In talking about online video, we can’t totally turn a blind eye to Pornhub. The, uh, adult video platform boasted 28.5 billion visitors in 2017. Not to mention that Pornhub and YouTube creator searches sometimes overlap.
Yes, in 2017, Pornhub users hoped to find some famous YouTube creators on the X-rated site. In the company’s “2017 Year in Review,” Pornhub was kind enough to share with the public not only what terms users most frequently typed into the search bar, but also which celebrities they searched for. A handful YouTube creators made the 31-person list.
At the top, the third most frequently searched celebrity in 2017 with over 9.8 million searches was Lena the plug, whose YouTube channel has over 1 million subscribers. Interestingly, her work on YouTube actually fueled people’s searches for her on Pornhub. Her video titled “Q&A (confidence, being a YouTuber, relationship advice…),” posted on December 11, 2017, caused a surge in Pornhub searches for her name that day, the company reported in their 2017 review.
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Two YouTube gamers made the list. Celestia Vega and, of course, Pewdiepie, aka Felix Kjellberg, because his popularity transcends video platforms (though he’s the least-searched-for YouTuber on the list, with almost 300,000 searches, but still ahead of Kathy Griffin). The other YouTube star on the chart is Tana Mongeau, who has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube and nearly 1 million searches on Pornhub.
The fact that Lena and Vega are among the names is no accident. Both their careers include adult video performances, something neither of them are shy about promoting on their YouTube channels. Lena posted a video to her channel last January promising a sex tape if she reached 1 million subscribers (which she has), and Vega posted a vlog last month on YouTube chronicling her first adult film scene. She also currently wears a Pornhub shirt in her Twitter profile picture.
To be fair, the top searched celebrities on Pornhub don’t necessarily indicate anything more than their cultural popularity. For instance, Donald Trump made the 2017 list with over 400,000 searches. It seems likely that his incredibly frequent appearances in the daily news cycle and overwhelming cultural prevalence put him there, as opposed to his physical appearance. And, of course, there was the whole Russian dossier scandal involving alleged “golden showers”…
Pornhub does data dives like this one every so often. This is the fifth year the company has published an annual review, and it hosts an entire blog featuring regular posts with statistical “insights.”
Other tidbits worth noting from the Pornhub review include the so-called “searches that defined 2017.” First on that list was “porn for women,” a nod to the momentum the #metoo movement picked up starting last year, and number two was Rick and Morty, the Adult Swim cartoon that took the internet by storm during its third season, which ran through October 2017.
And, okay, number three on that list was “fidget spinners.” No need to read any deeper into that.
