Basic Trope: Telepaths are constantly picking up people's sex thoughts.
- Straight: Bob gets mind-reading powers and finds out that people really do think about sex once every three seconds.
- Exaggerated: Bob is beset by a constant stream of Filth he can't shut out.
- Downplayed: Bob only picks up the odd sexy thought, but always finds it embarrassing.
- Justified:
- Bob has no conscious control over which thoughts he picks up, and as such his power tends to be hijacked by his baser instincts. His Dirty Mind Reading is essentially a psychic version of Distracted by the Sexy.
- Bob is reading the thoughts of hormonally-charged teens.
- Sexual thoughts tend to be both "louder" than other everyday thoughts and pretty common.
- Inverted: Bob uses his telepathic abilities to project sexual thoughts into others' heads.
- Subverted: Bob reads something which sounds absolutely filthy, but turns out to be Innocent Innuendo.
- Double Subverted: ...and then reads "Phew, I think he fell for it. Oh God, I Forgot About the Mind Reader!"
- Parodied:
- Bob ends up grossed out from hearing thoughts involving literal filth and poor hygiene habits. It works on a perfectly innocent level and is a Parental Bonus.
- Your Normal IS Our Taboo is in effect, and Bob is tormented by lurid images of ...people eating with forks!
- Bob encounters a nun with a particularly interesting private life, and then suddenly slaps her, saying "You pervert! Shame on you!" Hilarity Ensues due to the surrounding Muggles lacking the context for his actions...
- Zig Zagged: Bob has grown up with this power all his life, and no longer finds it remotely embarrassing when he picks up on stray sexy thoughts. However, he's still human, and when he's in the mood he tends to idly surf around until he finds something juicy. When his friends find out about this they're horrified at the invasion of privacy, pointing out that it's almost literally Mind Rape (or at the very least Mind Voyeurism) Feeling guilty, he suddenly becomes very aware of people's more intimate thoughts, which just makes him pick up on them even more often.
- Averted: Bob can seek out exactly the information he wants from someone's Neuro-Vault, bypassing the Fort Knox-sized "Sex" wing. Unless that's what he's after.
- Enforced: It's a porn film about telepaths, what did you expect?
- Lampshaded: "Dear God, do people never think of anything except sex?"
- Invoked: Bob deliberately tunes into people's sexual fantasies.
- Exploited:
- Bob finds it extremely easy to track down people who share his more peculiar fetishes. And there's all that Sex by Proxy. And the feedback loops are intense...
- One of Bob's enemies intentionally thinks about sex in order to distract Bob or otherwise sabotage him.
- Alice tries to seduce Bob by thinking sexy thoughts in his presence (though of course, he's also aware of her thoughts about trying to seduce him by thinking sexy thoughts in his presence...)
- Alice thinks dirty thoughts whenever she thinks a telepathy is around, knowing that any reaction would give them away.
- Defied: Alice tries desperately to Think Unsexy Thoughts when Bob is around, as a form of Psychic Static.
- Discussed: "I'd never want to be a telepath. You'd just hear everyone's most disgusting fantasies..."
- Conversed: "Ugh, how is that any different to peeping through people's bedroom windows? And don't tell me he has no control over what he reads, or he'd never get anything but white noise."
- Played For Laughs: Bob's seen so much filth he thinks that Alice cannot surprise him with her kinks. He's wrong.
- Played For Drama: Bob is a telepathic survivor of sexual abuse who can't turn off his mind reading. The common sexual thoughts bring up some very traumatic memories.
- Implied: Bob is idly resting on the train, then suddenly starts, and looks around while suddenly very flushed. We know Bob is telepathic, but we never see what thoughts he was scrying on...
- Deconstructed: Bob is disgusted by people's sexual desires and it causes him to dislike people.
- Reconstructed: Bob gets used to people's odd desires, and it stops being a problem.
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