A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire (38 page)

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Authors: Ogi Ogas,Sai Gaddam

BOOK: A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire
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14
some users are from India, Nigeria, Canada, and the United Kingdom
Dogpile traffic from different countries is taken from Quantcast (
www.quantcast.com
).
15
AOL released a data set
You can view the AOL data set here:
http://www.aolstalker.com/
The scandal surrounding the release of the data is described in:
http://techcrunch.com/2006/08/06/aol-proudly-releases-massive-amounts-of-user-search-data/
, retrieved on August 29, 2010, and
http://news.cnet.com/AOL-apologizes-for-release-of-user-search-data/2100-1030_3-6102793.html
, retrieved on August 29, 2010.
15
“101 Dumbest Moments in Business”
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/101dumbest/2007/full_list/index.html
, retrieved on August 29, 2010.
15
the search phrase “college cheerleaders”
The expected number of overlapping searchers for “cheerleaders” and “porn” in the AOL data set: 50.3. Obtained: 382. The expected number of overlapping searchers for “college cheerleaders” and “porn,” assuming independence: 0.6. Obtained: 8.
16
we counted the search in the appropriate category
Obviously, this means there is a near-certainty of overcounting the frequency of certain sexual search categories. Some people searching for cheerleaders are no doubt searching for nonerotic reasons.
16
most popular sexual interests on Dogpile
Here is a more complete list of sexual search categories from the Dogpile data set:
 
 
 
 
18
The following tables list the most popular “erotic” Web sites
Visitor information from Quantcast:
www.quantcast.com
. Rankings from Alexa:
www.alexa.com
.
19
men prefer images. Women prefer stories.
Women also enjoy reading erotica more than men do. It’s no surprise that the eleventh century
Tale of Genji
, the world’s first erotic novel, was written by a woman. But erotic stories on the Web were initially targeted toward men, who were far more prevalent on the Web than women in the early years. See
http://www.asstr.org/~JournalofDesire/v3n2/JekyllSexStories.html
Pre-Internet studies of erotic fantasy include Leitenberg & Henning (1995). “75% of boys and only 39% of girls responded yes to sexual fantasy items, whereas 36% of boys and 50% of girls responded yes to romantic fantasy items. In addition . . . explicit sexual scenes, as opposed to romantic scenes, produced the greatest physiological (genital) arousal, women did not rate these scenes as most arousing.” “Female participants were more likely to say that their first fantasies were stimulated by a relationship (31% of women vs. 6% of men), whereas male participants were more likely to have their first sexual fantasies in response to a visual stimulus.”
Hamann et al. (2004). “Men are generally more interested in and responsive to visual sexually arousing stimuli than are women.”
GENDER DIFFERENCES ON SELF-REPORTED PREFERRED ONLINE SEXUAL ACTIVITIES
 
PRIMARY REASON FOR ONLINE SEXUAL ACTIVITIES, USA
 
19
Preferred Online Sexual Activity
Table from Cooper et al. (2003).
19
different modes of stimulation
Leitenberg & Henning (1995). “Females are more likely to say that their first sexual fantasies were triggered by a relationship, whereas males report having theirs triggered by a visual stimulus.”
19
“In the male fantasy realm of pornotopia”
From personal communications with Donald Symons and Catherine Salmon, August 2010. Based upon original text in Salmon & Symons (2003).
19
Biological anthropologist Donald Symons
Kinsey’s work parallels Galileo, who pointed a telescope at the heavens and was the first to document Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons. Kinsey pointed his survey at men and women and was the first to systematically document their true sexual interests. Symons is more akin to Charles Darwin. Darwin patiently synthesized biological data from a broad variety of sources in order to forge a unifying theory of natural selection which explained the design of all life on Earth. Similarly, Symons synthesized a diverse range of findings to offer something that was missing from previous inquiries into human desire: an explanation. Masters and Johnson also contributed to sex science by reporting on what they observed, with very little theoretical contribution.
20
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker
Personal e-mail communication, August 26, 2010.
21
our brains contain innate mechanisms designed to detect specific sexual cues
Toates (2009). “Incentives and cues associated with them (conditional stimuli) impinge on the nervous system, which triggers sexual motivation.” Also worth considering: McCall & Meston (2006).
21
“It is clear that human beings evolved psychological mechanisms”
From personal communications with Donald Symons and Catherine Salmon, August 2010. Based on original text in Salmon and Symons (2003).
22
men and women are wired to detect the same taste cues
In fact, there is evidence that men and women do differ in their relative sensitivity to different taste cues. cf.
http://carlacompanion.hoppress.com/2010/07/12/women-make-better-beer-tasters/
, retrieved on August 30, 2010.
22
how an apparent infinitude of appealing stimuli can be reduced to a finite set of cues
Also worth considering: language, which is infinitely expressive, despite a finite set of grammatical rules and a limited vocabulary.
CHAPTER 2
 
23
Researchers led by neurobiologist Michael Platt
Deaner et al. (2005). Also personal e-mail communications with Michael Platt, March 2010.
23
The most popular paysites featuring adult videos
Personal communications with Perry Stathopoulos, chief technology officer for Manwin Canada, parent company for Brazzers; Steven Yagielowicz, senior editor for Xbiz; Colin Rowntree, owner of Wasteland.com; and Titmowse, webmaster for Cozy Campus.
24
only 2 percent of all subscriptions to pornography sites
Personal communications with Mark Greenspan, vice president of CCBill.
24
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is
http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/
.
In the NSF/OIG Semiannual Report to Congress, September 2008, that reports on the investigations, all investigated employees are referred to using the male pronoun. Example: “An NSF employee continued to store sexually explicit image files on his NSF computer, despite being previously reprimanded for downloading inappropriate files and peer-topeer software on his NSF computer. The employee also sent emails from his NSF account that contained numerous sexually explicit image and video files to users outside NSF. Based on our findings and his recidivism, NSF issued a formal Proposal to Remove followed by a Decision terminating the employee. After being terminated, the employee invoked his right to grieve under NSF’s CBA, and that process is pending.”
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/oig0901/oig0901_3.pdf
.

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