Despacito continues to accumulate views on YouTube with the patience of a glacier, and the American chicken breast continues to accumulate pounds-per-capita with roughly the same patience (r = 0.959), and between 2017 and 2022 they have risen in such harmony that one could set a metronome to the graph. The song plays; the chicken is roasted. Both will outlive us.
Despacito crossed 8 billion YouTube views during this window, still gathering tens of millions more per year despite being released in 2017; US per capita chicken consumption climbed from about 91 pounds to nearly 100 pounds annually, passing beef definitively as Americans shifted toward what was perceived as the lighter option. The connection is again the cumulative-counter problem — both series only go up, so they will always correlate with anything else going up — but also the fact that 2017 was genuinely a year of cultural saturation in multiple directions. The song was on every radio station; the chicken was in every sandwich chain's rebrand.
A song streams forever. A drumstick returns every Tuesday. Both very hard to stop.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “Despacito YouTube views” vs “Per capita chicken consumption” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
