Time asks probing questions of the the researchers who studied all the porn on the internet:
Why did you decide to analyze online porn searches?
I’m a computational neuroscientist. I view the mind as software. Most computational neuroscientists study higher functions like memory, language and vision. We wanted to apply the same techniques to a lower part of the brain, the sexual part.
So is “Rule 34” true — that if you can imagine it, there’s porn of it?
When we first started, Rule 34 was almost a guiding idea. The Internet has every kind of imaginable porn; searches are going to reflect immense diversity. We quickly realized that [the data] didn’t really support that.
Even though you can find an instance of any kind of porn you can imagine, people search for and spend money and time on 20 sexual interests, which account for 80% of all porn. The top five are youth, gays, [sexy mothers], breasts and cheating wives.
Why are cheating wives so popular? You’d expect that would not be something men would like to think about.
It’s one of the top interests all around the world. Men are wired to be sexually jealous. And, certainly, men can fly into murderous rages, but simultaneously they’re also sexually aroused.
This is an example of what biologists call a sperm competition cue….
More fascinating insights at the link.