Animal Crossing porn is going viral on TikTok, despite moderation

TikTok is home to an extremely diverse set of short-form videos. You’re just as likely to see a video praising a carpet cleaner as you are to stumble upon one of Mickey Mouse rapping or real doctors fact-checking viral pathologies.

One of the main types of content you’ll never see on the viral video platform is porn — unless it happens to be homemade Animal Crossing porn. That’s a phrase we never thought (and hoped) we’d ever utter aloud, but, uh, yeah, apparently that’s very much a thing now. Not just one or two Animal Crossing porn vids but enough that the trend’s gone somewhat viral. At least, according to Insider’s culture team.

The most explicit versions of the video — along with any links to its full version — have been mostly scrubbed from TikTok already. But the memes remain. The memes are uncontrollable.

Ankha by Ankha — The Animal Crossing porn in question centers on Ankha, one of the cat villagers in the Switch version of the popular series. Insider says (we haven’t watched the video ourselves… yet) the clip that’s gone viral on TikTok shows Ankha and the player’s character “having rhythmic, penetrative sex to the beat of Croatian singer Sandy Marton's 1980s track ‘Camel by Camel’ in a setting reminiscent of Ankha's home in the game.”

According to Insider, the full “Ankha by Ankha” film was created by someone who goes by the name Zone or Zone-sama online. It was originally posted on Zone’s personal website back in January, though it’s now made its way to sites like Pornhub, too. Some of the Pornhub uploads now have millions of views.

Uncontrollable memes — For the most part, TikTok has been able to take down the most explicit of the Ankha clips. The platform’s content guidelines specifically prohibit content that depicts sexual activities, so that, at least, is routine. One video that showed the more explicit parts of the video did end up evading eviction for two days, though, and managed to rack up more than 259,000 likes before TikTok got to it.

More troublesome for TikTok is the extensive memes now being created about the Ankha porn. Creators have taken to recreating the hip-bumping carried out by Ankha in the original video or making videos narrating how scarred they are from watching the full video.

The Animal Crossing porn situation puts on display the double-edged sword of TikTok’s algorithms. The unique For You Page algorithm — along with creation tools that encourage remixing existing videos —allows unknown creators to find popularity, but it also makes moderation very difficult. And those moderation difficulties can prove even more dangerous on TikTok than elsewhere, thanks to the platform’s overwhelmingly large teen population.