Porn—the solar eclipse goggles of watching-life-pass-you-by, and excellent afternoon programming—was briefly neglected by its reliable viewership as the sun was blotted out by the moon and the “path of totality” plunged into eerie twilight darkness.
On Tuesday, porn provider xHamster reported it witnessed a significant decrease in viewership during the eclipse, with traffic dipping as low as 40% below normalcy in cities where the eclipse could be viewed most completely (Nashville, Portland, etc). “It just goes to show that porn stars can never compete with real stars,” xHamster vice president Alex Hawkins said in a statement. Haha, so humble.
Anyway, now that I’ve boosted xHamster’s visibility using their dexterously publicized metrics, I’m still left burning to understand why the numbers went down rather than up. I mean, I get why people in the path of the eclipse stopped watching 13 Reasons Why to go outside, but the eclipse also potentially afforded porn viewers the rare opportunity to indulge in emptied semi-public places undisturbed. Of course there’s plenty of other stuff you could do with that special moment, but I’m just imagining, if you really liked watching porn….
Maybe I’m wrongly, wildly assuming, because I’ve been out of the country, but Instagram has given me the impression that everyone in North America was in a field or park for at least an hour on Monday. Based entirely on perception of friends’ social media posts, it seems that even the skyline of New York City, which saw something like 71 percent of the eclipse, was a hollow sham for many minutes as everyone streamed out of their offices and fast-talking work-coffee thingies to snap pics through goggled phones. My ill-informed understanding of what it’s like to work in an office may also come into play here.
Still, seems like as good a time as any—and a better time than most—to watch some porn.