Earlier this week, the race for the US Congressional seat in Virginia took an unexpected turn. Democrat Leslie Cockburn shared a photo on Twitter of a previous Instagram post by her opponent, Republican Denver Riggleman, that quickly went viral.
The post depicted cover art for a book about the mating habits of legendary cryptid Bigfoot, which Riggleman appears to suggest he is writing. Although Cockburn's tweet points out Riggleman's apparent happiness to campaign alongside white supremacists, it was the Bigfoot thing that became the focus as it spread online. And whenever something is popular, you can bet that people want to get their rocks off to it.
Pornhub noticed something rather hilarious in the days after the accusation of being a "devotee of Bigfoot erotica" went viral, and of course released one of their data "Insights" posts about it. It doesn’t go into statistical depth like previous investigations (such as the actions of porn purveyors on May 4th, during the Football World Cup, and even the recent Royal Wedding) but it gives a pretty good idea of what people get curious about – and this week, it was Bigfoot.
According to Pornhub, hundreds of people search for Bigfoot erotica on the pornographic portal (something, they point out, they had not thought to look into before now), but on July 30 there was a whopping 8,000 percent increase of people looking for some cryptid action. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly as they have a vested interest, Virginia residents were 38 percent more likely to look up Bigfoot porn compared to the US average.
“The last few years have taught us to expect the unexpected when it comes to politics in the United States," Pornhub staff write in the post. "We’re pretty open-minded here at Pornhub, but none of us were expecting that Bigfoot pornography would be at the center of a contentious race for a US House of Representatives seat in Virginia.”
So is there such thing as Bigfoot erotica? Well, dear reader, I looked it up for you. I was prepared to be traumatized by what may exist in the red light district of the Internet (and sacrifice my search history), but there was nothing weird. Pornhub has only 14 videos that show up when you search for Bigfoot and one of them is a self-described "hot nerd" playing a Bigfoot videogame.
This poor show from Bigfoot almost breaks Rule 34 of the Internet (you can look that one up yourselves). Many other cryptids, like vampires and succubi, are more popular, and even putting in something like “el chupacabra” gets over 1,000 results. Clearly, if you’re looking for a niche in porn, Bigfoot is the place to invest in.
