How Freaky Are You? Studying 14,000 Anonymous People's Freak

Note: This article was previously published at 1,030 results, and has been updated with new freaky data

I built a quiz called “How Much of a Freak Are You?” because I’m fascinated by the phrase ‘match my freak’. How do we qualify how freaky someone is? Is it by their fantasies or their everyday behavior? I finally decided on a survey with 100 sex acts, from hair pulling to chastity, that compares your level of ‘freaky’ with the entire population of the survey.

Over 14,000 people took it this time, and 3,420 of them checked a box before starting that opted them out of the dataset. They could still take the quiz and see their score, but their answers weren’t saved. The remaining 10,990 gave me a fascinating look into their sex lives, in aggregate. The survey included 4,236 men, 4,657 women and 2,097 non-binary people. Here are some of my most interesting findings. As you read the results, keep in mind that these participants all found the survey through my kink-heavy Substack and Twitter accounts, so it probably skews freakier than the average population.

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The survey includes both ‘vanilla’ sex acts, and much less common, more kinky acts. The top five were almost universal: light bondage (93%), dirty talk (92%), sex with the lights on (92%), spanking (92%), and using a toy with a partner (89%). Spanking and toys aren’t as freaky as people might think they are, and the vast majority of participants had all of these in common.

The bottom five were: scat (4%), one particularly extreme act at 17%, another at 18%, public urination play (19%), and fire play (21%). Even though these are the least common, roughly 1 in 5 people who took the survey had participated in some acts that most people would never consider.

The overall scores are close. Men averaged 48% freaky compared to the population, women 49%, and non-binary respondents 54%. Men have done an average of 52 acts out of 100. Women have done 52. Non-binary respondents lead at 56. The top acts for every group are nearly identical: dirty talk, light bondage, toys, spanking, and sex with the lights on.

The interesting part is where they split. A yes on this quiz means the act has been part of your sex life in either direction, giving or receiving, so these gaps don’t tell you who was on which end. They tell you which acts men and women have experienced.

The single biggest gap in the dataset runs the other way from what you might guess: chastity devices, which men reported far more often than women (80% vs 65%). Men also pulled ahead on cross-dressing or feminization, watersports, and a cluster of denial-adjacent acts.

What women reported more often than men: making someone cry during sex (71% vs 56%, the biggest gap on the women’s side), choking (92% vs 82%), and several intensity-forward acts where women consistently edged out men by ten points or more.

The freakiest 10% have done an average of 89 acts out of 100. That’s only 11 things on the entire list they haven’t tried.

Gender split among the top scorers: 425 men, 426 women, 248 non-binary — almost a perfect three-way tie. More than half of them (609 out of 1,099) are attracted to both genders.

At the very top, a handful of acts are effectively universal: 99% or more of the top scorers have done light bondage, dirty talk, and spanking, along with a set of impact and power-dynamic acts.

But even at 90%+, there are hard limits. 85% of them have never done scat. Half have never touched the single most extreme act on the list. And more than a third have never done a cluster of the highest-tier acts — the ceiling holds even for the freakiest people in the sample.

The bottom 20% of scorers, the least freaky of the sample, have still done acts that aren’t typically considered vanilla. This group has done an average of 22 acts each, more than a fifth of the entire list.

79% of the lowest scorers have done spanking. 77% have done light bondage. 70% have done dirty talk, sex with the lights on, and used a toy with a partner. Even the tamest quintile of a kinky sample is well past what most people would call vanilla.

If you’ve done edging, there’s an 85% chance you’ve also done orgasm denial. If you’ve done spanking, 71% of you have also done cane, crop, or whip impact play. If you’ve had a threesome, 53% of you have also had a gangbang.

The milder version of something often travels with the more intense version. Light bondage overlaps with full body rope in 53% of cases. Edging overlaps with ruined orgasms in 68%.

The average person has done a large majority of the vanilla and low-mid acts, then falls off a cliff at the mid and high tiers. It doesn’t gradually taper. Most people’s experience runs right up to the edge of the mid-tier and then stops. Two thirds of the sample had little to no experience with the high tier.

Some acts divide the sample almost exactly in half. Five acts land within two points of a perfect 50/50, including CBT (49%) and ruined orgasms (51%). In a sample that skews this kinky, these are the acts the population genuinely can't agree on: for every person who's done them, there's another who hasn't.

Seventeen people said yes to all 100 acts. Six were women, seven were men, four were non-binary. Fifty people said yes to zero, 26 of them men, who somehow found their way to my little quiz and then reported doing none of it.

Most of you are somewhere between those extremes. You’ve done an average of 53 things. You’ve done bondage, spanking, and edging, and asked permission to cum. If you’re a woman, biting and scratching are almost certainly part of your sex life already, and you’re more likely than a man to have made someone cry. If you’re a man, you’re more likely to have tried a chastity device than she is.

I built this quiz to find out how freaky people actually are, and this time nearly 11,000 people told me. This isn’t about what they fantasize about or what they’d consider with the right person, but what has actually happened in their sex lives. The clearest thing the data shows is that there is no universal line between vanilla and freaky. The top five acts are near-universal. The bottom five are uncommon, but still very much present. Everything in between is a mess of individual preference that doesn’t sort neatly into categories, genders, or tiers.