Fatal dog attacks in the US

As vinyl records have made their improbable comeback—rising from the cultural grave with the determination of a format that refuses to accept its own obsolescence—fatal dog attacks in the United States have risen in near-perfect synchrony. One is forced to consider the possibility that dogs simply cannot stand the sound of a turntable needle, or that the kind of person who buys vinyl in 2023 is also the kind of person who underestimates a dog's personal space. Neither theory survives contact with logic, which is rather the point.

Vinyl sales grew from roughly 900,000 units in 2005 to over 43 million by 2023, driven by nostalgia, the aesthetic appeal of large-format album art, and the inexplicable human desire to pay thirty dollars for something Spotify provides for free. Fatal dog attacks, meanwhile, have risen from around 28 per year to over 50, a trend attributed by animal behaviorists to the increasing popularity of larger breed dogs, inconsistent breed-specific legislation, and the pandemic-era adoption boom that placed many dogs with inexperienced owners. Both trends are cultural phenomena riding the same wave of disposable income and lifestyle branding—vinyl as an identity purchase, dog ownership as an identity commitment—without sharing any causal mechanism whatsoever.

Nineteen data points of coincidence between dog attacks and record sales is exactly the kind of statistical artifact that keeps this website in business. The vinyl revival and the dog bite crisis are both stories about Americans spending money on things that make them feel something, which is perhaps the most human correlation of all. The grooves on the record remain silent on the matter.