Ian Fortey
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If the size of the porn industry is any indication, it would seem as if humanity views all other aspects of life as distractions from what we'd prefer to be doing every moment of the day: f****n'. But thanks to the power of data, science has found that people aren't nearly as sex-obsessed as the conventional wisdom would have you believe ...
"She stopped having sex with me to check her phone!" sounds like a stand-up bit that would be immediately followed by a rant about kids these days and their Snapchats. Not only is it a boring Black Mirror plot, but it also defeats the unspoken hierarchy of s**t You Should Be Paying Attention To. If you're in the middle of sex, then logically, the thing you're paying attention to most is sex. Your Instagram follower count is maybe in fourth place, after the snack you're gonna have when the sexin' is done and trying not to fart.
Yet in one survey, 62 percent of women admitted to stopping mid slip-n-slide to check their phone, because that's how important sex is sometimes -- good, but not unread text good. And in a rare bit of men being more sensitive to the needs of their partners, a paltry 48 percent of them check their phones mid-hump, meaning it's very likely some couples just pause and maybe have a little Pokemon Go break. Is that Squirtle? You bet!
It's not just the phone that is more attractive than bumping grundles, either. 21 percent of women prefer TV to some spunk hockey, and while 21 percent isn't helping you pass any tests, it's still one in five. One in five women, when presented with the option of riding the slippery seal, just shrug and put on Top Chef.
In a separate study, 40 percent of respondents rated WiFi as the most important thing out of all daily luxuries and necessities, with sex coming in at 36.6 percent. Another found that half of women and a third of men prefer the internet to sex. So I guess I should say hello to all of the naked people out there who are reading this in bed next to a bewildered partner. And ... thank you? I think?
"Sex sells" the one rule of marketing that everyone who doesn't know anything about marketing can cite. Who cares if your cars barely work or hamburgers are barely edible? Throw some double D's in the ad, and customers will line up around the block. It's like sex is such a powerful motivator that the suckers will ignore everything else as all of the blood in the critical thinking parts of their brains rushes to their genitals. It kind of makes you wonder why people go to school for marketing at all. The only book you need on the subject is two words long.
Well, unless you've seen the three decades of research, which has proven that sexy ads don't actually do anything for sales. Advertising expert John Wirtz analyzed about 80 studies done over 30 years, and found that not only does hiding your product behind a wall of seduction not help, but it actually makes people feel more negatively about the brand (specifically, it makes women feel more negatively). It doesn't matter whether the models used in the study were fully clothed or nearly nude, or how explicit they were with the innuendo.
Sure, a sexy lady made people notice the ad -- there's no doubt a picture of cleavage catches the eye better than a picture of, say, a clown or a snail. But the whole idea that we'll then associate sex with the product, or feel sexy using it, is utter bullshit. Sexy ads had zero impact on sales, or even getting people to remember what product was being advertised. Sex, it turns out, is not a form of mind control.
Only about 1 percent of people worldwide are asexual by orientation (which is still around 70 million people, or about double the population of Canada). But then you have all the ones who don't call themselves asexual but also never have sex. First, it's estimated that 15-20 percent of marriages are utterly sexless, whether by circumstance, mutual agreement, or otherwise. Then you have to look at age. Less than half of teenagers 16-19 are sexually active, and likewise for people over 50. And it tails off after that -- there are some 70-year-old fuckmasters out there, but they're in the minority.
The point is, when you're talking about our horny as hell society, you're really only talking about a specific group of people mostly in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. And about 12 percent of women and 14 percent of men aged 20-24 -- what Hollywood tells us are the sexiest ages -- are virgins (and are having less sex than a generation ago). Meanwhile, 40 percent of women in one study prefer masturbation to sex with a partner, while 8 percent of men prefer it. Also, a Plenty of Fish survey found that 90 percent of women would, if given the option, forego sex in favor of spending all night having a meaningful talk with their partner.
And please note that all of these stats are based on what people were willing to say in a poll. I think it's safe to say that some of the guys telling pollsters they've had a threesome in the last week do not in fact even know how those work. ("What if I only have one penis?") Never discount the social pressure to pretend we're getting more action than we are. In fact ...
In my youth, I was a bit more lecherous than I am today, which is to say that I am still lecherous but more tired now. But in my 20s, you could have caught me bragging about my marathon-like prowess and indomitable stamina to people who would almost surely never have a chance to find out otherwise. I'm confident I was not the only one.
Well, here's the cold reality: The average time for a dude going to town is 12 minutes. Of course, within that average is a broad range, from the 44-minute Supermen to the 33-second hyper efficient rabbitmen. To be fair, we're talking strictly penetration here. If you spend time licking mint juleps out of each other's knee pits as foreplay, that's on you and on your own time. When it comes to straight up toad-in-the-hole action, you could very well be done in half a minute. Which is probably not the best time anyone's ever had, but maybe that guy also gives really good foot massages. I don't know because he's not me. I swear.
Meanwhile, a staggering 80 percent of women have admitted to faking an orgasm. Sometimes she's just not into it, or the angle is bad, or the cat is making eye contact in a very judgmental way. The point isn't that she didn't finish, but pretended she did. Because god forbid anyone admit to each other that they didn't enjoy the sex quite as much as they were expected to, or that they don't have it as often, or desire it as much. The moment we do that, our whole society will fall apart.
There are tons of other facts about the body it's probably important to learn in the Cracked De-Textbook.
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For more, check out 24 Shocking Statistics That Change How You View Sex and 25 Bizarre Statistics About Relationships And Sex.
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