theyahem archive

If I ask if a food is spicy at all, and you reply “No, not at all! You can barely feel it!” then that is a contradiction. It is spicy. It may not be very spicy, or even moderately spicy, but it’s still spicy. Please just tell me that straight-out.

I know there’s a good chance you’re mocking me in your head when I say that I cannot handle spices at all, and that even the mildest of sauces, that you insist are barely there, are going to hurt, because I’m mocking me too. I know I’ve got a child’s palate when it comes to spicy food. I know it’s almost laughable, how badly I react to even table pepper in more than the most minuscule of doses.

But if I ask “is this spicy,” and you answer “not at all,” and then proceed to tell me that it’s mild, then I will still consider it too spicy.

If I ask “is this spicy at all” and you say “no” while knowing that it is, just a tiny bit, because you can’t imagine anyone reacting, then please don’t be offended when I take one bite and then throw it out, because I asked for a reason.

It’s a dumb thing to talk about, but… yeah. Just do your cannot-handle-spices friends a favor and be honest when they ask. Mild is still a level of spice.

Food doesn’t taste the same to everyone. There are scientific reasons that some people might be able to tolerate ‘mild’ spice and others might not. If someone tells you they are sensitive to spice, that doesn’t mean they’re experiencing what you experience when you eat those foods. It means that for them, it feels far different. It hurts. 

My partner is super sensitive to spice. She calls herself a ‘spice wimp,’ which I hate, because there’s nothing wimpy about not wanting to suffer through horrible burning sensations in your mouth. Which is what she has to suffer, when someone tells her something “isn’t that spicy” when in fact it is. 

This isn’t about flexing.This isn’t about being tough. This is about acknowledging that the chemical and anatomical composition of someone else’s taste receptors is different than yours, and you need to be sensitive to that. 

I’ve learned to detect even the smallest amount of spice, so I can tell her if something is probably safe for her to eat or not. I’ve learned that the tiniest burning sensation to me means something is going to cause her physical pain. I’ve gotten better at identifying which foods will be okay and which will not. And you know what? I’m able to do it without being a dick about it. It has nothing to do with who’s’ tough and who’s a wimp and everything to do with the fact that her nerves process spice differently than mine do. 

It’s about creating a Brand Identity - an anthropomorphized personality that your brain fits into an established schema (system of thought) so it’s easier to just drop into the background of your everyday life. It’s not about making you want a burger, it’s about making it so, when you DO want a burger, the first place you think of is Wendy’s, because their ads have made you think about them five time already that day. And most importantly, it’s about making sure you dont realize how often they make you think about them, so you don’t resent how pervasive they’ve become. They do that by tricking your brain into thinking of them as just another human-like personality. Your Funny Meme Friend Wendy’s. Wine Aunt World Market. Woke Jock Nike. Even your Endearingly Unhip Uncle Geico.

this shit works. it makes people like Brands. gets under their skin and in to their minds. when i said i didnt like the wendys twitter i personally offended people that viewed wendys as a friend, that viewed the wendys social media manager as a friendly individual that they respected.

the wendys social media manager is not your friend. they don’t even really exist. there’s no one person that writes the tweets for wendys. there’s a team of 20 something year olds that casually observe the latest meme trends and crank out mspaint memes because they know they’ll get retweeted if the memes are relevant.

they trick you in to thinking that Wendys is a hip friendly young person, and they manipulate you in to thinking that disliking marketing is somehow a “problematic” “un-woke” thing to do. 

and it works.