Shopping mall foot traffic

One would like to believe that extraterrestrial artists follow the rhythms of British retail, but the more probable explanation is that crop circle reporters and mall walkers are the same demographic and had the same 2020. The aliens, if they existed, were also working from home. The fields, in their absence, grew regrettably tidy.

Both metrics dropped sharply in 2020 for strictly terrestrial reasons. UK shopping mall foot traffic collapsed under lockdowns — many centres saw their worst year on record — while crop circle reports dwindled because the enthusiasts, photographers, and tourists who notice and publicise new formations were also staying home. A pattern cut into a wheat field is only a pattern if somebody posts about it.

So the correlation is less about fields and malls and more about the humans who ordinarily connect them — the strollers, the spotters, the reporters — all suddenly absent from the landscape. The crop circles may still have been out there. The witnesses were watching Netflix.