Dogs Drive the Streaming Wars
Annual Pet Industry Spending vs Video Streaming Subscribers
Annual pet spending and streaming subscriptions climbed together. We did not buy Netflix for us — we bought it for the Labradoodle. Disney Plus is canine daycare.
“Dogs are the silent majority of streaming subscribers. The Paw Patrol retention rate is absurd.”
— Dr. Fetch Binge, Consumer Veterinarian
A correlation, not a conclusion
What you are looking at is the trajectory of Annual Pet Industry Spending set against Video Streaming Subscribers. Over the years where both series exist, they happen to move in lockstep tightly enough to produce r ≈ 99% (positive). That number sounds impressive. It is also entirely meaningless without a hypothesis.
Two unrelated trends can correlate strongly when they share an underlying driver — economic growth, technology adoption, demographic change — or when the dataset is small enough for noise to look like a signal. The only thing this chart proves is that "correlation does not imply causation" remains the most-ignored sentence in science.
Treat it as a meme with a citation. Source data is from public, reputable datasets; the implied story is not.
Put it on a thing
This correlation belongs on a wall, a mug, or a t-shirt. Pick your poison:
Share the nonsense
Generate your own
Download the Stupid Correlations app to discover thousands of absurd correlations on demand.
