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Pornhub 2019 trends include alien porn, cosplay, Kim Kardashian

Seems like Fox Mulder from the X-Files would like this story.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

Remember back in September, when a bunch of people showed up in the Nevada desert to NOT storm Area 51 for aliens? That renewed interest in extraterrestrials may have showed itself in an unexpected way. Adult web site Pornhub shared its year-in-review statistics this week, and named "alien" as one of its top "searches that defined 2019."

pornhub-insights-alien-searches-area-51-july

Maybe we don't want to know what's going on at Area 51.

Pornhub Insights

Searches for "Area 51" went from zero to 160,000 over a four-day period in July, when the Area 51 event was making headlines, the site reports.

Pornhub breaks the intimate alien interest down in more detail than you'd ever want, noting that the top related search was "alien impregnation" followed by the plain vanilla "alien sex." Women and younger people are more likely to search for aliens getting freaky than men and older people are, the site says.

Other popular searches that reflect trends of the past year include cosplay, aka dressing up as fictional characters, especially from manga and anime; and ASMR, which refers to videos using oddly soothing sounds or voices.

Not sure how much detail you want to know on Pornhub's year, but the highest-ranking search term overall was "Japanese," which moved up four spots to take the No. 1 place. British social-media star Belle Delphine was the most searched celebrity, followed by Kim Kardashian . And the top three countries sending traffic to the site are the US, Japan, and the UK. USA! USA!

There's much more detail available on Pornhub's Insights blog. If you dare. 

Originally published Dec. 13, 9:19 a.m. PT