Ugly Sweaters Are Dating Gold
Ugly Christmas Sweater Industry Revenue vs Online Dating App Users
Ugly Christmas sweater sales and dating app users rose together. Nothing says "swipe right" like a reindeer with LED antlers. Tinder's secret weapon is itchy wool.
“A Rudolph-themed cardigan now outperforms a gym selfie by 300% on dating apps. The algorithm has chosen.”
— Dr. Holly Swipeworth, Dating Sociologist
Why this correlation is stupid
The numbers above are real. Public data on Ugly Christmas Sweater Industry Revenue and Online Dating App Users happens to move in lockstep closely enough to produce r ≈ 87% (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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