In case you missed last year's diatribe, Thanksgiving is my favorite American, history-ignoring, food-based holiday. This year, now that social media has fully seeped into every single orifice of our existence, I decided to turn to Pinterest, the pinnacle of everything food-porny, weird, magical and un-natural in this world, for some help in planning my Thanksgiving meal.
Oh wow was that a mistake. Here's why.
See also: - Five Alternatives to Traditional Thanksgiving Stuffing! - I Fucking Love Thanksgiving Hey Thanksgiving, Let's Make Out
Thanksgiving Dessert Overload What you read about food porn addiction is REAL. Just look at Pinterest. It's an echo-chamber of food porn, particularly dessert food porn. But the worst offender during Thanksgiving is not the pumpkin everything, not the spice cakes dripping with hot icing, nor is it all the sweet potato casseroles with flambéed marshmallows -- or heaven forbid -- candy corn. No. It's cupcakes that are made to look like savory, traditional Thanksgiving foodstuffs. Why the fuck would I eat a cupcake that looks like mashed potatoes?!?! Sure, I want a cupcake, but first I want actual mashed potatoes. Thanks for forcing me to look at cupcakes that make me want to puke, Pinterest.
Turkeys are Everywhere Take a look around the room you're in right now. Now think hard. Do you see any turkeys? No? You idiot. Everybody knows that you can make a turkey out of nearly every inanimate object and spare scrap bit that exists in the world. Cotton balls, gourds, scrap paper, flowers, pine cones, pipe cleaners, paper bags, tulle, candy, toilet paper rolls, Nutter Butters, doorknobs, yarn, fingers, cigarettes, whatever.
Terribly Awesome Thanksgiving Home Decor There are two types of home decor on Pinterest. Lame/Sad Decor and Ridiculously Incredible Decor. Lame/Sad Thanksgiving decor features scented candles, leaves made out of construction paper and basically anything educational in nature. Ridiculously Incredible Thanksgiving decor is beautiful and dreamlike. It's where perfect families talk about how much they love each other, eat a reasonable amount of food, don't spill anything, never argue and help the host clean up until the entire perfect house is spotless. This is the type of Pinterest decor that makes ordinary, seemingly sane people want to murder themselves with their own electric turkey knives.
Turkeys Made out of Non-food Materials Obviously, turkeys are either made out of turkey or dessert items like peanut butter cups. So why the fuck would you make a turkey out of non-edible materials? For arts and crafts purposes? That's just SICK. Well, thanks to Pinterest, you can make that nightmare a reality.
Turkeys Made out of Healthy Materials The only thing worse than turkeys made out of non-food materials is one that's made out of healthy materials like apples [shudder] or raw vegetables [double shudder]. Thanksgiving is the least healthy day of the year for a reason. LET US HAVE JUST THIS ONE DAY!!
Thanksgiving-themed Fashion. Really. I mean, don't we all start planning our sexy Thanksgiving outfit right after we finish with sexy Halloween? According to Pinterest, we do.
Thanksgiving-themed Fashion for Kids. The Scared Shitless Turkey Baby pictured above was just the beginning. You can thank Pinterest for letting parents (well, let's face it, moms) everywhere know that it's OK to do things like this to your children.
Pet Torture in the Name of Thanksgiving When dressing up your kids in festive Thanksgiving garb just isn't enough, folks on Pinterest turn to their pets. Anything to distract attention from the fact that you're stuffing your face with more food than you normally eat in a week, right? Your dog probably just got over the trauma of the Halloween costume you shoved him into a month ago. Leave him alone and let him lie under the table waiting for somebody to accidentally drop something.
Bad. Pie. Pie is a thing that is good. It can be good or really good or really fucking good. It's rarely ever bad, unless it's a chart that contains bad news. That's a true fact. BUT, Pinterest has a way of making anything suck, and pie is no exception. Using the words "tofu" and "healthy" in the same pie recipe? Blasphemy.
Black Friday Shit Ahhhh Black Friday. The one day a year we convince ourselves to get up early (or stay up late), wear our pajamas to Walmart and go on a potentially murderous shopping spree in the hopes of scoring the deal we could have scored safely at home on the Internet. I suppose Black Friday is relevant to Thanksgiving in that the pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner and post-Thanksgiving meals can provide you with the sustenance you need for intense Black Friday shopping, but honestly what's the point? Sit on your full, fat, lazy ass and shop online like you do the rest of the year. If that doesn't convince you, check out the asshole who got Tasered.
The Bastardization of History Clearly any mentions of the historical origins of Thanksgiving is just an excuse to make us feel better about shoveling food into our faces until we can no longer recognize each other. Forget that the folks who "discovered America" killed thousands of people; history is told by he who writes it and OMG LOOK! I DREW A HAND THAT LOOKS LIKE A TURKEY!!!!
In all seriousness, be sure to follow foodbitch on Pinterest. Her mom says she's very good at pinning.
