XNXX is not just a funny set of letters, it’s a funny set of letters that you should associate with sex. It’s also one of the most popular destinations for porn-seekers, regularly placing in the top 50 most visited websites in the world. The real question, though, is how their selection of gay bondage porn is, and whether you’ll want to stick around long enough to see it.
It’s blue and I’m feeling alright
The first thing you’ll notice is that XNXX is blue. So very, very blue. Everything except the text and the thumbnails on this website is some type of blue, like an ass that’s been spanked for too long. I honestly can’t tell if this is some sort of brilliant fucking design move, or an artifact of the 90s internet and its limited experience making attractive websites. I want to say it’s the second one, though, because everything else here looks like it came on a damned CD-ROM as well: there are no graphics or icons other than the logo, and every button is just plain text. There’s even a forum, if you feel like an ass-blast from the past.
And it might surprise you nerds, but I actually like how it looks. Sure, after hours of looking at it, I’ve started associating the color blue with jacking off (which sucks, because it means that I now get a boner whenever I look at the sky), but considering that the average site is uglier than dogs wrestling in a mud puddle, I appreciate a more classic look, even if it’s a little dated. It also helps a lot that search pages actually don’t have any ads at all, so you can look at all the thumbnails of muscly, tied-up ass you want before you’re reminded that cam models and online porn games exist.
The video player is the most modern-looking thing on this website, but honestly, that’s the one thing you want to be young and good looking (other than the actors), so I ain’t complainin’. There’s a screenshot function built into the video player that works shockingly well, letting you quickly take images to download or share (because what’s nicer than sharing images of your spank material with your buddies? Send one to grandma, too). And as the cherry on top, XNXX also just lets you download any video on the site without needing a profile or email address, a feature rarer in porn than an unfingered butthole.
Prehistoric gay bondage
Now you might be thinking that this review is entirely too positive so far, so let me tell you that it’s not all blue peaches and cream. This site has been around since the 90s, and you’re going to see everything posted between then and now. A lot of the videos on here are from a time before everyone had access to halfway-decent cameras, standees, microphones, or LED vibe lights to hang in your gross sex basement. Be ready for the cleaner, more modern videos to be right next to eight second clips of cock sucking that look like they were filmed in a haunted mine.
Another way that XNXX reminds me of the 90s is how the dudes in these videos look. If you’re lucky enough to be too young to remember the era of VHS gay porn, let me put it this way: very few of the guys on here are the sleek, perfect femboys and twunks you might be accustomed to from shinier websites. You’re gonna be seeing a lot of bears, otters, older leathermen and every other variety of man-lover well represented. You’re gonna see dudes with weird shoulder blades, dudes with monobrows, and yes, even dudes with unshaved backs and hairy feet. And while I think most of us are okay with that these days, I know there are still some delicate flowers out there in the audience that might be put off by it, so consider yourself warned: if you’re not yet ready to see some tied-up lumberjacks bending each other over a pommel horse, you probably want to stay away from this site.
The “professional” videos aren’t much better, and all seem to have been recorded in the same five basements, one of which was under a Bavarian castle. The cameras are better, but that’s pretty much the only difference, and the guys you’ll be seeing are pretty much the same as the guys I just mentioned, so those of you who want a more polished video are gonna be disappointed.
You’d think that the variety of dude types on display would mean that you’d also have a variety of kinks to find, but it’s kind of a mess. There’s a lot of foot stuff (as always), but if you’re looking for full spandex, wax, sensory play, or really anything else that isn’t “Sex But With Belts And Straps Involved”, the options are dryer than a desert hooker. The dedicated will probably find something nut-worthy in the pile, but the rest will walk away disappointed.
As any red-blooded boyhole lover knows, gay stuff, and especially gay bondage stuff, is tagged and categorized worse than straight content, alongside video names that have nothing to do with reality. It’s something you’re probably used to after a lifetime of pulling your ham online, but it’s still lame when the rest of the site is such a smooth ride. But that’s not the only problem with trying to search for videos on here.
Showing its age, but not in the fun way
As much as I love the simplicity, it also has some drawbacks. One of the most annoying things about XNXX is that you can’t see who posted a video until you’ve already clicked on it. If you think that doesn’t sound too bad, just remember that where there’s porn sites, there’s gonna be losers that spam low-quality videos like a club on Friday night spams R&B – the only reason anyone sits through it is because they don’t have a choice. So unless you start playing Gay Sherlock Holmes and try to suss them out before you click the thumbnail, get ready to get regularly disappointed by the same handful of lazy video makers.
Think you can get around them by avoiding the tags they use? Wrong, fucko – the tags aren’t actual tags. When you click on a tag, that just opens up a new search with the tag’s title. Sure, it affects the results, and videos with similar “tags” are likelier to be near the top, but you’re still gonna see the same videos on the list, just slightly further down. And seeing the same videos better be a kink of yours, because there’s a real duplicate video problem on the site. This is such a basic fuckup, I’m shocked it’s still around - If I wanted to see replays of the same pasty dweeb touching himself twenty times, I’d find his fucking cam profile!
And while I complimented the site for feeling nicely old-school in a lot of ways, it still has all the bullshit of a modern website – any button on the top bar that isn’t a video search is just a redirect to some other ad-covered site. There’s an even bigger asshole move at the bottom of the search page, where you have big buttons for “Pictures”, “Gifs” and “Stories”. You expect different categories of content on XNXX? Nope, it’s just an ambush that leads you to HotAnimeWives Dot Whatever, so steer clear unless you wanna feel as dumb as I did when I fell for it. Still, these sins are pretty small in the greater porn scene, so I can give them a pass, accompanied by a smack on the ass.
Not feeling blue
It absolutely has problems, including some potential deal-breakers, but I think XNXX lives up to its legacy. There are prettier sites, there are sites with better content curation, and there are sites that put their more conventionally attractive dudes up front, but most of those also have much more bullshit than XNXX does. If you want a hassle-free experience where the most intrusive thing is a five second ad before the video starts, it’s better than most.
If you can deal with the tagging system sucking, and are much more interested in old-school amateur boning than you are in professional content, you might just have a new favorite site. The only other hurdle is the appearance, but I think your dick won’t particularly care what color the page is once you find the video you want. And in my infallible opinion, while the harsh blue colors of the website can be ugly, it’s a charming kind of ugly; the kind of ugly that probably knows how to fuck good, just like the boys you’ll see on the site.
