Ben
The result of the UK’s referendum on whether it should remain a part of the European Union (for anyone that managed to miss it, the UK voted to leave) is more than just a perplexing self-inflicted wound.
OK, there are a raft of genuinely concerning potential ramifications so far – disintegrating society, a rise in racist attacks and a huge drop in value of the Pound, to name just three – but to extrapolate to less serious fallout, the vote also had an effect on the amount of porn people watched.
In comparison to normal viewing levels, in this case two weeks before voting day, traffic to porn tube site xHamster dipped by nearly a third in some instances.
At around 5am, which was also around the same time that the BBC confirmed the result, there was actually a slight bump in traffic by 5 percent more than normal, but this is the only increase across the whole 24 hours. It’s most probably explained by the sheer increase in the number of people awake in the UK at that time.
Not now!
However, it seems that UK visitors to the site had other things on its mind following the exit vote.
One hour later, traffic was down over 9 percent in comparison to a regular Friday at 6am GMT.
This became a 14 percent fall in traffic by 7:00AM and 22 percent by 8:00 AM. A decline that even managed to outstrip Sterling’s 10 percent drop in value over a similar period.
From 8:00 AM onwards, the relative decline across the day was less significant – but traffic remained below normal levels throughout and by 9pm was still 3 percent below average.
The company also broke visitors down by gender, showing nearly 13 percent fewer women visiting the site overall throughout the day (and taking the biggest decline – 28 percent at 8AM), while the overall decline was just under 9 percent.
Who would have thought that masturbation and titillation (yeah, we know, you visit it for the ‘community’ really) aren’t really front of mind while the country around you falls apart?
Or alternatively, perhaps Brexit supporters were just too busy celebrating somewhere. Though that seems less likely given what’s transpired since.
