PSL: The Flat Earth Recruiter
Flat Earth Society Membership vs US Pumpkin Spice Product Sales
As pumpkin spice sales climbed, Flat Earth Society membership climbed right alongside it. One sip and suddenly the horizon looks suspicious. Basic beliefs start with basic beverages.
“After four pumpkin spice lattes, 87% of drinkers begin questioning whether gravity is actually real.”
— Dr. Nutmeg Horizon, Cult Researcher
Why this correlation is stupid
The numbers above are real. Public data on Flat Earth Society Membership and US Pumpkin Spice Product Sales happens to move in lockstep closely enough to produce r ≈ 96% (positive) — a value high enough that, in a less skeptical world, someone would file a Substack post about it. Here, it earns a chart and a chuckle.
Statisticians call this a spurious correlation: two trends that share a shape without sharing a cause. With enough variables tracked over enough years, you can find pairings like this one between almost any two phenomena. Confounding factors, common drivers (population growth, smartphone adoption, the unstoppable march of time), or pure chance can all make graphs hold hands.
Source data is drawn from public datasets. We do not endorse any causal claim — only the comedic one.
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