Why Is Step-Incest Porn So Insanely Popular Right Now?
No one these days is going to be shocked that Pornhub.com is the thirteenth most visited website in the world. But unless you yourself watch porn, this may be surprising: when sorted into all-time most viewed videos, whether in the United States or globally, one genre dominates. It is step-incest (or “fauxcest”), meaning sex between family members who are not biologically related to one another, such as stepbrothers and stepsisters; stepsisters; stepsons and stepmothers; and stepfathers and stepdaughters (stepbrothers is also a popular genre on Pornhub’s gay videos). The count is not even close. As of January 2024, of the most popular 100 videos, 4.1 billion views were for step-incest videos and 3.3 billion views were for all other videos combined. Make no mistake, step-incest pornography is mainstream. It may even be majoritarian.
What on earth can account for its popularity? Pornography, of course, trades on the breaking of taboos. Given how powerful and visceral the prohibition on incest is in just about every historic and contemporary society, it seems we don’t have to look far for an answer. It’s the incest, obviously. But that’s just the problem: if virtually every society, throughout all known human history, has forbidden incest, it doesn’t explain why this particular genre of porn is so popular now. If the incest taboo has always been around, why hasn’t incest (or incest-adjacent) porn always been mainstream and wildly popular?
There must be a better explanation. Step-incest porn is indeed popular because it busts a taboo. But maybe the taboo in question is not (or at least, not primarily or only) incest. Step-incest porn, I believe, is popular because it violates one of the most cherished ideals of liberal democratic societies: merit and meritocracy, which is to say, the idea that power, prestige, and wealth should be vested in individuals strictly on the basis of their talent, effort, and achievement. When losers and frauds get laid—which is the bread and butter of these videos—a frisson runs through meritocracy to make the seemingly weird genre of step-incest the pornography of our times.