Despacito YouTube views

One would like to think that the view count of a Puerto Rican pop song has no bearing on the global consumption of instant noodles, but the cosmos appears to have other ideas. Perhaps people watch Despacito while cooking. Perhaps people cook ramen while watching Despacito. Perhaps the universe is just tired.

Both metrics surged in 2020 for the same reason. Despacito's view count kept compounding as locked-down audiences defaulted to YouTube for background comfort, while global instant ramen consumption posted its biggest jump in decades as households worldwide stockpiled the cheapest, most shelf-stable carb they could find. One is a song about taking it slow; the other is a meal for when you cannot.

So the correlation is two extremely different comforts served in the same anxious spring. Background music and foreground dinner, both on autoplay. The noodles did not mind the chorus.