CYBERSPACE – One of the world’s most-visited adult websites has analyzed its server statistics and discovered that major events in the real world can have significant effects on a popular virtual pastime: porn viewing.

“The stats show that people pull themselves away from their favorite website just long enough to watch things like the Olympics, the World Series, presidential elections, etc.,” a post on the blog PornHub Insights noted. “We can form this conclusion based upon the actual drops in traffic to PornHub during these events in different regions throughout the world. We also observed that traffic spikes as soon as the event ends….”

According to an interactive infographic presented on the blog, events can impact web traffic in some surprising ways. For example, during the Summer Olympic Games in London in July 2012, traffic from IP addresses located in the UK dropped 27 percent, presumably because the British were very interested in an international sporting event on their home soil. During the same period, American traffic rose by two percent, possibly because the American public was a bit disappointed in their athletes’ performance.

Americans reacted in the opposite direction when Osama bin Laden died in May 2011. American traffic dropped by seven percent upon the news the founder of terrorist network al-Qaeda had been killed in Pakistan by a U.S. Navy SEAL team.

“[W]hen people believed the Mayan Calendar [indicated] the world was ending [Dec. 21, 2012] … instead of trying to find a mate to share one last sexual moment with, a 10-percent spike from the U.S. showed that Americans wanted to stay in the comfort of their own homes on a solo mission to have sex with someone they loved,” the blog noted.

The stats indicated another big drop in 2012 traffic, this time worldwide: On New Year’s Eve, U.S. traffic fell 34 percent, Brazil’s was down by 36 percent, French traffic plunged by 60 percent, and a whopping 70 percent of Argentineans abandoned online porn.

The interactive infographic, which is full of intriguing details, may be found here.