Episode 3: Eating Tide Pods

Elizabeth explains how eating Tide Pods became a thing, and analyzes media coverage of the phenomenon. This leads to a discussion of challenges past and present, and the ensuing freakouts.

Links to some of the things we referred to:

Tide Pods official webpage Washington Post article on eating Tide Pods Onion article from 2015 College Humor video Know your Meme, tide pods Know your Meme, drinking bleach Tide Pod Chan and Cosplay (Safe for work, if you’re cool with your coworkers watching you stare at anime chicks) Gronk Twitter video The Tight Ends podcast episode with Gronk's video Michelle Obama mannequin challenge Paul McCartney mannequin challenge ALS research related to the ice bucket challenge The failure of Bald for Bieber The fire challenge Jackass (which was on MTV, not network TV)

We also revisit Logan Paul (shudder), who also invaded the grownups' part of the internet this month. Here’s a timeline of the scandal.

Dec. 31, 2017: Logan Paul uploads a video of him and his friends finding a dead body in the Aokigahara forest in Japan. Jan. 1, 2018: After amassing millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes, the video is taken down. The internet is outraged. Logan Paul releases his first apology via Twitter. Jan. 1: Mainstream media picks up the story. Jan. 2: Logan Paul releases an apology video. His social media then goes silent. Jan. 3: The internet community continues to lampoon him, releasing parody videos and demanding that YouTube takes action. Jan. 9: YouTube releases a string of tweets condemning Logan Paul’s actions. Jan. 10: YouTube announces that Logan Paul has lost the advertising privileges granted to him by the platform. The sequel to Logan’s movie, The Thinning, is put on hold indefinitely.

And that’s enough of that. We talked about the Paul brothers in Episode 2 of That’s a Thing?!, if you want to go back to simpler time.

Finally, we fielded a question from Tammy, who wanted to know what teens mean by “mood.” Elizabeth explains.

If you have a question about what the youngs are on about, you can ask them on our Twitter account, @thatsathingyeg. You can also email questions to [email protected].

Subscribe to That’s a Thing?! In Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and other places that catch pods (but not Tide Pods).

The music for That’s A Thing?! is Scott Joplin’s Ragtime Dance from the Free Music Archive. Many thanks to Castria for production assistance.