Christmas is a time for... (25)

Given all this talk about BDSM becoming more popular/accepted, I thought it would be interesting to conduct a mini-investigation of the trends in relative popularity of various key words over the last 5 years in the UK using Google Trends. (Yes, I was bored!) This is a summary of what I found out.

I'll cut straight to the chase: the trend is not good. My first search, for the words 'bondage' and 'bdsm' revealed a gradual downward trend. To double check, I searched for some popular terms that are related to, but not synonymous with 'bdsm', such as 'mistress' and 'slave'. Again, the same downward trend emerged.

When all of these terms are compared on the same axis, one surprising thing jumps out, and that is the relative (though still declining) popularity of the word 'spanking', which seems to be more popular than any other kinky term in particular, by quite a convincing margin. Interestingly, internet searches for spanking, along with other kink-related terms have a strong seasonal effect whereby they all peak around Christmas. (So, if you're not getting any right now, just wait and see what Santa brings! )

As a controlled experiment, I had a look to see if 'sex' and 'porn' were becoming less popular as a whole, but the evidence indicates otherwise, so it appears that people might be getting less kinky, rather than less sexual.

One interesting correlation I found was between the terms 'bdsm' and 'alt'. Since the term 'alt', as far as I'm aware, only refers (in kinky terms, at least) to one of two very specific things (i.e. the 'alt:sex:bondage' newsgroup and 'alt.com'), I had to wonder why the correlation was so strong. Given that 'alt.com' doesn't even come up on page 1 of Google, I'm surprised that there was any correlation at all. I'm afraid I don't have any theories at the moment, so 'answers on a postcard' please!

Finally, a bit of bad news for CAAN, which had its day in the limelight around the time that the CJIA was hitting the news, but appears to have fallen off the radar somewhat since then.

So, maybe it's time to find something else to make a fuss and campaign about, or then again, maybe it's time to be more worried about the world generally becoming less kinky? Who knows?

"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."

Seriously though - although some results may be interesting (especially the seasonal peaks), one must be careful when interpretting what these actually mean. E.g., I imagine people searching for "mistress" may be more those looking for some quick porn that those doing it in a relationship (not to mention other meanings of the term "mistress").

I think more accurate indicators might be the usage of sites like Informed Consent - and with over 140,000 profiles, and consistently over 5000 online in a given 24 hour period, it's still going strong.

I imagine most of CAAN's hits would come from links or coverage elsewhere, than people searching for "CAAN" (people who already know about CAAN don't really need to keep visiting the website, as there are other ways to keep informed).

It seems to me like saying that NO2ID for example should abandon their work against Government plans to ID cards, based on Google Trends of NO2ID not doing great now compared with the past.

There's also a steady decline in homosexual ... but I don't know if that means less people are gay, nor should it mean that gay rights organisations should "find something else to make a fuss about".

And a dramatic decline in Jane Longhurst - it's a shame that Liz Longhurst didn't find something else to "make a fuss" about

ETA - I suspect that most of the "CAAN" results are for James Caan, which matches almost exactly (and I wouldn't worry that more people search for a celebrity than the organisation). But CAAN does at least get the number 1 Google hit

Sign the statement against criminalisation of possession "extreme" images. Petition against plans to criminalise sexual cartoons appearing to depict anyone under 18.

Edited 28 Jun 09, 9:23 PM by emark

This is true - one can only speculate what people might be looking for when they search a particular word, but hence the value of searching for a broad range of related terms and seeing if they tally. I think the most telling thing about the trend is the fact that all of these search items show a similar downward trend.

As you say, I've no doubt that most people who are searching for these are indeed just searching for wank material; however, I strongly suspect that that's exactly how a lot of people first express their interest in kink in the first place. Surely a proportion of those who look at kinky porn will then go on to participate in real life? I know that's how I first got started anyway!

I seem to remember Google's statistics showing that IC's popularity peaked about a year ago and declined slowly since then, but I can't find the feature that showed the graph any more. I don't know if I'm just being thick or if they've discontinued it.

"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."

Edited 28 Jun 09, 9:42 PM by El_Presidente

emark wrote: And a dramatic decline in Jane Longhurst - it's a shame that Liz Longhurst didn't find something else to "make a fuss" about

Maybe she thinks her work is done now that all things kinky are on the decline?

ETA - I suspect that most of the "CAAN" results are for James Caan, which matches almost exactly (and I wouldn't worry that more people search for a celebrity than the organisation). But CAAN does at least get the number 1 Google hit

Good spot. I did wonder if our CAAN might actually be the less significant contributor to the popularity of the word overall, but then James Caan didn't suddenly come into existence in 2007, and I'm not sure why people would only search for him when the CJIA issue was in the news. :-S

Edit: Maybe looking at 'caan' with the word 'james' excluded is more relevant.

"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."

Edited 28 Jun 09, 10:00 PM by El_Presidente

Hmm, interesting stuff, I can see where the CAAN bit peaked though, it must have been those slightly dodgy pics in the papers.

**Choose Freedom** Sign up to http://www.caan.org.uk

Edited 12 Jul 09, 12:01 PM by Silent_Storm

"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."

Edited 28 Jun 09, 10:10 PM by El_Presidente

I noticed this with other terms too - e.g., heterosexual has nothing before 2005. This may be just some issue with the way they've recorded the data perhaps - I don't think we can conclude that no one searched for these terms before these days.

Sign the statement against criminalisation of possession "extreme" images. Petition against plans to criminalise sexual cartoons appearing to depict anyone under 18.

Anyhow, activism or rights issues has never been about trying to increase the numbers of BDSMers. That's just a possible side benefit

Sign the statement against criminalisation of possession "extreme" images. Petition against plans to criminalise sexual cartoons appearing to depict anyone under 18.

Edited 28 Jun 09, 10:39 PM by emark

I wasn't saying you were wrong - there clearly was an almost perfect correlation between 'caan' and the anomalous results for 'james caan'. However, if you specifically exclude the word 'James', then I suspect that what you're left with is then predominantly the CAAN that we're interested in.

It was an unfortunate coincidence that searches for 'James Caan' coincided with what I expected to see for CAAN, hence why I thought no more about it at the time.

"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."

emark wrote: El_Presidente wrote: Just out of interest, I dug out the Google site statistics again for IC. It's over a shorter period than the search statistics though, so don't be misled, although it still shows a general decline over the period since its all-time peak of popularity at the beginning of 2008. The pattern of decline is almost identical to that of Myspace

That's interesting, and would seem to indicate that the popularity of IC might be driven predominantly by an influence other than the popularity of BDSM.

Surprisingly though, the trend for Facebook is totally different (and quite striking, I might add!).

Edit to add: Maybe we've found the common cause?... http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook%2C+myspa...

"If you've got a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul."

Edited 28 Jun 09, 10:47 PM by El_Presidente

El_Presidente wrote: emark wrote: El_Presidente wrote: Just out of interest, I dug out the Google site statistics again for IC. It's over a shorter period than the search statistics though, so don't be misled, although it still shows a general decline over the period since its all-time peak of popularity at the beginning of 2008. The pattern of decline is almost identical to that of Myspace That's interesting, and would seem to indicate that the popularity of IC is driven predominantly by an influence other than the popularity of BDSM.

Sign the statement against criminalisation of possession "extreme" images. Petition against plans to criminalise sexual cartoons appearing to depict anyone under 18.