Deaths from falling out of bed in the US

As global influencer marketing spending has grown, bed-fall deaths have increased with a correlation of 0.991 across six data points, which is barely enough to fill an Instagram carousel but more than enough to produce an impressive coefficient. The influencer posts, the elderly falls, and the chart connects them with the same algorithmic confidence that suggests you might also like dying in your sleep based on your recent purchases.

Influencer spending grew from about 1.7 billion to over 16 billion dollars between 2016 and 2021. Bed-fall deaths continued their steady rise with the aging population. Six data points of two upward trends produce a high correlation by shape alone. The influencers and the elderly are different demographics in different rooms—one posting content, the other posting no content, ever again—but the math treats them identically.

Six data points of influencer spending and bed falls is a coefficient with more confidence than data. The influencer markets, the elderly falls, and the chart produces a number that would be meaningless with a hundred data points and is doubly so with six. The engagement is high. The bed rail is not. The sample size is concerning.