Robocalls per month in the US

Somewhere in the vast indifference of the cosmos, a universal law has decreed that Americans cannot receive automated telephone harassment without simultaneously gaining access to more cruciferous vegetables, and nobody involved in either industry appears to have noticed. We are a species that has trained ourselves to see the hand of fate in the movements of robocalls and produce, which says something unflattering about what we do with our free time. The universe, naturally, finds this hilarious.

The answer, in all likelihood, is that both trends track the same underlying force: the relentless expansion of the American economy and consumer infrastructure between 2015 and 2022. Robocalls exploded because telecommunications companies finally figured out how to monetise the void between your ear and desperation, while cauliflower availability surged because someone in the agricultural sector decided that gluten-free, keto-friendly, and vaguely trendy were the future. Both followed the same rising tide of GDP, technological connectivity, and the peculiar American hunger for things that are simultaneously healthy and convenient. To put this in perspective: the average American received roughly 200 robocalls per month by 2022, while having access to roughly 8 pounds of cauliflower per person per year available in grocery stores—two entirely separate metrics of our species' commitment to progress, whatever that means.

What we are witnessing is not cosmic alignment but rather the simple fact that many things move together when the engine of commerce accelerates, and our pattern-seeking brains are constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone. We noticed the correlation and felt briefly clever, which is perhaps the real correlation worth studying. Both datasets prove we are always finding something.