Please Don’t Eat a Tide Pod, No Matter What the Memes Say

New York Magazine ^ | Madison Malone Kircher

[nickcarraway]

Tide Pods contain detergent. For washing your clothes and your sheets. Not for eating. Doesn’t matter how much they look like a snack, or a candy, or an oversize Gushers. You shouldn’t eat them unless you’d like to, well, potentially die. A child might not know better, so you should probably keep them out of reach of little hands — these things have killed before — for safety. (Or just buy some boring, cheaper, non-pod detergent. It works better anyway.) If you, after all of this, are still looking at a Tide Pod and thinking, Maybe just a little bit … you definitely shouldn’t go on Twitter today. Tide Pod–eating, a long-running internet joke, has reached something of a fever pitch this December.

The earliest origins of the Tide Pods–as–food bit date back to an internet forum in 2013, according to Know Your Meme. The topic of said forum, however, was less about Tide Pods as a delicious snack and more about old people and kids accidentally eating them. In the years following, sites like College Humor and the Onion both created content around the idea of edible laundry pods. See here: “Don’t Eat the Laundry Pods” from last March. Communities of people — on Twitter and Reddit — have since become very into talking about eating, or how badly they want to eat, Tide Pods. (I’m assuming that very few to none make good on these conversations, given the whole Tide Pods are poison thing.)

This December, there have been a number of viral tweets about Tide Pod–consumption that seem likely to have been the impetus for the detergent renaissance this week. The most important being a person who tweeted at Gushers on the day after Christmas with something “very important” to tell them. They sent a DM asking if Gushers would consider making a fruit snack shaped like a Tide Pod — which is a great idea if you ask me — so all of the would-be Tide Pod–munchers could satisfy their pod hunger. Gushers blocked the user after receiving the DM.

If anybody knows a gummy company looking for a hot new product, I think we might be onto something here. And again … don’t eat the dang Tide Pods. Though if you do, please have somebody film you and send us the video.

[Tax-chick]

For me, Purex is currently the cheapest. However, it could go back to Arm & Hammer any time. I check every time I shop.

[rlmorel]

That IS a good idea...I think the libs would be horrified that we would find it funny though!

But hey, we know...kids do that!

(maybe they could do that where it is adults doing it with kids reading the script like this How kids would do a job interview!

[Hot Tabasco]

Thank God they weren’t available when i was growing up, my mother only used bars of soap in my mouth........

[PJ-Comix]

I love Tide Pods. Why? Because via coupons I get them real cheap. Usually for only a couple of bucks for a 16 pack bag. Sometimes I get them for 99 cents per bag.

The first time I got Tide Pods, my wife complained that they weren't big enough. After some questioning I found out that she took a knife, cut the Pod open, and poured the liquid into the washing machine. I told her that you are supposed to use the ENTIRE pod but she didn't believe me even after I explained that the outer solid covering dissolves and contains cleaners. Finally, I did convince her to toss the entire pod into the washing machine.