The Year Everyone Got Horny
By: Emily Kirkpatrick
Tags: Social Media, Sexuality, Culture, Onlyfans, Music

The Year Everyone Got Horny

Leave it to months of social isolation to bring out peoples’ kinkier sides online

Photo: Igor Ustynskyy/Getty Images

Though it feels like light-years ago, last January gave us the debut of Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina-scented candle, an electrifying hug between Brad Pitt and Jen Aniston, and an eerily portentous dating show called Love Is Blind. So with a lusty start like that, it should come as no surprise that 2020 has turned out to be one of the internet’s horniest years on record.

When the term “horny on main’’ first became a fixture of internet meme culture circa 2016, it was considered to be an embarrassing and pathetic quality bestowed upon those unable to keep their chaste public and filthy private lives separate on social media. When Ted Cruz’s Twitter account was caught liking a clip of incest porn, he was guilty of being horny on main. As was Pope Francis when his official Instagram account liked a picture of adult entertainer Natalia Garibotto dressed as a lingerie-clad school girl in November. And who could forget the overly enthusiastic Beto O’Rouke supporter who penned a 2018 viral tweet comparing the presidential campaigns of Richard Ojeda and Michael Avenatti to “the guy who thinks good sex is pumping away,” while Beto is more like “the guy who is all sweet and nerdy but holds you down and makes you cum until your calves cramp.” But there’s nothing like months and months spent indoors exclusively in your own company to swing the needle of public opinion in favor of certain online sexual practices formerly deemed cringeworthy.

In mid-March, as the coronavirus swept the globe, single people everywhere were forced to sound the death knell on their romantic lives as love and sex moved online for the foreseeable future. So with all of our normal outlets for pent-up libidinal energy suddenly stripped from us, a very isolated public turned to the only forum they had left after consuming copious amounts of pornography: being openly, unabashedly horny on main.

Naturally, Caroline Calloway was an early adopter of the 2020 zeitgeist of being oversexed and underserviced. The scammer and social media star decided on April 1 to pin a full-frontal nude to the top of her Twitter feed, followed shortly by the launch of an OnlyFans account. The adult-content venture appears to have been a very lucrative one for Calloway, who reportedly earned over $100,000 this year, which she used to pay back the advance for that book she never wrote.

It’s hard to imagine another point in history where a song as sexually explicit and pro-female pleasure as “WAP” would even be released, let alone become the #1 song in the country.

After months of layoffs, unemployment, and sheltering-in-place, Calloway’s not the only one flocking to start their own OnlyFans. A number of high-profile influencers and celebrities like Chris Brown, Bella Thorne, Cardi B, and Michael B Jordan have also joined the site over the last few months to share content ranging from sex tapes and charitable thirst traps to behind-the-scenes videos addressing the latest tabloid rumors.

Even as little as a decade ago, a celebrity signing a deal with an adult entertainment website would have caused a serious tabloid sensation. But it seems the country has slowly become, if begrudgingly, more permissive of A-listers’ sexual slipups and exploits. Social media has also done much to humanize these stars and influencers, making them feel like a friend instead of a public brand. Adding OnlyFans into the mix is simply another way for celebrities to turn their followers’ desire to have a more intimate relationship with them into cold hard cash. A paywalled platform of that size also gives celebrities the opportunity to dispel rumors, speak directly to their most die-hard fans, and express themselves more freely without fear of backlash in the press.

Regular folks have also increasingly pivoted their social media accounts into their own personal, much more public, OnlyFans, posting full nudes to raise funds for both themselves and various charities. According to Mashable, terms like “nudes” and “dick pics” tweeted alongside “coronavirus” jumped 384% on Twitter from the beginning of March to April, and the peach emoji spiked 46%.

With all of this newfound free time on our hands spent not making love, TikTok has also surged in popularity in America. The app has seen numerous trends shaped by the female gaze sweep the platform in the last several months, giving rise to video categories like Maid Tok, men whose entire schtick is chopping firewood or throwing clay while topless, and a flood of double-entendre-heavy content created by the floppy-haired, single-earring-bedecked young gentlemen who dominate the medium. “Accountant” TikTok has also been on the rise in 2020 — the neutral catchall profession used by a wide variety of sex workers to dole out tips about their vocation without getting flagged.

Given the litany of spectacularly shitty things that have transpired over the last 12 months, who are we to deny anyone even a modicum of joy?

However, all of the above was simply part of 2020’s grand plan to prepare us for the unveiling of the undeniable musical sensation that is “WAP.” It’s hard to imagine another point in history where a song this sexually explicit and pro-female pleasure would even be released, let alone become the #1 song in the country. The hit also helped usher Megan Thee Stallion and her particular brand of female sexual empowerment into the mainstream. As she told GQ in October, “Sex is something that it should be good on both ends, but a lot of times it feels like it’s something that men use as a weapon or like a threat. I feel like men think that they own sex, and I feel like it scares them when women own sex.”

Owning up to being extraordinarily horny on main, however, doesn’t always lead to these types of inclusive, culture-shifting conversations. This time of great sexual suppression has also resulted in plenty of people acting out and making some very questionable, if not outright bad, choices. Around May we got the unholy invention that is the A Bug’s Life fleshlight, and by October, Jeffrey Toobin had accidentally exposed himself to his colleagues after deciding he was overdue for a wank sesh mid-Zoom meeting.

But overall, our mass sexual repression and reappropriation seem to be rapidly pushing society in the general direction of increased sex-positivity. And given the litany of spectacularly shitty things that have transpired over the last 12 months, who are we to deny anyone even a modicum of joy? It’s never been clearer that everyone is simply doing the best they can while navigating historically dark circumstances. So if all it takes to keep you going is getting a little horny on main, go ahead and get your rocks off.