At the current time of writing, some people on this wonderful planet of ours decided that they would eat tide pods because they look like some edible snack.

It’s obvious that the only thing they will be eating is liquid detergent, but people have made jokes about it on the internet, so therefore it will be funny if it’s actually done “for the meme.” While it was still around, people would do whatever in public “for the vine”; meaning that whatever sort of embarrassment and social rules might be broken during the recording, the attention and quantitative likes on the post would make it all worth the trouble.

That is essentially the main idea behind public pranks and some kinds of performance art; achieving a reaction from shocking, funny or generally unusual acts performed in public. Whatever intention the perpetrators had, the main goal is to disrupt everyday life for some amount of attention.

The idea is fine enough for people who are bored or determined enough to try stunts, but only the invention of the internet could lead to people actively harming themselves to appease an audience larger than the one around them.

However, there is something else at play here, too. People make each other do dares just to do something stupid and laugh about it, but specifically with tide pods, it’s done willingly. The only real pressure someone has to do something like that and record themselves, too, is for some kind of participation in the joke on the internet.

Everyone from newscasters to real academics have had trouble describing and figuring out what makes people act so wildly on the internet when there can be real consequences. I’m not going to act like it is a new idea, but I think a good explanation is that they simply want to be in on the joke that is everywhere.

Knowyourmeme.com can explain it for you, give you some examples and now you can understand what everyone else is referencing.

Most people are not going out of their way to eat tide pods, but referencing the joke has become the joke somehow. Simply mentioning it or mixing it with something else and understanding how the two connect is the joke.

It’s a strange sort of meta-humor that can’t really be replicated in something like standup, only reworked and mixed in with the other jokes and memes that are familiar to us.

It is curious, though, that people would still actively go out of their way to harm themselves simply for the joke. I think those people are missing the point, though, that you don’t actually have to eat them in order to be funny and show that you understand it.

To actually eat the tide pod is just taking it too far.