Games of Thrones season 6 hit the world by storm last Sunday and it seems the world is loving it. So much so that popular porn site Pornhub, saw measurable differences in their porn consumption while the show was airing. In fact, during that hour when the premiere episode aired, Pornhub saw their website traffic across the United States drop by 4%. “Hundreds of thousands of people from America put their usual Sunday night porn watching on hold to tune in.”
In our blog earlier this year, 2015 The year that Pornhub’s stats went even more weird, we summarized the huge amounts of porn that Pornhub serves every day to the world. When you run the numbers, that 4% drop in viewing on Sunday equates to millions of viewers! According to Pornhub, after they’d crunched the numbers, “the results – especially those immediately after the premiere – were surprising.”
Of course, once the show was finished it was back on, and searches containing Game of Thrones shot up to peak on Sunday the 24th at 370% greater than normal. Pornhub gloated “Game of Thrones has remained a popular search on Pornhub due in part to porn parodies and also from fans hoping to find a glimpse of the nudity and sex that the series is known for.” I mean really, is this something to be proud of?
During the flurry after the show had finished, the most popular search term was “Game of Thrones Sex Scene” followed by “Games of Thrones Parody” and “Game of Thrones Porn.” Search terms including the names of actors or actresses in the show were not far behind. While the show was on, Games of Thrones was satisfying some people’s need for online porn. A view further cemented by data showing people turning back to Pornhub at least, very quickly after the show had finished.
It comes as no surprise really because Game of Thrones has become well known, not only for it’s great storytelling, but also for the graphic sex scenes and nudity. This is why the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in America has Game of Thrones in their sights. “GOT creators are fixated on producing sexually graphic scenes which are better suited to a pornographic torture website than the average American household” they say in their recent blog online.
“In stark contrast, films like Shawkshank Redemption and the Color Purple manage to convey the gravity of rape in a plotline without exploiting the scene in a way that is salacious, dehumanizing, or disrespectful to real victims of sexual violence or domestic abuse who often struggle to stop re-living the horrors that Game of Thrones writers so carelessly portray.”
The worry is that TV shows like this are normalizing sexual violence and using them as props for entertainment with absolutely no consideration for the anguish and heartbreak caused by sexual violence and the absolute sheer destruction it causes in people’s lives. In GOT’s case, especially in the story of Sansa’s rape last season, “Full nudity and pornographic depictions of incest became the wallpaper of this storyline, and increasingly ‘character development’ for male protagonists hinged upon degrading and violating women.”
So for me, the question that remains is, “Game of Thrones, is it really that great?” Should we put up with the sexual violence and borderline celebrate and enjoy being served up with dehumanizing acts for the sake of a “good storyline?” Here at Guilty Pleasure, we don’t support GOT at all. I know for me, as a father of 2 precious daughters and beautiful wife, I choose to say no. I choose not to watch. I choose to respect women and not follow the trend. I choose not to view out of respect for survivors of sexual violence and abuse. I choose to avoid Game of Thrones. I’ve never watched it and I never will.
Leave A Comment