Gangnam Style YouTube views

Between 2012 and 2022, Gangnam Style's cumulative YouTube views and US gluten-free product sales both grew, correlating at 0.9655. The implication that PSY's invisible horse dance is somehow related to American wheat avoidance is, even by the standards of this website, a stretch. What is less of a stretch is that both metrics describe cultural phenomena that peaked in intensity years ago but continue accumulating: the video still gets views, and the gluten-free aisle still gets shoppers. Both are monuments to the persistence of trends that have outlasted their novelty but not their numbers.

Gangnam Style, uploaded in July 2012, became the first YouTube video to reach 1 billion views and has continued accumulating views at a declining rate, reaching over 5 billion by 2023. Gluten-free product sales grew steadily from roughly $4 billion to over $7 billion over the same period. Both are cumulative or growth-from-base metrics across the same 11-year window, one driven by algorithmic recommendation and nostalgia clicks, the other by dietary trends and retail expansion.

A cumulative view counter and a growing retail category will always correlate across the same window because neither can decrease. The correlation measures shared monotonicity, not shared meaning.