Study Shows the Internet Is Way Hornier Than Usual

It’s not just you, the internet really is hornier these days. Between quarantine-inspired boredom, stress, sexual dry spells with no end in sight and a lack of moderators to carry out the noble quest of policing every last female-presenting nipple on Instagram, COVID-19 has drastically restructured the rules of internet horniness — and it shows.

While anecdotal evidence of increasing horniness on main has been mounting for weeks, the good folks over at social media management firm Khoros have the numbers to prove it, with everything from thirsty tweets to suggestive emoji use on the rise. According to the data, tweets featuring the magic formula of terms like “nudes” and “dick pics” paired with “coronavirus” increased 384 percent from the beginning of March to April, which Forbes speculates may suggest a spike in sexting is also afoot. (You don’t say?)

The Khoros data also found that Twitter has become a veritable farmer’s market of horny emoji, with eggplants and peaches as far as the eye can see. According to the data, use of those suggestive fruits has increased 46 percent on the platform since a pandemic locked us all in our homes with nothing to do but take out our sexual frustration on the internet.

While ordinarily such unbridled displays of horniness would be cause for ridicule, they’re permissible, nay celebrated, in the age of quarantine internet. “It’s in some ways safer to express one’s sexuality on the Internet,” Dr. Helen Fisher, Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute, told Forbes. “We can’t meet in person. This gives people a sense of freedom.”

But you’ll have to act fast, because according to Fisher, this horniness window won’t last forever. “The expression of sexual desires on the Internet will no longer be innocuous, once we can again meet in person,” she told Forbes.

Don’t wait. Go forth and be horny on main while you can.

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