Monday 21 March 2011

Sex, Sports and Sand....

I've been mucking about on Google trends (to the detriment of my work efficiency, LOL). What a fantastic resource this will be to future historians! I remember reading 20-odd years ago a lament by a professional historian that the displacement of the epistolary record (letter writing, I'm feeling bombastic today) by the telephone had led to a dearth of primary material for historical research. As ever, this was just as dawn was breaking on the advent of email. And with blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc... so much of the minutiae of contemporary life has been recorded for posterity that future historians will be spoilt for choice.

Anyways, I was just checking out web traffic statistics for Basel and there was this interesting correlation:


There's a mysterious gap in the middle of 2010 for hits to a well-known site for human anatomy aficionados. The lacuna coincided partially with the 2010 Football World Cup.


Nevertheless, there was still a gap even after the Final (11th July). July-August however are the summer vacation months and sure enough the search term for vacation, ("ferien" in Swiss-German and not the Hochdeutsch "urlaub"), peaks during the latter stages of the World Cup and carries on for the rest of the period.




So what would a social scientist make from this? Porn consumers are predominantly male* (No shit, Sherlock), sports (especially a once in four years extravaganza) can trump sex, most porn traffic comes from the 20-40 crowd who decamp for the summer sun-and-fun vacations,....

*on the assumption that guys are more likely to be keen football fans, just like women are in general more interested in fashion.

Anyway, in keeping with the blogpost title, just a little eye-candy...... ;-)

A team that's guaranteed to score!

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