The Italians, sovereigns in tastes and in the morbid search for social cohesion. Pornhub says so

These are weeks of great work for the pollsters: there are elections in Lombardy and Lazio to predict, the approval of the government to be tested with the high price of petrol to be measured, the candidates for the secretariat of the Democratic Party to be evaluated… And yet I wouldn’t worry so much. We have data updated to December 2022 which allow us to already know a lot about Italians, and thus to predict their next moves – barring incredible reversals.

I’m talking about the 2022 report of the pornographic site Pornhub, which, like every year, has released data on the site’s performance and its traffic country by country. In this report, in addition to the effects of the Draghi government – not only on GDP: the average duration of Italians in front of porn videos has increased by 9 seconds, bringing it to 9 minutes and 52, slightly below the world average) – trends and general indications are recorded as every year. After all, we had already discovered that Pornhub Italia is a mirror of the country during the last elections: on 25 September, while the vote and subsequent counting were in progress, the pornographic site recorded a +35 percent access, the highest number of the last ten years. The peak was reached at 3 in the morning, with Meloni’s full-blown victory; on that occasion, the most searched categories were “Woman”, “Mother”, “Christian” and “Giorgia”.

The data for the whole of the year that has just ended tell the story of the country better than any sample survey. Starting from the liking for sovereignty: “Italian” is the most searched term on Pornhub in the last year. Populism is still doing very well: “Italian amateur” (a category that has always been associated with the 5-star Movement, and relaunched by Giuseppe Conte with the 101 percent bonus that made it possible to renovate some of the bedrooms that can be seen in certain videos) it is in third place among the preferences of Italians. However, there is also a strong desire for social cohesion: “Italian gang bang” has recorded a +278 percent, especially among the voters of the Democratic Party, who are asking for unity and alliances. In the post pandemic, the topic of health remains relevant also on Pornhub; but from this observatory we can see that by now the priorities of Italians are other than vaccines: “dentist” recorded an increase in searches on Pornhub of +173 percent. With regard to industry leaders, the porn star Martina Smeraldi is the one that registers the greatest consensus; but approval remains high also for Malena La Pugliese and Valentina Nappi, confirming that Italy is ready to be guided by women in all sectors.

In Pornhub’s Italy, the only negative indicators are “blowjob” (-2 per cent, perhaps as a result of the large resignations) and “squirt” (-1 per cent, probable effect of energy savings). After all, inflation is also reflected in pornographic tastes: “share bed” recorded +79 percent in the last year. And if the traditions continue to have a transversal consensus (“milf” is in second place among the most searched terms, even if it is probable that the acronym this year stands for “Mother I Like Fratelli d’Italia”), there is another Italy that is advancing, and which will probably take over in 2023: it is that of the “hentai” category (fourth place in the national ranking) and transgender, present both among the most searched terms and among the most clicked, and among the growing trends (+114 percent). From these data comes a strong signal for the Democratic Party and the Third Pole: to focus on those abstainers who stayed at home masturbating on election day, running a Japanese transgender candidate.