Like Instagram, much of TikTok’s success is due to the presence of beautiful women on the app. These women often participate in viral dance trends, or dress up in cutesy outfits. They’re right there in front of you, posting themselves, available to respond to your comments. They seem authentic, and most importantly, attainable. They’re the girl next door, and your phone is the window through which you can peek into their bedroom (or bathroom). Now, TikTok “porn stars” like Bree Louise (who had nearly a million followers before TikTok deleted her account, likely for inappropriate content) and CuteLilKitten aka KittenWithDabs (who currently has 50,000 followers) have leveraged this appeal into an adult-content cash cow. Sometimes, the safe-for-work originals are considered erotic enough on their own, but in all cases, one thing is clear: Fans are getting off to TikTok — or trying to.
Is there porn or nudity on TikTok? Although TikTok doesn’t allow nudity on its platform, videos may occasionally slip past the algorithm, staying up for a few hours before being deleted, or are craftily framed in order to technically meet the guidelines. You can’t find TikTok porn hashtags the way smut sneaks through Instagram censors. In truth, most of the sexier content on the app doesn’t challenge the nudity guidelines. Often, the women in question are fully clothed, or at least in a sports bra and athletic shorts. But when naked videos are available outside the app on platforms like OnlyFans or through private Snapchats, fans will gladly spend their money on a monthly subscription.
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According to Alex Hawkins, Vice President of xHamster, Gen Z and young millennials are “disproportionately” willing to pay for adult content compared to previous generations, especially if the star of the video is also the one creating it. “We see the shift from studios to performer-producers dramatically changing the industry,” he says. Aesthetically, this translates to “a surge in realistic situations and more natural bodies.” In other words, more of what you might find on TikTok, albeit with fewer clothes. “We believe that consumers are much more likely to pay for performer-created content than they are traditional porn,” says Hawkins. “It feels more intimate.”
Per the xHamster 2020 trend report, “natural tits” and “real homemade” have experienced massive growth as search terms over the last few months — 200 percent and 112 percent, respectively. Likewise, amateur porn is the most popular category in the U.S. and third most popular worldwide, and within that, “‘natural bodies’ and authentic situations (such as public sex or voyeuristic content)” has grown as well.
“We suspect part of this is due to the rise of ‘real’ productions, such as independent amateur performers, paid social, performer-produced custom clips and fan-based subscription sites, where fans can see the supposedly (and sometimes actually) real-life sexual encounters of porn stars,” says the report. “Often filmed with high-end phones, this next wave of production moves sex out of the studio and into the home, college dorm or hiking trail. Expect this trend to only increase in coming years, as high-definition, easy-to-edit pro-am phones such as the iPhone 11 Pro grow in popularity.”
The nudity-filled subreddit r/TikTokNSFW is a prime example of TikTok’s porn appeal: Less than a year old, it already has over 50,000 members. Users primarily use the group to share TikToks straight from the app that they find hot, but also share nudes of TikTokers, either leaked maliciously, stolen from their paid platforms or willingly distributed.
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Bree Louise is unquestionably the star of the subreddit. First garnering popularity on TikTok for, you guessed it, her dances, Louise began creating NSFW content almost from the moment she turned 18. Most famously, she recreated some of her biggest TikTok videos with nudity. She now has an OnlyFans with more than 7,500 subscribers who pay $15 a month. After OnlyFans’ 20 percent service fee, this means she likely takes in more than $90,000 a month.
Once a clown from tiktoknsfw
Further proof of the demand for TikTok porn comes from another subreddit: r/BabeCock. The general premise of the group is that it contains photos of babes, juxtaposed with photos of cocks, in a collage (so, it’s not just a clever name). Sometimes, the cocks belong to the members of the group. Other times, the cocks belong to porn stars. While the babes are often celebrities or simply girls that members of the group know, TikTokers frequently appear on the subreddit, and when they do, they’re usually featured in video format. Men will edit the TikToks of their favorite women so that clips of them dancing on the app are sandwiched between clips of hardcore pornography: One very NSFW example can be found here.
Again, the women in the TikToks shared in this group aren’t actually in the porn; however, the juxtaposition of TikTok clips with pornography provides the viewer with the sense that the TikToker could be. This way, a fan is able to masturbate to his favorite TikToker while also getting the fix of traditional porn.
It’s unclear whether the women presented this way are aware of the existence of these videos. Nevertheless, it’s apparent that women of TikTok are driving current trends in adult content. “The appeal, in my opinion, seems to be that they’re just normal everyday girls doing normal things with a dash of naughtiness,” r/TikTokNSFW moderator LeThisLeThatLeNO tells me.
It’s not a coincidence that TikTok’s explosion in popularity coincides with the growing appetite for porn that more closely mirrors reality. After years of Instagram’s emphasis on staged polish, Gen Z is demanding unfiltered authenticity — no stage lights, no airbrushing and no expensive cameras. They want content that mirrors their own lives, spent largely on an iPhone in their bedrooms.
Is it any surprise, then, that they want the same from their porn?
The After-Dark Guide to Life in Quarantine
- Sex toys are becoming hard to come by.
- As the coronavirus spreads, public sex isn’t the safest idea — but that won’t stop this Italian throuple on Pornhub.
- A much safer option: join a 69-member digital sex party.
- The horniest podcasts you should stream with headphones on.
- Or check out Reddit’s r/QuarantineGoneWild.
- Sexting your friends in quarantine is totally normal.
- ♬ It’s a party for one / When we are quarantined / I’m getting high by myself / Back on my beat ♬
- Cruising Grindr in quarantine is frustrating when you crave real-life connection.
- You can make a surprisingly tasty “Quarantini” cocktail with Emergen-C.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
