How it works
Sexualized imagery, presentation, suggestion, or interpersonal cueing is introduced or amplified because it increases attention, engagement, retention, or monetization.
Amplification can be editorial, algorithmic, or economic: what gets surfaced, what gets recommended, what earns, and what the product's own design encourages people to present.
Recognition checklist
What to look for
It escalates rather than sits still
The level of sexualization rises over time without a corresponding change in what the product is for.
It tracks the metric
Increases appear where attention, retention, or revenue is measured, not where the product's function requires it.
Participation adapts
Producing for the platform increasingly means meeting the presentation standard the platform rewards.
Example
What it looks like
A platform learns that increasingly provocative content keeps users scrolling longer, and systematically begins rewarding and surfacing more of it.
Sexualization Creep is a newly adopted Lexicon entry. Company assignments are recorded as CHI assessments test for it.
Important distinction
Not a moral judgment about sexuality.
CHI is not making a moral judgment about sexuality, sexual expression, or adult content. Products built openly and honestly around it are not the subject of this pattern.
The pattern concerns sexualization being systematically used or amplified as engagement machinery — introduced or escalated because it moves a metric, in products where it is not what the customer came for.