Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Sounds like there are quite a few socks getting absolutely wrecked every year in America.
According to The Atlantic, the energy needed for the gang at Pornhub to stream thousands of smut videos for college freshmen and my Uncle Ron is rather alarming. How alarming? Well, you guessed it – you could illuminate 11,000 light bulbs and leave them on for a year using the same amount of energy Pornhub does, and that’s if Pornhub is streaming their tit flicks as efficiently as Netflix.
Using a formula that Netflix published on its blog in 2015, Nathan Ensmenger, a professor at Indiana University who is writing a book about the environmental history of the computer, calculates that if Pornhub streams video as efficiently as Netflix (0.0013 kWh per streaming hour), it used 5.967 million kWh in 2016. For comparison, that’s about the same amount of energy 11,000 light bulbs would use if left on for a year. And operating with Netflix’s efficiency would be a best-case scenario for the porn site, Ensmenger believes.
And if you think that’s insane, try taking in this stat without creaming your shorts. Pornhub’s first “Year in Review” post in 2013 revealed that guys yanked their cranks 14.7 billion times to something on their site. And that’s low compared to now, as last year alone, that number rose to 23 billion, and those visitors watched…wait for it…more than 4.59 billion hours of porn.
And as the crew at The Atlantic perfectly put it, keep in mind that “Pornhub is just one site.” Yikes.
