The days leading up to America’s 2020 presidential election were heady ones — jammed with anticipation, dread and an intense zeal to do good democracy. Also heavily featured: fiery entreaties to vote, arriving in the form of ads, Instagram posts, Zoom reunion specials, and oh yes, thirst traps.
To thirst in the 21st century, after all, no longer means you’re simply dehydrated. The Internet and social media have recast the humble word into a term for transparent lust for attention, approval and/or sex. You could thirst for water as much as Harry Styles or you could fall for a thirst trap, a seductive post blatantly fishing for likes — or during the election, for civic action. Sample: the Naked Ballots ad, which involved a clutch of celebrities (thirsty to the end) stripping down to talk viewers through mail-in voting.
But celebs hardly corner the market on thirst trapping for change; when it comes to sex appeals, leave it to the pros. Namely, the group of Atlanta-based strippers who produced the ingenious viral video that implored “Get Your Booty to the Poll”, or adult performer Cherie DeVille, who launched the Erection Season campaign to promote the vote. “There is so much at stake,” DeVille told New York Post. “I want to convince anyone I can, even if I have to appeal to their penis.”
And naturally, as a leading outlet for private impulses, Pornhub stepped up too. On Election Day, in the name of its Give a F**k, Get a F**k campaign, the site was only made available to American users who’d voted. According to a spokesperson for Just For Fun, Pornhub’s creative agency, “To encourage everyone to get off the couch and head to the polling places, we knew we needed to hit them where it hurts — their pants.” It was cheeky fun that belied an urgent and necessary social message — not a thing you’d immediately associate with an adult entertainment platform, but surprise, it’s not Pornhub’s first rodeo.
If anything, for years now, the streamer has been upping its innuendo-rich efforts in social and sexual awareness. In October last year, it unveiled Pornhub Sex Ed, its firstever educational series that offers lessons ranging from communication to healthy masturbation habits, with input from sex therapists and doctors. The videos come under the umbrella of the Pornhub Sexual Wellness Centre, which, since 2017, has offered resources on various aspects of sexual health.
“Real talk about sex from those who know it best,” as its tagline goes. In effect, the Centre hopes to provide a vital counterpoint to porn — actual sex education as opposed to distortive sexual imagery.
And Pornhub has more where that came from. Last August, on International Female Orgasm Day, its Orgasm Gap initiative paused heterosexual videos on the site at the 40-percent mark to underscore the percentage of straight women who don’t climax during sex. Earlier, as the pandemic ravaged the US, it unleashed its Cleanest Porn Ever campaign to spread the word on handwashing and social distancing, while donating some 50,000 masks to frontline responders and monies to various sex worker relief funds. Meantime, Pornhub Cares, the site’s philanthropic arm since 2015, has been actively offering scholarships, raising awareness on breast and testicular cancer, and supporting causes like bee and whale conservation.
These are gestures of corporate activism, yes, though not necessarily empty, unproductive or clumsy ones. While you’re busy wondering what a porn platform has to do with environmentalism, Pornhub’s Beesexual video has hit more than two million views, effectively educating viewers on the world’s dwindling bee population through bee porn. Or as one YouTube commenter, reacting to Pornhub’s Sex Ed series, put it: “When a porn site is more educational than the American system.” (Also worth noting: the country with the third highest per-capita visits to Pornhub’s Sexual Wellness Centre since 2017? Singapore.)
In short, it’s brand transformation. Pornhub’s responsiveness to social and political currents has encouraged its entry into the mainstream conversation — and not just for being, you know, a hub for porn. And it’s been essential for the company, considering how pornography remains one of the hot button topics out there. Porn’s been found to have deleterious effects on perceptions of sex and and sexual expectations, but at the same time, it may serve as a way to liberate and validate one’s desire and sexuality. It remains saddled with a universe of taboo, even as Pornhub averages 36 billion worldwide visits per year.
Pornhub’s road to mass acceptance, then, is bound to be long and bumpy, fraught with hypocrisy, prejudice and double standards. Steve Steck, founder of Heroic Vice, a consultancy that helps fringe businesses align themselves with social causes, has noted how so-called “vice” industries often struggle to find societal recognition for their philanthropic endeavours.
For example, in 2012, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation outright spurned Pornhub’s donation of US$75,000 ($99,500); a reforestation organisation accepted the site’s 2014 donation but stopped short of publicising it.
“If a family-friendly brand gave attention to that many issues, there would be applause and awards,” wrote Steck in Fast Company. “However, due to society’s moral hang-ups and arbitrary logic, Pornhub’s charitable efforts get written off as insignificant, disingenuous or self-serving.”
More effective have been Pornhub’s many collaborations with creators, from fashion label Hood by Air (Spring 2017) to musician Mykki Blanco (for her Loner video). In 2020, Pornhub Art debuted its first non-adult film, Shakedown, an experimental outing by filmmaker Leilah Weinraub that explores the early-2000s Los Angeles queer strip club scene. It’s the kind of work you might only view at the arthouse or not at all — that is, until you reach Pornhub.
“We want to be seen as a platform that artists and creators can use,” said the site’s brand director Alex Klein. “We’ve seen artists in general upload content to the site that might not have a home at places like YouTube or Vimeo, that don’t permit nudity.”
Of course, none of this should whitewash Pornhub’s problematic aspects. The site should still be held accountable for any questionable content it hosts, as should Facebook (per the Internet Watch Foundation, the amount of exploitative material on Pornhub is dwarfed by that found on social media networks). The company maintains that it stringently regulates and verifies what’s being uploaded to its platform via “a robust system for flagging, reviewing and removing all illegal material and age-verification tools” — and if it plans to position itself as a socially responsible entity, that’s a baseline.
For now, the jury’s still out if Pornhub’s adventures in leveraging thirst for social good and legitimacy have borne any significant fruit. But as the sex-targeted messaging during America’s election season proves, young and online audiences won’t hesitate to engage — which is not entirely a bad thing. As the web’s prevailing pornographic destination, Pornhub doesn’t just shoulder its own brand but, in some part, that of the adult entertainment industry. The renovation of its image — alongside the work of individual creators and emerging ethical sites like OnlyFans — might go some way towards normalising desire and pleasure, and removing the stigma attached to sex work. And if there’s such social value to be found in the thirsty world out there, that surely makes for a happy ending.
This story first appeared in the January/February 2021 issue of A Magazine.