Myspace monthly unique visitors

It is a curious fact, and one that ought to trouble us deeply if we were the sort of creatures who were easily troubled, that the number of people logging into a social network to share photos of their lunch moved in almost perfect synchronisation with the approval rating of a man in Moscow for eight consecutive years. One might imagine the universe is either considerably smaller than we thought, or considerably more indifferent to what we imagine about it.

The truth, which is only slightly less absurd, likely involves the simple fact that both metrics were riding the same economic wave. Between 2005 and 2012, Russia was experiencing an oil-fuelled boom—the kind that puts money in ordinary people's pockets and makes them feel, temporarily, that things are going rather well. The same years saw the internet penetration in Russia and Eastern Europe accelerate at a rate that would make your head spin; we're talking about going from roughly 20 percent connectivity to over 40 percent in a region of 150 million people. As broadband reached provincial towns and teenagers discovered they could waste time online instead of staring at walls, MySpace grew. As oil prices climbed and Putin presided over rising living standards, he looked rather good on television. It was almost certainly the same underlying prosperity moving both needles.

Which is to say, we've discovered that two completely unrelated things both respond to economic optimism, which is either the least surprising finding in statistical history or a reminder that correlation doesn't care how little sense it makes. The real miracle is that someone bothered to check. Two dots, eight years, one fever dream of data.