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Joker searches way up on Pornhub, no joke

He's a bad boy in more ways than one.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, and generational studies Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
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A come-hither stare from the Joker?

Niko Tavernise

Here's another reminder of Internet Rule #34: If it exists, there's porn for it. In the days after Joaquin Phoenix's Joker film opened, searches on Pornhub including the word "Joker" surged, the site reported. 

Watch this: Joker character coming to life in final trailer
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Pornhub Insights

Those searches reached 741,000 in four days. Oct. 6, two days after the film opened, saw the highest number of Joker searches, with 291,000 that day alone.

Pornhub also notes that Harley Quinn, Joker's girlfriend in 2016's Suicide Squad, remains the most popular movie or game character on the site, with over 10 million searches in 2018 alone.

Pornhub is the de facto front page of porn on the internet for millions. This is far from the first time it has reported on the popularity of fictional characters on the site. Rick and Morty, Family Guy, Fortnite and Star Wars have all been popular search terms.

Joker has made more mainstream headlines as well, setting a box office record for the largest October domestic opening weekend ever. Joker hasn't exactly been hailed as a sexy character, although CNET movie critic Richard Trenholm notes in his review that Joaquin Phoenix is "swaggering, confident, (and) cool" in the role.

Take heart, Joker fetishists. Phoenix has said he might be interested in making some sort of sequel.

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