Despacito YouTube views

The ongoing conquest of Despacito over the YouTube view count seems to rhyme, for reasons unknown, with US video game revenue. Perhaps both are what happens when a controller is placed in a bored hand. The song plays. The game runs. The hand does both.

Both compounded sharply in 2020 for the same lockdown reason. Despacito's view count kept climbing as locked-down households defaulted to YouTube for background audio, while video game revenue surged as housebound consumers bought consoles, subscriptions, and games in record numbers. The common variable is the hours a 2020 household spent looking at a screen with headphones on.

So the correlation is two pieces of digital leisure, both fed by the same captive year. Background music and foreground gaming. Both on for too long.