POV

Point of view: porn filmed through the eyes of one of the men having sex, so the viewer takes his place instead of just watching.

POV, short for point of view, is porn filmed as if through the eyes of one of the men having sex. The camera is his head: you see his partner looking up at you, his hands on a back, his cock going in. The viewer is not watching two men; the viewer is one of them.

It is a style, not a type of sex. A POV scene can be a blowjob, a fuck, a solo or a whole group, as long as the camera takes one man's place and stays there.

How it works

Most POV is shot by a performer holding the camera himself, or wearing it on his head or chest. In gay porn the camera is usually the top, so the screen is full of the bottom: his face, his ass, his reactions. POV bottoming scenes exist too, with the camera looking up at a top, and they have their own devoted fans.

The appeal is obvious. Instead of watching a fantasy, you are inside it, and the performer looks straight into the lens, which means straight at you. A good POV scene feels less like a production and more like a very personal video someone forgot to delete.

On the sites

POV grew with cheap cameras and phones, and it is now everywhere, from studio sites with a POV series to amateur uploads and creators on OnlyFans, where many scenes are POV by default because there is nobody else to hold the camera. A lot of hookup videos shared between men on the apps are POV for the same reason.

Variants and close relatives

• POV blowjob: the most common kind, the camera looking down at a man on his knees.
• Selfie POV: the performer filming himself from his own angle, often in a solo.
• Mixed POV: a scene that switches between a normal camera and a head camera, so you get both the view and the action.
• VR porn: POV taken to the extreme, shot in 3D for a headset so you can look around the room.

Related terms