Are furries trying to poison your kids with detergent pods?
Update (12 Jan): YouTube removed the Tide Pod Pizza video. Here's a copy in China.
Well, if you're familiar with the concept of Betteridge's Law, then you should already know the answer to that question. Hint: it's no. However, it's certainly an odd question to even present without a reason. So why ask?
Pousta, a Spanish language news site that covers fashion, design, music, and trends, posted an article about an early “fashion” of 2018 (Spanish). It covers a recent Internet meme around the consumption of detergent pods, and particularly its growth because of a video. This video is one of a furry YouTuber named Majira Strawberry with fellow fursuiter Arrin. The video ends with Arrin cooking a cheese pizza decorated with detergent pods.
Ruining perfectly good pizza seems to be a thing furries have been doing lately. One slightly more edible, but still disturbing concoction, was candy corn pizza. Created by a furry to seemingly poke fun at Halloween putting seasonal flavors on everything, or perhaps they hoped to get the pineapple and anti-pineapplers to agree that some things are too sweet to put on pizza (I would hope). Regardless, the scary Halloween-topped pie went viral, to the point where people on the Today show gave the confection a shot. Spoiler alert, the toppings spoiled the pizza. So why are furries so good at ruining perfectly good pizza with unorthodox toppings? I blame the Ninja Turtles.
Going back to the consumption of detergent pods, though, the trend of it being a joke to eat them didn't start in the fandom, or in 2018. It started because of legitimate complaints from consumers about these chemically dangerous items looking similar to candy. According to Know your Meme, these complaints started to increase around 2012, forcing a response from Procter & Gamble to help try and inform consumers to keep these not-so-delectable items out of the reach of children.
So basically what Arrin did here was mix the viral twitter candy corn pizza idea with the detergent pods meme to create the unappetizing pie.
In the end though, it’s interesting that Pousta didn’t notice this possibly harmful meme until a furry did something with it. Since this was evolving for about 5 years, it’s certainly not a new item as the headline claims. Someone there might be a bit too into the fandom if that’s where they’re leaning towards.
Compare this to Vox’s coverage, which claims that a YouTuber doing things with it may mean the pod-eating joke is on its last legs. Furries do ruin everything, and apparently the same goes for Internet culture. I guess we’ll have to end with another question, is YouTube where memes go to die?
About the author
Sonious (Tantroo McNally) — read stories — contact (login required)a project coordinator and Kangaroo from CheektRoowaga, NY, interested in video games, current events, politics, writing and finance
Comments
I don't even know what to say. Strange that the other article apparently doesn't mention that Majira's video starts with a "do not try this at home" warning. But in any case, if you're stupid enough to imitate a video with a warning and that is clearly being humorous then its your own fault.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
What about 9 months ago with College Humor?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM6wanZOLtk
That is mentioned on the know your meme webpage as part of the 5 years of its evolution.
[comment removed on request]
To be fair... it's where I learned about the Tide Pod thing...
So it was a shot at myself as well in a way
Ive known about this for a very long time. But then i used to work at walmart and even had to change out all the clear tubs for the solid orange ones
Aww, pobrecitos! They seem to be really struggling adorably with the concept of furries.
Forbidden fruit candy making!
Not furry, but kinda amusing and absolutely fascinating.
Looks like Youtube took down the video!
They did. I've replaced it with an alternative source (which alas, does not embed well).
I see our "pivot to video" is working out for us just as well as it is for everyone else.
How about furries (who pride themselves on their supposed diversity and eccentricity of imagination) stop jumping on stupid normie memes, or is that too much to ask for?
Yes.
Oh no... this thread is now going to become a hive of scum and meme-ry. We must be cautious.
Sam and Max join the fray:
https://twitter.com/dosnostalgic/status/953843432937713664
No, Facebook is where memes die.
Wtf is this article?
"Are furries trying to poison your kids with tide pods?" "Furries are ruining pizza".
I mean come on, you can't blame furries for everything.
I do; I will.
You can blame furries for a LOT of things.
For example, I blame them for ruining a large part of the Sonic fandom. Its because they happen to like Sonic The Hedgehog but somehow feel the need or lack of a better term, the obsessive-compulsive force to bring their usual crap into the Sonic fandom, ruining most of it for the rest of us. The usual crap includes their constant personal gay drama, their constant sexual urges, and their general desire to rule over it all and be the boss.
I was never a big enough Sonic fan to be on any Sonic-specific forums or read any fanfic or anything like that, but I really doubt there's much truth to what you're saying. I mean if all that shit ruined Sonic for a lot of people so be it, but I don't believe for a minute the Sonic fandom was this unspoiled Chao-Garden of Eden until furries came along and tempted them with the forbidden fruit of stunted sexual and social development.
It's fun to imagine, though. I like to think furries were kinda ahead of the curve in digitally lewding Sonic in 1995 (at least, on insisting on an official takedown email; there might well have been stuff floating around earlier on BBS and newsgroups).
I think I am being misunderstood so here's a better explanation:
As a Sonic fan my first encounter with a lewd Sonic image was in high school. A photocopied version of a piece of art done with pencils. It was before the internet. We had no dial-up (and neither did the American public either it seems, just a few universities were connected, using expensive AF leased lines). When I got online in 1997 it wasn't long before I waded right into it. No biggie. I am a liberal person.
I didn't imply either that the Sonic fandom was unspoiled or an idyllic setting. What I mean specifically is, the kinds of bullshit that flies around these days whenever furries are involved. Its this stuff: the gay relationship drama, the shunning, the hatred, the treament of people like pieces of crap, lack of respect, attitude, power tripping Lord of the Flies style, and outright sexual harassment. That's what I am talking about.
In short, the furry drama that follows furries around, specifically their behaviour, is what I meant, is ruining the Sonic fandom. I now understand why Sonic groups on Discord, and other places, have rules specifically targeting furries.
I have no problem generally with the sexual side of Sonic or anything, hell I've been seeing it since the 1990s when the franchise was started.
Word of advice; maybe don't lead with "gay relationship drama" in your list of furry crimes.
Or include it. That works even better.
Gay relationships can be fabulously dramatic - but so can straight ones; and either way it's not unique to the fandom. Besides, the drama isn't the crime - it's the punishment!
Frankly, just what passes for "friendships" in this fandom can be as dramatic (or more) as any relationship. I think what
SonichuSonikku is experiencing here is a massive dose of culture shock. Let's face it, South Africa has really only just begun to dismantle its historic institutional homophobia. The culture itself will take a long time to catch up, if it ever does. The furry fandom barely has a presence there.Personally, I always found the Sonic fandom to have higher degrees of, let's just call it "socially challenged" folk, relative to the furry fandom. And that's why I never got too heavily involved in that fandom despite enjoying Sonic fan-art from time to time.
If there's less relationship drama in the Sonic fandom it's probably because there's less relationships to be had, because there's fewer people capable of forming relationships.
I don't think "barely has a presence" is really the best way to describe the furry fandom in South Africa. While it's true the fandom is still relatively small, it has been present for over a decade, reasonably influential globally and has a growing media presence.
There is now a yearly furry convention, South Afrifur, which, while small, is still bigger than some European conventions and has attracted international visitors. South Afrifur also featured in furry news for having the highest rate of charity donations per person at a furry convention last year. South African has had a South African developer and has a South African ambassador. Two or three members of the Furry Writer's Guild are South Africa and one South African author's work appeared in Symbol of a Nation which was nominated for both an Ursa Major and a Leo Award. There's also the South Afrifur podcast which works in partnership with Swiss furry radio station FurryFM and interviews all sorts of prominent furs. The podcast was even nominated for an Ursa Major award. And while it would still be nice to have more furs, last year South African furs were interviewed on one of the largest radio stations in the country, with around 2 million listeners, and this year featured on a television segment.
There is also a problem with homophobia in parts of the country but lets not forget that South Africa was the fifth country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage and offers full constitutional protection against discrimination due to sexual orientation.Two winners of Mr Gay World have been South African and the competition has been hosted in South Africa four times in its eleven year history.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
You're really reaching, but it's cool. Where I'm from, people do the same thing. I get why they do it, I just don't have the patience/stomach for it anymore. I used to be the same way. Then I realized I had to stop defending my country and be realistic, which most people automatically interpret as pessimistic/negative. On the plus side, it means I'm not one of these smug-yet-insecure upper-Canadian cunts who, were this the comments section of many other sites, would be rubbing your face in the fact "we did it way before you guys!" on everything from gay marriage to ending slavery to legalizing weed and all the obnoxious bullshit the more realistic Yanks rightly criticize us for.
National pride is folly when it's not fanaticism. If "leaders" like Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau should teach us anything it's that symbols of progress are nice, but they're just symbols, as are the largely toothless laws that fail to govern our crumbling world. These kids literally going on strike from school, protesters who keep protesting despite plenty of recent evidence that it could cost them their lives, okay, still largely symbolic, but much more potent than the token gestures we've been conditioned to accept up until now. It almost gives me hope... Almost.
I guess given the choice I'd rather see you be this kind of apologist than the other kinds of apologetics you've tried in the past. It's much more understandable and less cringeworthy even if I disagree.
And yet you're trying to deny where you come from? What is the bloody point though? Honestly, does it thrill you to lord over apparently lesser furries from your cold office chair in Austria? To my knowledge you're not planning on coming back so why not just do it, get the friggen passport and don't come back.
In everything I have read/seen/heard of you, you care not one iota for South Africa, except your exclusive opportunity to be the boss of South African furries. If I had the chance to get the fuck out of the shithole the LAST thing I'd waste my time on, would be the shithole I escaped from!
There's a lot less lording over than you seem to think. Pretty much none of it, actually.
Despite your tenuous relationship with reality, I am slightly curious about where you are getting this idea that I am am trying to deny where I come from. Considering I've listed where I came from on nearly all my major profiles and actively spread news of SA furs, I don't have even the slightest clue where that delusion is arising.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
It's probably that very activity that gave that perception. I admit I don't know Sonikku from a hole in the wall, but some people are just "like that", more or less. Post a bunch of news about a topic that matters to you because no one else is? Clearly evidence you're "lording over" those people the topic is pertinent to, otherwise they all would be. Just like I could say, clearly, Sonikku wants to lord over the Sonic fandom, because he even posts about it in the furry fandom, which he doesn't even like, and, OMG, didn't you notice how his avatar looks like Sonic giving a military salute?! He wants an army!
Conversely, I know you about as well as I know Sonikku, and did what he probably did, which was click and skim some of your profiles, and came to different assumptions based on my own experience. Suspended from FA for being a zoo apologist? Yeah, definitely a losing battle, but I'd be inclined to agree with the people calling the suspension dubious, because a shit-tonne of FA suspensions are.
But having been banned for bullshit reasons in the past as well as having known many others who also were, on top of being privy to some of the shit people don't get banned for, I'm going to care more about that than the state of South Africa's corner of the fandom because I'm not from there. The guy has issues of some kind besides being obsessed with Sonic, yeah, afraid to speculate too much though.
I know him from some other sites too. I had the pleasure of banning him from the South African furry forum after he broke rules, lied, insulted people and so on. He was given extra chances and banned again about three or four times for the same behaviour.
My FA ban was for supposedly encouraging illegal activities, which I did not do. There was merely discussion on whether or not it should be legal, a discussion which included several mods/admins none of whom seemed to think the discussion was out of line. The actual ban was from Dragoneer himself and I believe he used the discussion as a pretext because he was pissed off that I had been criticising FA and publishing its failures on Flayrah.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Fucking Dragoneer. I don't think the guy has ever made a decision in his entire life that didn't come down to pure, base emotion. Or necessity. When people talk about "lording over" a fandom, the kinds of shit he does is what they're talking about. When people talk about furries being authoritarian, that's what they're talking about. When you have a list of rules a mile and a half long, and none of them apply to the one making said rules, and they don't even really apply to anyone else with any consistency beyond what's consistently convenient to the one making these decrees (which change on a whim), that's what tyranny looks like.
Fun fact: FA's motto used to be Where Freedom Of Expression Rules. Sometimes I feel like the only one left who vividly remembers that period of FA. Of course, that was always naive and could never be an absolutist philosophy. But what always infuriated me was a belief that the slogan wasn't quietly dropped because of a conscious awareness of why that is as much as because people called bullshit on how little it mattered to the people tasked with upholding it.
Nothing quite as extreme as the alt-right or antifa was around yet to put the lie to that notion either, so it's not like it could be argued they didn't know as much as they didn't care.
Quite frankly my dear, I don't give one flying fuck about you or your forum that's practially one breath away from death...
Your VACation on FA is well documented and I agree with your position on that. I got to know dear old Dragoneer a little, there's not much to say that I am really glad I don't have to share a room with that guy... jesus fuck!
Where I come from, that's a salute, like a tip of the hat.
It is from the cover of IDW's recently published Sonic annual, as drawn by Yuji Uekawa.
There's a saying in English "don't judge a book by its cover" you just did that, to me.
I haven't got time for BS accusations about crap about me... Ever heard of playing the ball, not the man? Try that for a change.
While I do not like furries in the main, there's the situation that I have a number of friends, people I spend time with on a daily/weekly basis, who are furries. So to be fair to them I have to somehow walk the line of respect on both sides. However since this platform is quite open to free speech that is of course not absolute, I feel its the ideal place to air these kinds of issues.
You don't care about Rakuen? You've featured him in art you've drawn. Sure, it was just generic Sonic fanart you awkwardly shoehorned his name into, but still.
https://board.sonicstadium.org/uploads/monthly_2019_02/growlithe_slap_original.t...
https://board.sonicstadium.org/uploads/monthly_2019_02/fact-or-fiction.thumb.jpg...
And I didn't judge you based on first impressions. I still don't think I'm being that judgmental now. I've been plenty nice to you in the recent past, even made it a point to upvote posts of yours I thought were unfairly downvoted. So maybe you've said things that rub people the wrong way, doesn't mean everything you post afterwards needs to be downvoted into oblivion. But if I think you're wrong or misguided, I'm going to say so.
You kind of proved my point when you said you have furry friends even if you don't like the fandom on the whole. Well, neither do I a lot of the time. I can be very critical of furries at times. Most people don't really like most people if they're honest, they just like their friends and everything you dislike about the fandom exists in the general population, even if it's less obvious.
Be honest, how much experience you even have in the furry fandom outside of those few pretty small forums?
OK cool!
LMAO
What is unique is whining, and behaving like a 5 year old about it, in the furry fandom...
Again, you're missing the mark. Listen, there is something more or less "unique" in what ails the furry fandom. I don't grasp quite what though. I don't think any of us do, not entirely. It's probably just not possible to summarize. There's plenty wrong with the people in it. But people leave all the damned time. Or get driven out. I've watched it happen, I've participated in it, and we oust "the bad guy(s)" and feel like we've achieved some kind of victory, only for our own problems to bubble back to the surface once that initial buzz has worn off.
"Gay relationship drama", "whining and behaving like 5 year olds", hypocritical kink-shaming, blending right-wing politics with the kinds of lifestyles traditional right-wing ideologies would historically despise and suppress, championing tolerance while being intolerant of those who are intolerant (but mainly against those who point out the kinds of intolerance that the supposedly tolerant don't care about because it doesn't impact them personally)...
None of this is unique to the furry fandom! I think your online world must be pretty small or you're just new to the internet and weren't there to experience the plethora of online communities that have come and gone over the years/decades that were very similar to ours that had nothing to do with anthropomorphism.
From what I observed though, they all had their roots in fantasy and escapism and that probably has a lot to do with it. But it gets crazy when you (and by you, I really mean me) observe how similar the IWC (Internet Wrestling Community) is to the online hip-hop community (of which there is a lot of overlap, several hip-hop forums I used to frequent even had sub-fora dedicated entirely to wrestling) in its overall culture. The furry and Sonic fandoms I would imagine are much closer, culturally, than either of ours is to either of those.
I used to be a member of a few Werewolf forums, each one was vastly different from the others, but all overlapped with furries, therians/otherkin, roleplayers of various types, and there were plenty of Sonic fans in those. They never struck me as all that different. But that was a long time ago, so maybe something changed.
I just want to point out though, some furries think the Sonic fandom is especially autistic. And there's a site called KiwiFarms that would, to put it mildly, chuckle at that. So this fandom beefing is fucking retarded.
So we're unique, yet not unique? ;-)
The key issue with Sonic fans is that many of them are relatively young, and the source material is not exactly an example of good anatomy; everything else can be derived from that. Some fans transcend these factors, others don't.
Admittedly, the "unique" I describe could just be my own emotions at work. I feel like I've seen the culture of this fandom change a lot over the years (or decades by now) but I've almost never felt like it was really in control of itself as much as being a slave to the whims of the internet at large. Basically the way anything else that exists mostly on the internet is going to be.
The difference between this and other fandoms I've been involved with is that many of those are now virtually non-existent, or I'm hardly a fan of those other things anymore. So for example, I could care less that the wrestling community is made up of mouth-breathing, mildly racist knuckledraggers because by the time that started rubbing me the wrong way, I was growing out of the sport itself. I still love the concept of pro-wrestling, I just almost never love what I see whenever I get curious and watch it for the first time in a while. There's an external product separate from the fandom that if you're no longer enthusiastic about, there's not much point to keep up with the fandom anymore. Furry is more about the concept than any one product and I think that's part of why it's a little harder to detach.
Not sure what you mean about the anatomy of Sonic characters, but the age thing makes sense, I guess. I remember I used to think Sonic was way more mature than it really is, and was much more emotionally attached to it when I was under that spell.
If only we could all
see things my wayagree that it's all a bunch of cynical horse shit, all of the people who make all of these things think we're a bunch of feckless idiots who deserve to be duped and exploited, and that they're pretty much right every time we spend a dime on any of it for any reason but to look at the pretty pictures and listen to the smooth grooves.Okay, I get where you're coming from. It's frustrating. But that's every fandom, since the internet began. And now it's spilled over from the internet out into the real world. I've never been on a forum, chat room, Facebook group, or in a town or a school or a workplace that didn't have it to a degree. But some groups are a little more tight-knit and insular than others, and there's splinters of those groups, etc. There's plenty of people in the fandom who have little to no serious baggage, they're just not very well known because they don't produce much if any content, they just stick to their small circle of friends.
And a lot of the hugbox mentality of both fandoms creates its own kind of shunning and ostracism and appeals to another form of lowest common denominator. Some places you basically can't have a strong opinion on anything, you're essentially not allowed to be angry, people's definition of aggressive and hostile is what most well-adjusted people would call assertive. And what's worse is there's plenty of people who know full well what the word assertive means, and dislike it just as much as aggression regardless. A lot of the fandom's angriest, snappiest and meanest furries became that way because they were betrayed, stalked, threatened, assaulted, doxxed, randomly unfriended/blocked or banned for petty reasons by people they thought were their friends.
The entire fucking Alt-Right and its many subcommunities is full of people like this. The YouTube community is full of Michael Jacksons, 30 and 40 something glorified children's entertainers who, true to the stereotype, are basically using their channels as a gateway to lure and groom children. Another one seems to get exposed every month.
But all these people exist in the real world, not just in arbitrarily defined and self-segregated online communities that thanks to social media pretty much all blur together now. Everybody seems to know at least a few fans of something there's an entire online fandom about. To truly escape any of this shit you'd basically have to be a hermit and a luddite.
We all start our narrative abilities by playing with the characters others created, for better and for worse.
If you're trying to argue that certain people can ruin certain fandoms because of the experience of what sOcIeTy thinks and/or feels, then I have to point out that it's a fallacy to claim so as it points the finger in the wrong direction.
For example, when someone in the sonic fandom sexually harasses someone, then does that actually directly change current Sonic, the current Sonic shows, and the current Sonic games? It doesn't.
Does it make the whole fandom be about sexual harassment? It doesn't either.
Does it even make it part of the definition of the fandom? Well if I'm thinking correctly on the definition of fandom and for sonic, I don't think so.
Remember, a person's personal life outside of the current sonic franchise are not automatically part of sonic as there is a different between behavior, and the person that does it, and yet there is a difference between both than anything that isn't about any of the two.
Otherwise, many things are ruined. If so, then I guess that would mean for example the person who killed his/her mate with a pizza has ruined Italian food. But in reality, he/she just ruined that pizza slice, and his/her mate.
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