The Front Page

I’ve been visiting the front page of Pornhub since I was fifteen or sixteen. Aside from a few search adventures in which I went looking (usually with no luck) for a video I remembered seeing on some previous edition of the front page, I don’t venture far beyond the “most popular” category. The front page is governed by zealous group sex and various types of clichéd taboos: stepsiblings, stepmothers, best friends and roommates. It’s hardcore but basically vanilla; as in, the acts are familiar and the participants are enthusiastic. I’ve been disturbed much more frequently by trailers I’ve sat through in cinemas than by porn thumbnails from the front page, though I generally find porn impersonal and aesthetically bereft.