Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed Costco rotisserie chicken’s 2-hour shelf life.
In American pop culture, Yale has become synonymous with a bevy of tropes. Society’s upper crust; argyle knit; gothic halls. It is where a quiet ole’ bookworm like Rory Gilmore can establish herself as a dogged reporter and where socialite-in-the-making Blair Waldorf can rub elbows with her kin. Primed like Pavlov’s dog to salivate or rage at the mere mention of Yale, our society pounces at any opportunity to peel back the curtain on Yalie lifestyles. A recent TikTok did just that, depicting the extremely decadent breakfast spread at one of Yale’s residential colleges—complete with pillowy scrambled eggs and s’mores pancakes and fresh-baked chicken sausages. Commenters were readily obsessed and fascinated and also jealous. Yale is playing right into our hands, and we are playing into theirs.
Also this week, Tesla announced that it’s selling an inordinately expensive beer to promote its CyberTruck, which is as of yet nonexistent. Speaking of unnecessary beverages, Coca-Cola and Absolut are releasing a canned Sprite and vodka, which I would wager will be more expensive per serving than if one were to buy those two constituent components separately. Lastly, someone attempted to sell urine on Amazon to reveal the site’s loopholes, and unfortunately made it a hot commodity. (You can rest easy: No urine was actually purchased or consumed.)
Read more about Yale’s breakfast options and other food news around the internet below.
Everyone has dining hall envy for Yale’s breakfast station
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My typical college dining hall breakfast was a bowl of Froot Loops mixed with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which is probably why I’m so envious of the Hogwarts-level food situation at the Yale dining hall. There, according to a Yale student on TikTok, it’s apparently common to have platters of rotating specialty pancakes—like s’mores, pumpkin spice, cannoli, and ube—garlic parmesan breakfast potatoes, and fruit platters that look like they should be served to you in bed at a luxury hotel. The real thing I can’t look away from, though, is the massive plastic bag full of eggs that they rip open, toss on the griddle, and turn into the kind of soft scramble that makes you want to say, “Yes, chef.” Some commenters were ready to transfer to Yale for the breakfast options alone. “I would literally go to Yale just for those damn pancakes,” one writes. I am, personally, distressed that I will probably never experience the ecstasy of a Yale breakfast for myself. 4/5 delicious. —Carina Finn, commerce editor
Tesla is selling $150 CyberBeer
In 2020, disgraced influencer Caroline Calloway began selling preorders for her book, Scammer, which she promised would publish late that year. In the meantime, she built up hype by selling merch—bookmarks with cutesy quotes—for a book that didn’t even exist yet. Then, flush with preorder and merch cash, she pushed Scammer’s pub date back again and again and again—until it finally released this year.
CyberBeer reminds me of this cautionary tale: Tesla is releasing a limited-edition beer this month to celebrate the eventual launch of the super geometric-looking, super-nonexistent CyberTruck. Elon Musk, the Caroline Calloway of Silicon Valley, “debuted” the truck four years ago. In the meantime, CyberBeer is here to hold antsy fans over with two bottles of beer and two angular ceramic steins for just $150. The beer is a Helles Lager brewed by Buzzrock Brewing Company in Torrance, California, with “herb and spice” tasting notes and “aromas of tea and citrus.” It comes with an optional $50 CyberOpener (?!) add-on. (Unfortunately at this point in this CyberBlurb, despite the scammy, villainous energy of this launch, I am starting to vibe with the “cyber” nomenclature. It is kind of camp, sorry!)
Of course, there is absolutely no need to line Elon Musk’s pockets with any more cash. He has clearly attended the Caroline Calloway School of Scams, though, and CyberBeer is the pointy-looking result. When are CyberTrucks themselves finally arriving, you ask? Tesla says it’s fully rolling the cars out “after 2024,” an impressively shameless non-date. Meanwhile, the beer has reportedly sold out already. 3.9/5 CyberDistressing. —Karen Yuan, culture editor
Coca-Cola and Absolut are creating a canned cocktail
Did you think, back in 2020 when you were casually sipping a White Claw, that mere years later we'd be in the midst of a canned cocktail hurricane? I know I didn't. And now look where we are: Sprite and Vodka in cans, so that we can drink exactly like our high school selves. The product is launching in a few European markets, so Americans will be spared, for now. But, if you ask me, it's only a matter of time until someone shows up for your dinner party with a tepid case of Sprite and vodka cans under their arm. You'll welcome them in, and pretend to be excited about the frankly absurd beverage they’ve introduced to your home—“Oh my God, I've been wanting to try these!”—but you’ll know, and I’ll know, that this is the last time you’ll invite that friend to your house. I'm giving this one a blacked out, sickly sweet 1.3/5 distressing —Sam Stone, staff writer
Amazon allowed urine to be sold on its website as an energy drink
For a stunt and social experiment, UK journalist and documentarian Oobah Butler recently collected bottles full of pee from the side of the road, discarded by Amazon drivers, and attempted to sell them on Amazon—basically, just to see if he could. In short, he could.
There are layers of distress in this story. First of all, it’s news to me that Amazon drivers are peeing in bottles, though that ultimately and unfortunately does fit into Amazon’s overarching dystopia arc. On top of these horrible working conditions, it’s further distressing to hear that that pee was bottled and allowed to be sold on Amazon, but based on the quality of some of the stuff I've gotten from Amazon in the past, it's not completely surprising“I thought that the food and drinks licensing would stop me from listing it, so I started it out in this Refillable Pump Dispenser category,” Butler told Wired. “Then the algorithm moved it into drinks.” An Amazon spokesperson characterized it to Wired as a “crude stunt” and touted Amazon’s “industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed.” Still, personally, I am never trying unfamiliar drinks off the internet again. 4.9/5 distressing —S.S.