A pineapple-on-pizza meme.

A meme about pineapple on pizza is eating shit.

I feel a compulsion to write about societal nuisances that upset me, but that I also feel the rest of the world hasn't noticed. Sometimes, my research brings me to the world of internet memes and youth culture. And sometimes, those memes originate from high schoolers.

I understand that the optics of "going after" a high schooler aren't great, especially when said high schooler was simply trying to be funny for her friends — not become a piece of internet mythology. I mean, who doesn't look back at their high school selves and cringe? But in this case, the offense is so annoying, so overly pretentious about its perceived humor, that I simply cannot ignore it.

There's this meme, okay, and it's a photo of a page in a high school yearbook, featuring an alt-looking girl with a cunning smile. Opposite her photo is her senior quote: "If you like pineapple slices on pizza, I hope you like pineapple slices on your children's graves because you're weak, your bloodline is weak, and you will not survive the winter."

There are only two possible reactions to this meme, love or revulsion. I am not going to paste or link to it to avoid any iota of controversy, but you can google the description and find dozens of uploads of the photo. It circulates the internet with esteem and adoration; people treat this girl's "epic" senior quote as though it's a "mic drop" moment. Well, it isn't. If anything, it's "epically" lame. . . "bro."

First of all, there's the whole "pineapple on pizza" thing. The entire internet is absolutely fascinated with the "debate" over whether pineapple is an appropriate topping for pizza or not — and has been for years now. Rather than accepting that some people like some kinds of foods and some don't, online society has elevated the opinion on this one food preference to some kind of matter of life and death. Alright, we get it. Pineapple is sweet and pizza is savory and some people don't like that combination! Pineapple on pizza used to not be a thing, really, but now it is, and some people are surprised and disgusted by that! Others love it! Enough. Most of the adults in the room got over this a long time ago.

(Plus, I'd be remiss not to mention how everyone brings it up at completely irrelevant and unnecessary times: the pineapple-on-pizza opinion is quite literally one of the most common dating app bio topics. People all around the country, of all genders, waste fleeting first impressions on their own pineapple-on-pizza viewpoints, rather than saying literally anything else about themselves. It's a waste of the limited time and space.)

And here, from the outset, this high schooler is wasting her own limited time and space on a joke senior quote — to perpetuate a very tired, pointless, unfunny meme.

But the real magic kicker, what separates this offense from any other similar joke and why this meme is emphatically eating shit, is the absolutely excessive, embarrassing, medieval fantasy-inspired threat she makes. I know it's a joke, and only supposed to be a joke, but even taking that into account, it's cringe. And it's sad, because humor evolves so quickly nowadays that the inclusion of an entire bloodline is almost necessary for audiences to find it even the faintest bit funny.

Let's examine the quote literally, why don't we. This random young woman is speaking as if she is a Game of Thrones character. From high atop a pedestal, she declares that by virtue of simply enjoying one pizza topping, you and all of your descendants will die (and presumably within the year).

Yes, I know it's a joke. But logically, how does this work? As the quote is immortalized in a high school yearbook, it tracks that the speaker is probably addressing other high schoolers — most of whom would not yet have a bloodline of their own. She mentions the reader's children's graves, so, can we conclude that while these readers will die, they'll grow up enough to have children of their own, first? Then, those children will die too, even if they themselves are against pineapple on pizza, just like her?

Plus, it's reasonable to assume that if the reader is indeed a pineapple-on-pizza-enjoyer, they didn't just start eating it yesterday. Presumably, they've survived multiple winters of their life with the dietary preference already. So, employing the logic, the pineapple aficionados will have children (who will then die, and they themselves will also die), but not yet. Because they've made it this far in one piece. The debilitating food preference that will devastate multiple generations of a family must evidently take a while to kick in.

Even taking all of this at face value, when you envision some kind of high fantasy scenario in which an entire bloodline is too weak to survive a harsh winter, you probably imagine a shared genetic shortcoming, a mental deficiency, or physical weakness that, well, actively impedes the family from overcoming hunger, the elements, or a complex survival scenario. Simply enjoying pineapple on pizza doesn't really seem to measure up to the grandeur implied by such a circumstance.

Well that's the joke, you argue. But still, shouldn't there be some truth to it? By what means does liking pineapple on pizza lead to the deaths of an entire bloodline over a winter? Especially in this day and age of heating and insulation, ample food, medical care, and other protection? So the bloodline likes pineapple on their pizza — so what? They're not eating pizza for every meal. Nobody even said they're choosing pineapple as a topping every time they eat pizza.

And once again, I know it's a joke. But please enlighten me as to how a high schooler who has already survived at least some winters enjoying pineapple on pizza will, in this reality, continue surviving long enough to have children — but then will die? And then the children and grandchildren will also die, regardless of which side of the debate they fall on? AND WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK IT'S SO FUNNY?

You know, I think I ought to try calls to action in order to foster more engagement on my blog. So here's one: in the comments, why don't you tell me why every opinion I have is 100% correct and every opinion the rest of the world has is 100% wrong? ✍︎