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Apocalyptic fiction has long tried to predict the cataclysmic event that would one day bring about the end of the human race. Would it be an outbreak of a fatal plague? Nuclear annihilation? Gwyneth Paltrow not washing her goddamn hands during a Chinese business trip? No futurist, however, could have foreseen that one day everyone would just start being like, “Lol. What if I ate a bunch of laundry detergent?”
In an effort to fight against the ongoing public health menace that is the Tide Pod Challenge, New York State Assembly member Aravella Simotas and State Senator Brad Hoylman have released a joint statement calling on Procter & Gamble to please, for the love of god, make those squishy orange and blue detergent packages look a wee less appetizing.
“We have been concerned about accidental poisonings from detergent pods among young children and people suffering from dementia for over two years and have introduced legislation to lessen poisoning risks,” the lawmakers write. “There is renewed opportunity—and urgency—at this moment in time. As you know, teenagers and young adults across the country have been engaging in the ‘Tide Pod Challenge,’ an alarming social media stunt that involves the deliberate ingestion of a detergent package.”
In order to deter those aforementioned fame-seeking teenagers and young adults, they ask the corporation to make the pods a uniform color, add a strong bittering agent to the detergent and reduce their lovely, pleasant smell. The lawmakers also want Tide to make its Pds feel a little more firm and a little less like the soft ambrosia of the gods that is currently seducing America’s hapless youth.
Still, we can’t help but think that a better solution may be to just offer up more pizza alternatives instead.
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