We take a scientific lens to Google Trends for the latest wiener-y pictures.
A couple days ago The Frisky published an essay documenting why men want to take photos of their members. As a woman, I can see the appeal, although obviously I'm anatomically barred from sharing it. (And were I a politician or celebrity, I'm not sure I'd have the hubris to do so even if I could.) Even so, a hot topic at the office is whether women really enjoy receiving dick pics. As sex bloggers, we're hardly a representative group, but even here we couldn't come to a clear-cut decision.
There are, however, demonstrable trends in "dick pic" searches online– which isn't to say that we're necessarily getting off on the pictures we're seeing. For one thing, there's a sharp uptick in all Google web searches for "dick pic" around 2011, with peak interest occurring in June of 2013. (That "100" represents a scale of interest, not an actual number of searches.)
If we want to compare image searches for "dick pic" to web searches, we can see that the uptick in searches for actual dick pics has been less dramatic. Here's what it looks like when you graph peak interest of image searches for "dick pic."
Moreover, most of the interest — at least interest as demonstrated by Google, which is admittedly a regional product — has been in the United States, Africa, and parts of Southeast Asia.
Indeed, you can see that the top countries in which "dick pic" is Googled are Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh, South Africa, and only sixth– the United States.
I have no idea why this is, except that if you Google "Pakistan dick pic" you get hits like "Follow naked Indian, Pakistani, South Asian men on bloglovin'" and "Big dick of pakistani mans pics – Video Sex Archive." No political scandal. Potentially, Americans don't need to search as heavily for dick pics because they're all over our headlines. On the other hand, if we look at "dick pic" trends on a more micro level, the top cities searching for dick pics are, in order, Lahore (Pakistan), Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Delhi (India), New York, Los Angeles, and London. So although the United States isn't universally interested in Anthony Wiener's penis, a couple of our cities boast impressive numbers of searches– just not enough to make up for the rest of the country's apathy.
The apathy:interest ratio in the United States is especially clear when we break US web searches down by metropolitan area. Check out the difference between this map, by region
and this one, by city.
Moreover, although "dick pic" is the preferred term of art today, it hasn't always been that way. "Crotch shot" witnessed a sharp spike in interest in 2007. Britney, Lindsay, and Paris all gave us their best crotch shots between 2006 and 2008. (Click here for a NSFW crotch shot timeline.) The influx of 2007 era "crotch shot" searches — when most American crotch shot-ers were female celebrities — also implies that "crotch shot," though applied to Anthony Wiener today, has traditionally been applied mostly to women.
Our preference has clearly shifted to "dick pic" over "crotch shot," although our "selfie" obsession — which isn't inherently sexual — is on the rise. Some of this might be attributable to celebrity and political scandals, but "dick pic" became more heavily Googled before Anthony Wiener's scandal broke the first or second time. Although my initial hypothesis was that interest in terms like "dick pic" would follow political and celebrity scandals, it seems the reverse is true: people Google "dick pic" more heavily before famous dick pics are released. The zeitgeist predicts the scandal, the scandal doesn't make the zeitgeist.
Likewise, the rise of interest in "selfie" does parallel the American interest in selfie afficianados such as Amanda Bynes. However, related search terms for "selfie," which include items like "tumblr selfie," "instagram selfie," and "take a selfie," imply that our interest in "selfies," at least, has more to do with technological advancement (like the ability to direct your instagram camera through the front lens of your iPhone) than with celebrity gossip.
What do you think of dick pics? Do you know why Pakistan is obsessed with them? Leave us your thoughts in the comments section.
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