Incest isn’t new to porn of course. It was always a niche, slightly off, slightly problematic and mainstream studios generally shied away from toying around in the genre. But this is a wave. Pornstar Whitney Wright said: »You can ask any young female performer what bookings she has this month, and she’ll tell you she’s playing 17 step-daughters. Everybody has become pretty used to it.«
Every genre and niche seems to be affected. Gay porn f. ex. is also witnessing a surge in incest related titles. One-third of the top 10 of the most popular search terms on Pornhub is incest related:»Mom«, »Step mom«, »Step sister« and »Milf«. Only Hentai and Lesbian have higher search numbers.
What’s the thrill, why is it taboo? Nearly every state in the U.S. and quite frankly in the world has laws against incestuous relations and that is one of the reasons incest porn was traditionally banned away from mainstream porn sites and platforms. But fauxcest is a way to circumvent one of the last taboos in porn. Most of the family role-play scenarios involve characters that are not related by blood. Hence the popularity of »step mom« and »step sister«. The reason for this is not so much rooted in moral inhibitions but in dark financial realities. The porn industry is traditionally burdened by the unwillingness of conventional payment processors to work with them. No adult company can accept Paypal and all companies know all too well that toying with incest characters that are related by blood might cost them their credit card connections. But as the genre gets more and more popular, some companies try to push the boundaries and risk it.
Bree Mills doesn’t think that fauxcest has a large cultural significance though. She seems convinced that the megatrend is at least partly self-feeding: »I think [porn websites] were able to spot trends in family role play, pump out a lot of content that met that demand, and then put that into all of their advertising, which influenced what people were watching. It became a closed loop—go to Pornhub and all the ads are about family stuff. That helped propel it to the mass popular interest it is now.«
Bree Mills is enjoying the success and the creative power that came along with it. Taboos and pushing the limits are a constant motor for the adult world. According to her taboos like Fauxcest are ideal for the fantasy world that porn is: »That’s what, as a writer, is so interesting about taboo subjects. If it was real, that would be a crime; you’d say, ‘Is that person okay?’ There would be guilt. But when it’s disassociated, even if you don’t support that in real life, you want to take a peek in the room and see what’s happening.«