What was the most popular porn search term of 2022? According to Pornhub's latest report, it was hentai. This was also the most popular term last year, and it seems to be on the rise. So what is hentai, and why do so many people seem to be drawn to it?
Hentai has been defined as “a subgenre of the Japanese genres of manga and anime, containing overtly sexualized characters and sexually explicit images,” according to Pornhub. In other words, it's a form of cartoon porn.
Despite its seeming popularity, it's not something that has yet received much research attention, but I do have some data that can shed some light on the appeal of this porn genre.
How Many People Fantasize About Cartoon or Anime Characters?
In the survey of 4,175 Americans' sexual fantasies that I conducted for my book Tell Me What You Want, one of the things I asked people about was whether they had ever fantasized about cartoon or anime characters. What I found was that 27 percent of participants said this was something they had ever fantasized about before, with 4 percent saying it was something they fantasize about often.
So while a sizable number of people appear to have had hentai-related fantasies, it's a relatively small number who fantasize about it frequently. This is interesting to consider in light of hentai being such a popular search term. Fantasies that aren't extraordinarily common can show up disproportionately in porn searches because they aren't as readily available and people have to intentionally go looking for them.
By contrast, if you look at something like threesomes (a fantasy almost everyone has had at some point), it's not as high up on the search list, despite the fact that there's way more threesome porn out there. It's just a lot easier to find and is more prominently displayed on porn sites, reducing the need to search for it. I say this just as a word of caution to not read too much into the top search terms because they might not tell us as much about the prevalence of a given sexual interest as we might assume.
Who Has the Most Hentai Fantasies?
One thing I see in my data is that there are pretty sizable gender and sexual orientation differences in hentai-related fantasies:
12 percent of heterosexual women have had this fantasy before, with 1 percent saying they fantasize about it often.
27 percent of heterosexual men have had this fantasy before, with 3 percent saying they fantasize about it often.
26 percent of lesbian and bisexual women have had this fantasy before, with 4.5 percent saying they fantasize about it often.
39 percent of gay and bisexual men have had this fantasy before, with 8 percent saying they fantasize about it often.
40 percent of trans and nonbinary persons have had this fantasy before, with 8 percent saying they fantasize about it often.
What you can see here is that men and gender-diverse persons are far more likely to fantasize about hentai than women. Likewise, persons who identify as anything other than heterosexual are more likely to fantasize about this than heterosexual folks.
One possible explanation for these gender and sexuality differences is that it may be due to broader differences in the fantasy themes people are drawn to. For example, heterosexual women on average have the fewest fantasies involving taboo themes and the most fantasies about passion and romance. They are also the most likely to say that they usually appear in their own fantasies (and often as the object of desire). As a result, fantasies that have a stronger grounding in reality (featuring themselves and real-life partners) may be more appealing to heterosexual women than other groups.
Why Hentai Fantasies are Appealing to So Many People
I also found that hentai-themed fantasies were linked to a large number of psychological traits and characteristics, which tells us something about their popular appeal:
People with active imaginations, in general, had more hentai fantasies, which makes sense—these folks had more fantasies about almost everything! So, for some people, these fantasies may simply be the product of a wandering mind.
Hentai fantasies were also linked to being less extroverted (meaning less outgoing and sociable) and less conscientious (meaning less detail-oriented). This makes intuitive sense. If you have a lesser need for human interaction in real life, this may carry over into your fantasies. Likewise, if you're not as focused on the details, this opens the door to a wider range of fantasy content (by contrast, people high in conscientiousness tend to have very detailed fantasies that closely mirror the real world).
Hentai fantasies were also linked to being more anxiously attached (having more fear of abandonment), having a more avoidant attachment style (being uncomfortable with intimacy), and being more neurotic (very easily stressed out). For anxiously attached and neurotic individuals, fantasizing about a fictional character might provide some comfort by taking some stress and anxiety out of the equation, whereas for those who are avoidantly attached, fantasizing about a fictional partner might offer the emotional distance they're looking for.
Hentai fantasies were also linked to having more BDSM fantasies in general, which suggests that these fantasies may sometimes be a vehicle for expressing BDSM interests.
These fantasies were also linked to more fantasies about taboo activities in general, as well as having more fantasies about nonconsensual activities (such as the nonconsensual forms of voyeurism and exhibitionism). So, for some, hentai may offer a means of engaging with sexual interests that are impossible, dangerous, or illegal in the real world.
Lastly, and perhaps not surprisingly, those who had hentai fantasies tended to have more fantasies about fantastical scenarios in general, such as s*x in outer space and s*x with aliens or robots.
As with any type of sexual fantasy, different people may be drawn to hentai for very different reasons. Sometimes it's just the result of having a very active imagination, whereas other times it might be about meeting a deeper psychological need or a creative way of expressing a taboo sexual interest.
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Hentai is the punishment for the atomic bomb, so just imagine what coomers would come up with after a nuclear holocaust.
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2 weren't nearly enough
![:#itsoverjapanese: :#itsoverjapanese:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/itsoverjapanese.webp)
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idiot any more would lead to hentai that's even more fcked up than it is now
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Not if you don't stop![:troll2#: :troll2#:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/troll2.webp)
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If humans with the minor defect of squinty eyes and terminal autism thinks up hentai shit what would the irradiated mutant survivors imagine
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They can do that in their cave paintings after I'm done with them, it will be a problem for future archeologists
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No, this is like leaving your antibiotics in the middle of an infection, where the bacteria develops resistance and gets much worse.
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Or it would turn around to being incredibly chaste![:marseyimmaculate: :marseyimmaculate:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseyimmaculate.webp)
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but we only had 2 and then they surrendered
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https://rdrama.net/post/273937/sirenbluelightthe-trad-catholic-bmc-big-mvtant
!foidmoment
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probably super mutant r*pe fantasies or something
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Godzilla: King of the Male feminists.
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And 100%![:#real: :#real:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/real.webp)
Factcheck: Yes.
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I would like some clarification on this, it makes sense that visual data (porn) could cause arousal even if its not an image of a real person, but what does fantasizing s*x with an anime character look like? Is it like paper mario or flat stanley? Is it like your brain imagines them as a sort of real 3D person but with the anime eyes? Or like you are in the anime and everything looks 2D?
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i agree with you and i masturbate exclusively to hentai
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Are you misanthropic or do you like comically exaggerated body parts or some other reason?
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yes
Yes but not exclusively
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For me it's like the idea of the interaction being depicted and not so much the characters. If I'm just imagining stuff without looking at porn it doesn't look like anime.
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Look man, I don't think that hard about it.
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yeah
i just see a hot 2d girl and my peepee gets up
needing to fantasize a whole world just to c*m sounds like some female shit
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my peepee got up
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Wood.
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I just now realized it never even occured to me to "fantasize" about a drawing, and I've watched hentai before. Having a sexual fantasy about a drawing sounds akin to fish swimming through the sky or playing a birthday cake like a guitar. For some reason the shit just sounds fundamentally absurd in a way that would kill my boner immediately if I tried.
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my brain ain't doing shit buddy
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!coomers what is this ''fantasizing'' and ''fantasy'' shit
when i coom to hentai i dont imagine myself being inside it or whatever, much like i wouldn't do if i were to watch porn
it sounds like some woman shit
when i fap to hentai it's justlike
''wow those are some big knockers''![:marseycoomer2: :marseycoomer2:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseycoomer2.webp)
fap fap fap fap fap fap
cooms
''that was a good fap''
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This is a good way of describing what it's like being <90 IQ
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Surely you think about something when you're horny but not currently looking at porn
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Yeah
Something like
''wow those are some big knockers ''![:marseycoomer2: :marseycoomer2:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseycoomer2.webp)
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Autism
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So what inspired you to go down this anatomically correct rabbit hole today?
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I was reading this (shoutout
@YALLAHblessYoTraplord) and it was on the sidebar.
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If I ever find out where you are I'm going to lock you in a cage you can barely fit into and r*pe you.
🤔🤔
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Certified built for the Northernmost Aryan Nordic-Germanic V̈bermensch Evropean BWC from the Cold Arctic lands of Hyperborea
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Meaning the non-binary part of the pie is not doing much lifting in the trans and non-binary section.
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Because they like books instead
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Proof that I'm a good person.![:marseyangel: :marseyangel:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseyangel.webp)
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I don't want to read that but it's basically “s*x is affirmation in abstraction, and people seek affirmation from those they don't have it from,” right?
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P much![:marseyagree: :marseyagree:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseyagree.webp)
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You can pretty much say I'm a sexpert (I am emotionally damaged)
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So this isn't just looking at hentai, this is your mind visualizing anime characters instead of flesh and blood people when you're fantasizing
If it gets to that point I would recommend![:marseymaid3: :marseymaid3:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseymaid3.webp)
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I'm pounding off to anime girls right now. You laugh today but tomorrow you'll be out again investing time & money into some woman; or the pursuit of some woman.
Meanwhile I'll be jacking off to a picture again, quick & easy & on with my day. Spanking it to cartoons eventually disassociates your s*x drive from real women so I don't even have to fear the vaginal jew when I go outside.
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Enlightenment
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why i'm happy bieng birdpilled
women![:marseyyikes!: :marseyyikes!:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseyyikes.webp)
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wow its a bunch of degenerate coomer
s, just like all the anime avatar trans flag twitter people
color me shocked
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Didn't? Or couldn't?
It's okay, this is a safe space. No one will shame you for your illiteracy.
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More like JEALOUS![:#chudgrug: :#chudgrug:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/chudgrug.webp)
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gif is apparently more high-quality than the one that I submitted a year ago:
, is there a way to replace it with this higher-quality one?
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done king
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finally, I have become a member of the 1%![:marseycoomer2: :marseycoomer2:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseycoomer2.webp)
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Way more than 27% of dudes have fantasized about a cartoon character at some point.
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Jerking it to Jessica rabbit when you were 12 before internet porn doesn't count
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Would guys with this![https://i.rdrama.net/images/1717540316727238.webp](https://i.rdrama.net/i/l.webp)
tell a researcher yes?
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A lot of this seems to say more about Heterosexual women than it does about every other group.
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My owner's greatest sexual fantasy is finding a nice white man and starting a family, does that mean she is the cisgender heterosexual woman she has always known herself to be?
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wdym ime cat nyanyanyaaa
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want extra soul crushing in your face facts? Go to any rule34 booru site with comments and read how many zoomers comment how much they want to be in the girl in the pictures.![:#doomerfront: :#doomerfront:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/doomerfront.webp)
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something something petite anime women
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I see this as a foid L tbh
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What the frick I'm no better than a
this is horseshit.
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the study that killed /pol/
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For me, traps, hijabis and milves of all creeds
I'm somewhat deviant but put on an austere front, I'll have my bichad harem when I've got tech CEO bux and want a femboy army
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That profile pic at the end has to be AI. Lmao
Yes, im sure the typical taboo/nonconsensual s*x fantasies for hentai coomer are voyeurism/exhibitionism. There is definitely not another far more common nonconsensual hentai category
![:marseypedo: :marseypedo:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseypedo.webp)
Also, maybe im getting old
or im just boring, but i would never describe any porn I watch as a fantasy. Its the exact opposite, porn is when i dont want to fantasise. Fantasies are reserved for my imagination, with my gf/crush/attractive person i know irl as the subject. Who the frick has fantasies about a pornstar unless theyre literally clinically addicted
???
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Is there an easy way to strip an article like this and format for markdown, I can't take the time to format these every time
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Typora does it automatically if you copy-paste into it.
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thank you!!!!
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Factcheck: Yes.
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Factcheck: This claim has been classified as misogynistic.
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Factcheck: Yes.
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All I learned from this is that I'm "avoidant attachment style"
oh and that lesbians and strag moids are even more similar.
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When looking at rule34, I for one think that Chris Refield should only ever have his furry butt reemed out by Wesker / dominate Piers, Enrico, Leon, Ethan etc.
Instant flacid when you add tentacles.
For I am a man of culture.
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The women are thin in hentai.
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The Bi men one was totally guys looking at traps and shos
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Bipedo strikes again
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I want robot girls but they're only anime why why why why why rusted creaky metallic motors running
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I'd look up whether the incidence of autism in those populations correlates but I'm lazy and it might contradict my preferred conclusion
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Everypony knew this already
Trans lives matter
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Snapshots:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-myths-of-s*x/202212/why-animated-porn-is-so-popular:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
porn:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
attention:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
sexual fantasies:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
Tell Me What You Want:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
gender:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
sexual orientation:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
nonbinary:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
sexuality:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
extroverted:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
conscientiousness:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
fear:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
attachment:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
intimacy:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
neurotic:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
stressed:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
anxiety:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
BDSM:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
imagination:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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Me when I see another
on the front page
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Never thought I'd see the word hentai on a serious psychology article![:marseydoomer: :marseydoomer:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseydoomer.webp)
Tldr Jimmy needs to stop watching anime
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What am I supposed to pikachuface about here?![:marseyconfused: :marseyconfused:](https://i.rdrama.net/e/marseyconfused.webp)
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