In news that probably shouldn’t surprise anyone, the internet has reacted to Red Dead Redemption 2 with critical acclaim, horse ball memes, and now – immense thirst.
It turns out that a bunch of you are so enamoured with Rockstar’s latest open world epic that you’ve been doing whatever you can to stay immersed in the Wild West, even if that means indulging the olden days during your solo rodeos, if you know what I’m saying.
I was making a masturbation joke just so we’re absolutely all on the same page, okay?
The handy Pornhub Insights team have reported an eye watering 745 per cent surge in users searching for steamy Wild West romps on the popular site. Their statisticians found that search terms containing Red Dead slowly started to creep up on October 26, before reaching this unsettling peak.
Not only did searches for the game itself increase, but the terms ‘Wild West’, ‘Western’, and ‘cowboy’ all enjoyed massive gains following the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Pornhub also reported that men were proportionately 1165 per cent more likely to search for ‘Red Dead’ when compared to women, and millennials – those between the age of 18 and 34 – were 9 per cent more likely to enjoy a spot of cowboy slap and tickle than those aged 35 or older.
Truly, we are the woke generation.
It’s perhaps not all that surprising that Red Dead Redemption 2’s influence should be spread into these stickier corners of the internet. The game has already made $725m in worldwide retail sell-through, making it the second biggest entertainment launch of all time – just behind Grand Theft Auto 5.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.