves. Can you imagine a Gallup poll on pornogaphic habits? Probably not. And in this sense, the connected world may be the most honest world we’ve ever known.

We’ve seen that we can learn from what people search for, through the eyes of Google suggestions: state stereotypes, national stereotypes, and even the insecurities of age. Do we see anything when we look at porn searches?

PornHub released a small dataset on the three most popular searches for each state. Their map only shows the top search, which is limiting, but the chart above incorporates all queries. If a term was in a state’s top three, the state is shaded black.

There are interesting regional patterns in there, as you sweep from more widely spread searches to the more specific. I thought the maps in the middle were most interesting. I’ll let you make your own conclusions (and maybe some googles for definitions) though.

PornHub also provided average time spent on the site per visit, but I pretty much ignored that column. The inclination seems to be to infer stamina from the amount of time spent on the site, but there are plenty of other reasons of why a state’s average might be shorter or longer, such as internet speed, length of videos usually watched, or just a tendency to spend less time on sites.

Just note that the bar chart by PornHub starts at 10 minutes, which makes Rhode Island’s average duration look a lot shorter. However, there’s only a two-minute span between the least and greatest.