)The Forbidden Snack
In February 2012, the multi-national consumer goods corporation Procter & Gamble introduced the Tide PODS laundry detergent packs. This....sensation started when people started noticing that Tide PODS looks like and is often mistaken for candy. Due to its packaging, it is often compared to various fruit-flavored snack. In the internet, it is often celebrated (?) through the Tide Pods Challenge, in where people consume Tide Pods, likening it to drinking bleach and other forbidden "snack".
The Epidemic
The spread began on December 8th, 2015, when The Onion, an American media company and news satire organization, published an article regarding Tide Pods in the point of view of a child attempting to eat it. I guess the point of it was to prove how attractive the pods are, especially to children. Its color and size and how the texture of it looks like, should be enough for a child to want to shove it in their mouth.
On May 2016, Youtuber IamCyr uploaded a video all about eating Tide Pods, which has now been deleted by Youtube for violating its policy regarding harmful content. The Youtube satirical channel, CollegeHumor, uploaded a video entitled "Don't Eat the Laundry Pods" which is currently at 3.5 million views. The video just how tempted people can get into eating tide pods and the end results:
You can just imagine the response. People started uploading their on rendition of the Tide Pods Challenge. The numbers were alarmingly large, they ate tide pods raw and some even COOKED them. It's fueled by those articles that keep talking about just how good it looks to eat. According to the Washington Post, “Last year, U.S. poison control centers received reports of more than 10,500 children younger than 5 who were exposed to the capsules. The same year, nearly 220 teens were reportedly exposed, and about 25 percent of those cases were intentional, according to data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers. So far in 2018, there have been 37 reported cases among teenagers -- half of them intentional, according to the data.”
The satirical obsession began to spread, memes of Tide Pods served as actual food began to appear. U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer commented on the appeal of pods, "These pods were supposed to make household chores easier, not tempt our children to swallow harmful chemicals. I saw one on my staffer's desk and I wanted to eat it."
Tide Pod-chan
In Japanse, the honorific "-chan" connotes to a younger or cute female. On the first day of January 2018, instagram user/artist greenpantsu created an anime version of what Tide Pods could look like. Not long, it went viral and got about 5000 likes in just 3 days. More days passed and people started cosplaying Tide Pod-chan.
With the Tide Pod Challenge getting out of hand, it was starting to get serious attention from the media. News outlets are helping spread the message about how harmful consuming these products are. Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Petra Renck said in a statement, "Laundry pacs are made to clean clothes. They should not be played with, whatever the circumstance, even if meant as a joke. Like all household cleaning products, they must be used properly and stored safely.” Tide then released a video featuring NFL star Rob Gronkowski, warning people not to eat the pods.
About a week ago, a Google spokesperson announced that Youtube will be deleting any videos related to the consumption of Tide Pods. They said, “YouTube’s Community Guidelines prohibit content that’s intended to encourage dangerous activities that have an inherent risk of physical harm. We work to quickly remove flagged videos that violate our policies.” Facebook also released a similar rule, a representative said, “We don’t allow the promotion of self-injury and will remove it when we’re made aware of it.”
Ever since the meme got viral, Tide has been using their social media as an emergency referral, instructing people to contact poison control if ever. The sensation got alarming that it actually reached to the point of actual news outlets announcing and warning the masses about the consumption of Tide Pods.
Even so, I do understand that it's a meme and yea it's funny to laugh about how it actually looks like food, but to actually INTENTIONALLY consume it despite the knowledge of health risks, I just can't start to fathom how the human brain works nowadays. Here are memes related to Tide Pods:
