Despacito YouTube views

There is a pleasing absurdity to the notion that the world's most-watched music video and a canned pork product manufactured in Minnesota might share a hidden destiny. One pictures Luis Fonsi in the condiments aisle, confused. The universe, when it wishes to be playful, reaches for the strangest shelves.

Both lines happen to steepen in 2020 for reasons that share a single cause. Despacito's view count kept compounding as locked-down households turned YouTube into a default channel — the video passed seven billion views that year — while Spam sales hit their highest levels in decades as anxious Americans stockpiled shelf-stable protein during the first covid panic-buys. One trend counts what people watched; the other counts what they canned for later.

So the correlation is really the sound of the same spring: a household bingeing old hits and hoarding tinned meat. Neither number caused the other. A quiet pantry and a loud speaker.