I am old enough to remember the cultural overreaction to "foodies," which coincided with the cultural overraction to "metrosexuals." Every single time you might have went on :reddit-logo: after that and saw some :le-pol-face: fantasizing about brutalizing or murdering overweight people in one thread while in another thread talking about how mantastic his bacon on bacon sandwich with bacon bits stuffed with mac and cheese and soaked in maple syrup has renewed his "man card," well, all of those :brainworms: started with Epic Meal Time.

Industrial demand and industrial output of factory-farmed processed meat products spiked steeply and the plateau after the spike remained significantly higher after that cultural disease broke out. Bacon used to be that thing that people had two strips of next to some eggs and hash browns and pancakes, but all of the phantasmagoria you see stoked and perpetuated by the Wendy's brand, where they hypersexualized and slightly aged up a little girl to be a blood soaked carnist that would make :jordan-eboy-peterson: proud, all of that started with Epic Meal Time. :agony-consuming:

It may be a looser correlation, but that show's start and peak of popularity also seems to coincide with the modern age of Funko Pops and what I call Bazinga Brain, the consumption as identity wrapped in a false veil of irony to hide just how childish it all is. It's why a meme car company lead by a self described "meme necromancer" :cringe: that peddles toy flamethrowers to manchildren can have a fraction of the output of its competitors and the cars can be shoddy by all modern metrics but that same company is also the highest valuated car company in the world. :stonks-up:

I blame Epic Meal Time for hellworld. Fuck Epic Meal Time. :rage-cry:

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. :rat-salute: