A few months back, I was writing a trend piece for the Niche Porn Sites blog about the most popular porn search terms in 2018. While researching the piece, I was somewhat surprised to discover that one of the biggest trends in the adult industry right now is incest porn. I’d certainly seen incest porn before, but I had no idea of its budding popularity! This genre has experienced a huge boom in the past few years and all of the biggest porn studios scrambling to fill the demand. Given that incest is one of the biggest taboos out there, I’d always thought of it as kind of niche. So why is it suddenly trending?
Let me start by explaining that (most) films in the incest porn genre aren’t depicting real incest. The industry term being thrown around is “Fauxcest.” The characters are (mostly) incest adjacent like step-parents, etc. Porn star Whitney Wright did a recent interview for Esquire Magazine where she discussed the popularity of fauxcest porn, and why it’s so important for studios to emphasize the step in step-daughter. She claims, “You can ask any young female performer what bookings she has this month, and she’ll tell you she’s playing 17 step-daughters” She goes on to explain that scripts must explicitly state that there are no blood relations or else many credit card companies won’t process their payments.
The My Family Pies series on the Nubiles Network is a good example of the fauxcest genre. This site features videos where step sisters teach their brothers how to fuck, stepdaughters sharing their stepfathers, and stepmoms providing anatomy lessons. Video titles like “Father’s Day Fuck,” “Our Sinful Secret” and “4th of July Family Fuck” really hammer home the taboo nature of these films. The word “step” is usually used only once, whereas words like “mom” and “brother” are constantly uttered (and moaned) throughout the films. Though I will say, typically the MILFs in these scenes do look too young to be biologically related to their barely legal co-stars.
Twincest films ditch the “faucest” pretense entirely. These are porns starring real-life twins. This subgenre has been around a long time. The 1970s brought us Denise & Diane Sloan, Brooke & Taylor Young, and a small handful of other sapphic siblings engaging in the ultimate taboo. More recently, Sasha & Pasha, The Milton Twins, and Gia & Noma Hill have all done some seriously explicate incestuous lesbian scenes. They’ve done everything from sharing men or toys to (occasionally) more hardcore sex acts on each other.
On the other end of the incest porn spectrum, you have some search terms which bring to mind the incest taboo, but don’t actually imply a relationship between the characters. The most popular search term for women, according to PornHub, is “daddy.”Some women are clearly hoping to find actual fauxcest – in fact, female porn viewers seem to be largely driving the fauxcest porn trend. However, many of these “daddy” searches are for porn featuring older, powerful men and young, vulnerable girls. Another popular search term with the ladies is “dad bod,” again, suggesting that some of these seemingly incestuous searches may really just be seeking a certain power dynamic. Similarly, men searching for “mom” might be looking for an older, more confident woman, rather than fauxcest.
That said, search terms like “step sister” are becoming more and more popular. These terms are too specific to be looking for anything other than fauxcest. Why are people suddenly obsessed with these scenarios? The answer seems to lie in who is driving this trend. I already mentioned that women are big fauxcest consumers, but it’s also very popular among international viewers in countries like Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. It’s not that these customers are naturally more interested in incest than more stereotypical porn viewers. It has more to do with the fact that many of these customers are new to the world of porn. If you look at who is searching for incest porn and what are emerging markets for the adult entertainment industry, you’ll see quite a bit of overlap. The theory among psychologists is that people who are new to porn find themselves seeking out harder and harder stuff – not unlike a drug user who need increasingly large doses as they build a tolerance. However, unlike drug addicts, porn viewers usually settle into something that suits them after some experimentation.
Does that mean incest porn is a fleeting trend? Probably not. There are so many untapped markets in the world as porn becomes less of a taboo. American and British men are actually watching less porn than they used to, which means porn companies are doing what they can reach women and international viewers. We can expect incest porn and other genres that play well with these audiences to continue to grow.