During a recent trip to New York City I visited the Museum of Sex, which I’d highly recommend to anyone in the Big Apple with an hour or two to spare. This small museum on the corner of 5th and 27th requires a lot of reading, but guaranteed you’ll learn something you didn’t know (and maybe didn’t want to know) before you leave. A highlight was a current installation, Universe of Desire, which is a comprehensive look at our sexual lives online. It explores the digital ways we express sexuality, and it taught me a few things:
 
1. The two top most searched porn keywords are “young” and “gay.” Not surprising, seeing as things like “barely legal” and “twink” porn are favourites. Concrete proof against bigots who claim homosexuality doesn’t exist (and they’re secretly searching these kinds of things themselves).
2. Rule 34: If it exists there is porn of it. The installation details a scenario where someone was sent dirty pictures featuring childhood cartoon favourites Calvin and Hobbes.
3. Just because you delete something doesn’t mean it’s gone. Those dirty pictures on your phone, your internet browser history, a saucy webcam session: you may have hit the delete button, but your electronic traces linger. Think of it as the digital fingerprint you leave on the world.

I also learned that gift shops can be sexy.