Try it yourself!
October 20, 2020 9:15 AM   Subscribe

@GrippingFood is a single purpose Twitter account (and Instagram, and TikTok, and Facebook page, and (adjacent?) Subreddit) featuring before-shots of held food and after-shots of that same food after it has been forcefully gripped.

Carly Tennes in Cracked: “‘Gripping Food With Force’ Is the Social Media Trend We Deserve in 2020” (September 15, 2020)
Bettina Makalintal in Vice: “The Grotesque Satisfaction of ‘Gripping Food With Force’” (September 14, 2020)
posted by Going To Maine (33 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
They ruined the Swiss rolls! Everything else, ok, I get it, but to ruin some perfectly great Swiss Rolls? Meh.
posted by AugustWest at 9:28 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


We know you want to fuck this stuff, just fuck it and leave us out.
posted by selfnoise at 9:29 AM on October 20, 2020 [6 favorites]


Sound familiar? Like a normal, casual Tuesday afternoon? No? well, you must not be one of Gripping Food With Force's nearly 365 thousand Twitter followers.

*Fin Tutuola voice*

"It's a new party drug. The kids are calling it 'sad burrito.'"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:30 AM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]


Thanks, I hate it.
posted by Night_owl at 9:32 AM on October 20, 2020 [8 favorites]


This is such a waste. Big pass.
posted by hooray at 9:38 AM on October 20, 2020 [13 favorites]


On the one hand: wasteful. On the gripping hand: *squish*
posted by Kettle at 9:40 AM on October 20, 2020 [6 favorites]


This is such a waste.

It’s certainly wasteful, especially when we consider food security issues in the US right now and our spiraling unemployment. We could read it as a metaphor about our K-shaped recovery. And yet -the foods being gripped are I believe universally sub-$10 expenditures, and the majority are probably sub-$5 expenditures. (Maybe the pancakes are more than $10, depending on where they were purchased, and they were already partly consumed.) This is a story about food waste, but it’s also a story about the widespread availability of cheap food products that can be seen as wasteable.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:52 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


“The Forceful Gripping of the Bourgeoisie"
posted by Going To Maine at 9:57 AM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


Mark my words: There will be a feature film and someone will say the name of the movie in dialogue
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:04 AM on October 20, 2020


So it's like "will it blend" only not even in the service of some marketing campaign?
Possibly a gateway to vore/crush kinks with a side of wet-and-messy?
Tiny power fantasies?

Or just a bunch of bored people with cameras and bunch more bored people with dopamine deficiencies.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:04 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


I hate having messy hands, making a mess with food, making a mess in general etc. to the point where it's kind of a trauma response from growing up with this guy and being constantly chastised as a kid for being dirty/messy/gross in situations where I lacked dexterity with food. I wash my hands every time food touches them while I'm cooking.

Looking at the Twitter account almost felt like the weird voyeuristic state you find yourself in when a taboo rolls around to being fascinating as well as repelling. A mix of disgust fuel and exposure therapy. I think the chocolate coated soft serve one was the worst, I hate getting that shit on my hands.

Agree that the food waste is not a great look but it was kind of weirdly inspiring for me on some level to see this.
posted by terretu at 10:09 AM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]


I hate it. In a weird visceral way. Cannot explain why.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:12 AM on October 20, 2020 [5 favorites]


Or just a bunch of bored people with cameras and bunch more bored people with dopamine deficiencies.

Or people who've never experienced the mild trauma of getting off a crowded subway with a falafel sandwich they've been looking forward to since grabbing it from the Place Near Work That Makes A Pretty Good One, and getting home only to find it's been squashed in their bag by some elbowy bastard on the train, well and truly capping off a Shit Day At Work.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:28 AM on October 20, 2020 [5 favorites]


Mark my words: There will be a feature film and someone will say the name of the movie in dialogue

I was thinking about using @TitlesInMedia in another dumb twitter post, but I feel like my hand has been forced.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:31 AM on October 20, 2020


I imagine some like the pancakes, the peanut butter, the potato, and the grapes are still being eaten post-grip.
posted by little onion at 10:31 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


I like the Instagram best because if you look at the main page you can only see the pre-gripped foods. It's like the first 15 minutes of a horror movie.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:36 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


In anticipatory repose, Gaston squeeze boxes a rack of lamb.
posted by clavdivs at 10:41 AM on October 20, 2020


I want to apologize for encouraging this trend by watching pimple popping videos, hydraulic press weirdness and all kinds of filth.

who the fuck am I trying to bamboozle imma sub to this shit asapppppppppppppppppppp 🥳🥳🥳
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:57 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


I am reminded of a day in my youth spent on LSD. My companions and I descended upon a Lyon's Restaurant (think Denny's). One of my cohort reminded us of his time spent working at a Burger King. He proceeded to hold his burger aloft, clenched in his angry fist, "At Burger King we were told to NEVER DEFACE THE PRODUCT!", squishing all of the contents of the burger out one side. We thought it amusing, the waitress and the two elderly women sitting across from us, did not. We were asked to leave.
posted by doctor_negative at 11:33 AM on October 20, 2020 [5 favorites]


Honestly the Danimals fucking deserves it for all of the nightmare inducing uncanny valley shit they've been pulling with the logo/mascot in recent years. Ruin. that. yogurt.
posted by phunniemee at 11:40 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


A surprising number of these were taken/done/committed really close to an open laptop computer. Who sprays food all over their machine? I was already having trouble with this from the beginning, but the nihilism involved in destroying food, cleanliness AND computers was just too much. Blech, grow up.
posted by Cris E at 12:27 PM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


Is this a paraphilia?
posted by GuyZero at 1:02 PM on October 20, 2020


Tiny power fantasies?

I think many (most?) people are currently suffering from pandemic related feelings of absence of control, and the pointlessly destructive act of will involved in mangling an innocent foodstuff seems like a thing that could very reasonably emerge as a weird coping strategy.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:07 PM on October 20, 2020


It's hard to describe, but the closest description is that this gives me a low grade anxiety.
posted by sundrop at 1:12 PM on October 20, 2020 [4 favorites]


You don't know if it's parody, experimental art, a niche fetish, or all of the above. It's like the Chuck Tingle of food blogs.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:32 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]


Wasteful?! I bet they're getting a lot more milk per almond than your fancy "factories"
posted by solotoro at 1:50 PM on October 20, 2020


Back when we were teenagers (early 90s) my brothers and I had a competitive game going where the object was to crush your opponent's Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie. Why? No one remembers. The reason is lost to time. We don't know who was the first to reach over and casually crush an oatmeal creme pie but once it began the competition was fierce. Managing to eat one before your brother crushed it was rare. (They taste just fine after crushing, so none were wasted.) It was a stupid game, like so many games brothers play. But it was fun.

Fast forward to the 2000s, post-9/11, my older brother was deployed to Iraq. I packed him a care package. I included an entire box of oatmeal creme pies. I slit the box open, GENTLY crushed each and every creme pie - taking care not to breach the plastic, because stale oatmeal creme pies suck - and then hot-glued the box shut again.

When he got the package and opened the box of oatmeal creme pies, he said he laughed for about 15 minutes straight. He has yet to get me back. I won that round. Totally worth the postage.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:03 PM on October 20, 2020 [16 favorites]


I can't with this. One of my sensory issues is I hate being sticky, and I am super grossed out by food residue being places it shouldn't ought to be. I loathe pictures of children with food on their faces or clothing, hate the current trend for photos of milkshakes and desserts to be oozing over the side of the glass or dish, and now I learn that this is a thing. That's a nope from me.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:35 PM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]


the nihilism involved in destroying food, cleanliness AND computers was just too much

I think that referring to this as “nihilism” is, uh, kind of extreme.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:41 PM on October 20, 2020


good lord - haven't any of these people ever had toddlers?
posted by pyramid termite at 5:08 PM on October 20, 2020


controversial opinion: I got a kick out of this
posted by roger ackroyd at 6:54 PM on October 20, 2020 [2 favorites]


I love some of these, I think they're hilarious. Some I get mad at because I want that food. I think it's silly and out of touch to try and frame every single post to fit into a single philosophical role. So much of what millennials and gen Z does is just for the kick of it. its own existence validates itself.
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:39 AM on October 21, 2020


A bit of reference though, that just dawned on me - a common meme trope is to do things the most incorrect and agitating way possible. And that's it, that's the joke. Imagine if I held my drink like this. It's a off-shoot of "thanks I hate it".
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:46 AM on October 21, 2020


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