Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me. At least that’s the message that randy users are sending leading porn streaming site PornHub following the release of 50 Shades Of Grey in cinemas: more people — especially women — want to watch BDSM content thanks to Christian Grey.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, 50 Shades is the film adaptation of a torrid book that tells the story of a girl who signs herself up to become the sexual property of a billionaire named Christian Grey.
PornHub noticed that searches for BDSM material began dominating the site’s traffic reports following the film’s Valentine’s Day release date, with women whipping up the biggest surge in traffic.
Female users more than men have been searching for terms including “submission”, “spank”, “bondage” and “dominate” over the last two weeks, with traffic peaking on the 13th just before the film’s release in cinemas.
“Suffice it to say, our female users have definitely been channeling their inner Anastasia Steele’s,” PornHub wrote.
Of all the categories PornHub hosts, “submission”, “BDSM”, “dominate” and “flogging were all popular tags, seeing a 55-40 per cent increase in search traffic after the film’s release. Other tags like “leather” and “punish” also saw single digit upticks.
PornHub wrote in its blog post that big cinema affects all industries, dating right back to the release of Bambi:
Cinema has come to affect our lives and views in real and meaningful ways. For instance, after the release of the film Sideways, Merlot became more difficult to move off of shelves while Pinot Noir enjoyed a 16% spike in sales. Deer hunting decreased by nearly half for a few years after Bambi. In the same vein, the recent release of the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey has been shaking things up over here at Pornhub. Specifically, people are getting freakier in their pornographic preferences and we’ve got the data to prove it.
Search on, folks.