Afrigather Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, the place we charge latest meals memes, movies, and different leisure information. Final week we mentioned Taylor Swift’s millennial-coded Milk Bar birthday cake.
If 2023 was the 12 months of over overhydration (it was), one receptacle is to thank—or blame, relying on the place you stand. The Stanley Quencher, a classy accent for millennial and Gen Z ladies as a lot as a water bottle, flooded our feeds in a rainbow of colours final 12 months, and the hype has evidently spilled into 2024. Crowds of Stanley stans swarming Goal this week to get their palms on one proves as a lot. TikTokers, like courageous Animal Planet documentarians, filmed Goal-goers barreling over each other, and we shall be getting into mentioned movies into the annals of historical past to be studied as major sources in 50 years.
Additionally this week, Sweethearts pandered to the youths with their “situationship” packing containers for Valentine’s Day, including gasoline to an already blazing fireplace (Gen Z’s fraught dating culture). The mascot at a latest faculty soccer recreation was an enormous Pop Tart that emerged from an equally large toaster, and it was edible. Lastly, a former congresswoman was discovered to have posted meals pictures that she stole from the web, and her ruse was readily debunked.
Learn extra under on this week’s meals information across the web.
People swarmed Target for a new hot pink Stanley Quencher drop
They are saying that the Stanley hype is peaking—however, oh, what a peak if that’s the case. Stanley lovers this week swarmed their native Targets and primarily leapfrogged off fellow buyers to seize the most recent drop—a sizzling pink Valentine’s Day collab with Starbucks. Their sheer agility is plainly surprising, however the scale of Stanley’s hype, at this level, is effectively confirmed by its sought-after shade drops, which cyclically promote out. Helmed by Terence Reilly, the previous CMO of Crocs, Stanley has manufactured a beast of an influencer-endorsed hype machine, morphing its bottles into must-have life-style equipment for girls. That its newest drop vanished from Goal’s cabinets as rapidly as they appeared is a logical finish to a lot of advertising and marketing calculus. As eyeballs flip away from Stanley and towards different buzzy manufacturers like Owala, it’s arduous to examine Stanley spitting out one other product to the identical degree of uproar. Right here’s hoping no accidents have been sustained within the course of. 2/5 distressing. —Li Goldstein, digital manufacturing assistant
Sweethearts is selling “situationship boxes” with blurry text and “mixed messages”
Capitalizing on the Gen Z time period situationship—a vaguely outlined, short-term romantic or sexual fling—Sweethearts, makers of these powdery Valentine’s candies with messages like “Be Mine” and “Cutie Pie,” is promoting packing containers of sweet hearts with hard-to-read blurbs, underneath the tagline “messages as blurry as your relationship.”
I’ve nothing in opposition to the idea of a situationship, however I believe Sweethearts is displaying its age with this one. Your Hinge match isn’t going to think about getting these candies a cute and foolish gesture; they’re going to get upset or anxious or begin explaining that work has been loopy these days and so they solely need one thing chill and low-key proper now and the way you’re completely superior however they don’t have time for—you get it. You’re both going to finish up collectively for actual or, extra probably, spending Valentine’s consuming chalky sweet by your self. 1.1/5 distressing. —Alma Avalle, digital operations affiliate
A former congresswoman was caught posting food pictures stolen from the internet
When you have accomplished one thing shady, the web will ultimately discover out—like thermodynamics, it is a easy legislation that governs our universe. Sadly nobody informed Maya Flores, former congresswomen and present candidate for US Home Texas District 34. What regarded like harmless if not questionably framed photos of meals that she shared along with her household have turned out to be flagrantly stolen photos from across the internet. It’s one factor to steal content material, however Flores actually leaned into it, clarifying the names of meals objects within the feedback and calling herself a “proud Latina who is aware of the way to prepare dinner” in captions. Web sleuths discovered that the fraud goes again years. Pay attention, I get it. Being a content material creator is creatively exhausting, however the answer is rarely to plagiarize, particularly for those who’re, you realize, an elected official answerable for conserving our democracy working. In the event you’re feeling sufficient strain to put up that you simply’re ready to lie on-line, maybe it’s time, as the youngsters say, to the touch grass. 4.9/5 distressing —Sam Stone, employees author
The mascot at this college football game was a giant edible Pop Tart
In what I can solely think about was some sort of intricate, public-facing immortality ceremony, a human-size Pop Tart mascot was slowly lowered into an infinite toaster at December 28’s Pop Tarts Bowl—for the uninitiated, a Pop Tarts–sponsored soccer recreation between North Carolina State College and Kansas State College.
