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Did ‘Butter’ Butter Butter?
A rather scientifically tenuous investigation into whether U.S. sales of butter crested upward due to BTS’s summer anthem “Butter”
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"Hotter? Sweeter! Cooler? Butter."
Photo Illustration by Joe Rodriguez. Images used in illustration: Lee Jin-man/AP Images (BTS); Butter Stick: LEVENT KONUK/Adobe Stock
Let’s start with: Correlation is
not causation. (Listen to your imploring math teachers, kids; the ramifications of shoddy data science are no joke.) And yet, when the most popular band in the world releases a song primly named after a pantry staple, one has to wonder — by which I mean, I may have been the only person who wondered — whether it packed enough of a Pavlovian punch to actually influence purchasing patterns of said pantry staple.