Everything you need to know about the internet's new obsession with eating Tide pods
Rule number one is do not believe everything you read on the internet—especially if someone is encouraging you to eat Tide pods.
Seriously.
Over the past week, Twitter has been filled with people talking about eating Tide pods—those convenient liquid laundry detergent alternatives—and it's really strange but also incredibly hilarious. But, uh, why is this all happening exactly? Here's what we know.
The urge to eat Tide pods isn't anything that's new, nor can be pinpointed to just one person jokingly declaring the edibility of the pods on Twitter. It's a joke that's appeared here and there online that has for some reason peaked this holiday season. Despite its resurgence, it has been a thought lurking in people's minds since Procter & Gamble Co. first introduced the laundry detergent packaging in 2011 and changed laundry, and ultimately the internet, forever.
But before we get any further...please don't actually eat a Tide pod. We beg you. They are dangerous and you can develop a swallowing dysfunction or actually die from ingesting one. Just...no matter how tempting it may be...please don't.
A quick search on Twitter people have been talking about eating these things since at least 2012. Yikes.
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Thanks to the good historians at Know Your Meme, we can assemble a timeline of sorts of where to begin our Tide Pod lore. Our country's premiere publication The Onion wrote about eating laundry pods in 2015 from the perspective of a child, which wasn't too far fetched, considering in 2012 and 2013, the consumption of Tide pods sent at least one child a day to the hospital (the Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared them health risk in 2012).
"You see, every single time you look away is another chance for me to cram as many of those colorful little things as I can into my mouth," the imaginary child, Dylan DelMonico, wrote in The Onion. "And it’s during any of these moments, when you’re occupied by one of a million little daily distractions, that you’ll look down and I’ll be forearm-deep in the tub of pods with a whole slick of blue goo all over my chubby face."
CollegeHumor took it a step further in 2017 with their video, "Don't Eat the Laundry Pods." It's gruesome, it's relatable, and it's hilarious.
It's worth noting that this sketch and The Onion piece don't call out Tide pods by brand. Tide wasn't roped in until it was mentioned specifically on Reddit's /r/intrusivethoughts. That recieved an honorable mention in The Onion's 2017 piece on Sour Apple flavored detergent pods, which joked about the edible flavors in each Tide pod. Perhaps it was this that finally brought the Tide pod resurgence to the weird year of 2017.
Somehow in between then and now, thanks to a few viral tweets about the little packets of detergent, we have reached peak-Tide pod content. People can't stop joking about eating them—and some have even reached out to Gushers, the fruit snack company probably responsible for a fraction of this craze.
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All this to say, don't eat them. Please. Also, maybe we really don't deserve net neutrality.
