Electric vehicles registered in the US

Between 2016 and 2023, the number of electric vehicles registered in the United States and the number of people subscribed to MrBeast on YouTube both grew at rates that would be described as exponential by anyone who passed high school math. The r-value is 0.97. It would be satisfying to report that MrBeast's subscribers are statistically more likely to drive EVs, but the data does not actually say that. The data just says both lines went up, very fast, at roughly the same time, and invites you to make of that what you will.

Both metrics track the explosive growth curves of early-adopter phenomena crossing into mainstream adoption between 2016 and 2023. US EV registrations grew from roughly 400,000 to over 3 million as Tesla expanded its lineup and competitors entered the market. MrBeast's subscriber count grew from near zero to over 200 million through the same period as YouTube's algorithm increasingly favored his production style. Both follow classic S-curve adoption patterns in their respective domains, with acceleration around 2020-2021 driven by pandemic-era behavioral shifts.

Exponential growth curves are the great confounders of correlation. When two things are both growing fast in the same decade, they will find each other in the data regardless of whether they share a universe.