Sentient Sandwiches
November 21, 2024 9:17 AM Subscribe
Daily Mail mocked for claiming Gen Z are "waging war" on sandwiches by choosing "fancy woke fillings" like chicken, and (shudder) continental cheeses.
We'll have to wait for the annual Christmas sandwich season to pass before finding out how the industry responds.
We'll have to wait for the annual Christmas sandwich season to pass before finding out how the industry responds.
Just let people order their sandwiches! It’s not that hard!
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:25 AM on November 21 [5 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:25 AM on November 21 [5 favorites]
NEVAH FORGET
Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project
An ongoing quest to track the Daily Mail's classification of inanimate objects into two types: those that cause cancer, and those that cure it.
posted by lalochezia at 9:39 AM on November 21 [6 favorites]
Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project
An ongoing quest to track the Daily Mail's classification of inanimate objects into two types: those that cause cancer, and those that cure it.
posted by lalochezia at 9:39 AM on November 21 [6 favorites]
Those Christmas sandwich fillings are about as woke as you can get. Some of them ought not to be allowed in public. Hide them in my belly, quick!
But usually I'm a plain-speaking down-to-earth woman, and I like a plain sandwich. Give me a lettuce, tomato, bacon, and peanut butter sandwich anytime. Yes, I said bacon and peanut butter. Want to make something of it?
posted by BlueHorse at 9:48 AM on November 21 [1 favorite]
But usually I'm a plain-speaking down-to-earth woman, and I like a plain sandwich. Give me a lettuce, tomato, bacon, and peanut butter sandwich anytime. Yes, I said bacon and peanut butter. Want to make something of it?
posted by BlueHorse at 9:48 AM on November 21 [1 favorite]
I tend to think of trend pieces like this as having been written by someone who observes the plebs via telescope from their 100th floor penthouse in a building with a doorman.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:49 AM on November 21 [3 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:49 AM on November 21 [3 favorites]
c.f. "Old Dry Keith", who, for the amusement of China, made crappy sandwiches and everybody laughed.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:49 AM on November 21 [4 favorites]
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:49 AM on November 21 [4 favorites]
clickbait successfully baits clicks.
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:50 AM on November 21 [11 favorites]
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:50 AM on November 21 [11 favorites]
You had me at Daily Mail mocked
posted by chavenet at 9:56 AM on November 21 [2 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 9:56 AM on November 21 [2 favorites]
Literally I just had lunch. I had a turkey brie, spicy mustard, chutney, finely sliced red onion, curried aioli, toasted in oven on openfaced quarter baguette, then topped with black pepper and lightly dressed greens. It was delicious.
posted by thivaia at 10:06 AM on November 21 [6 favorites]
posted by thivaia at 10:06 AM on November 21 [6 favorites]
I don’t eat sandwiches anymore because my doctor has me on low carbs. What I eat instead is definitely not “woke”.
Not if it was slaughtered humanely.
posted by funkaspuck at 10:07 AM on November 21
Not if it was slaughtered humanely.
posted by funkaspuck at 10:07 AM on November 21
Sandwiches have been going down hill since they perfected the ultimate food, the Toast Sandwich...
More seriously though, Mr. Tu Bakery's Cake-Pan (Cake bread), slices of soft sponge cake baked inside a breakfast bread, is a rare light in this despicable age... Guess I need to go visit it soon to stock up, it is delicious! That and their mind-bogglingly fantastic cheese tarts.
posted by rambling wanderlust at 10:18 AM on November 21 [3 favorites]
More seriously though, Mr. Tu Bakery's Cake-Pan (Cake bread), slices of soft sponge cake baked inside a breakfast bread, is a rare light in this despicable age... Guess I need to go visit it soon to stock up, it is delicious! That and their mind-bogglingly fantastic cheese tarts.
posted by rambling wanderlust at 10:18 AM on November 21 [3 favorites]
“The Sandwich Maker would pass what he had made to his assistant who would then add a few slices of newcumber and fladish and a touch of splagberry sauce, and then apply the topmost layer of bread and cut the sandwich with a fourth and altogether plainer knife. It was not that these were not also skilful operations, but they were lesser skills to be performed by a dedicated apprentice who would one day, when the Sandwich Maker finally laid down his tools, take over from him. It was an exalted position and that apprentice, Drimple, was the envy of his fellows. There were those in the village who were happy chopping wood, those who were content carrying water, but to be the Sandwich Maker was very heaven.posted by BungaDunga at 10:29 AM on November 21 [3 favorites]
And so the Sandwich Maker sang as he worked.
Daily Mail wages war on Gen Z!
"Gen Z workers are 'too scared to talk on the phone', says expert"
"Half of Gen Z would quit a job over political differences"
"Gen Z should order a pint properly and not queue at a bar"
"Gen Z doesn't know how to sign their names"
"Recruiters claim Gen Z are too focused on what's 'in it for them'"
"Gen Z—yes, I mean my grandchildren—are the rudest generation ever"
"Gen Z soldiers will only join Army if they are given better wifi"
"Gen Z are scared to wear a poppy"
"Gen Z shun fried and boiled eggs and opt for fancier options"
"Gen Z police recruits don't want to work weekends"
The Daily Mail writers know what they are doing: a 2014 survey found the average age of its readers was 58 and that was 10 years ago, so it's probably in the high 60s now. So the idea is to flatter the readers by explaining how much better they are than young people.
posted by cyanistes at 10:34 AM on November 21 [9 favorites]
"Gen Z workers are 'too scared to talk on the phone', says expert"
"Half of Gen Z would quit a job over political differences"
"Gen Z should order a pint properly and not queue at a bar"
"Gen Z doesn't know how to sign their names"
"Recruiters claim Gen Z are too focused on what's 'in it for them'"
"Gen Z—yes, I mean my grandchildren—are the rudest generation ever"
"Gen Z soldiers will only join Army if they are given better wifi"
"Gen Z are scared to wear a poppy"
"Gen Z shun fried and boiled eggs and opt for fancier options"
"Gen Z police recruits don't want to work weekends"
The Daily Mail writers know what they are doing: a 2014 survey found the average age of its readers was 58 and that was 10 years ago, so it's probably in the high 60s now. So the idea is to flatter the readers by explaining how much better they are than young people.
posted by cyanistes at 10:34 AM on November 21 [9 favorites]
The Daily Mail writers know what they are doing: a 2014 survey found the average age of its readers was 58 and that was 10 years ago, so it's probably in the high 60s now
On the other hand, those readers are going to die off soon, and then what?
posted by mumimor at 11:10 AM on November 21 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, those readers are going to die off soon, and then what?
posted by mumimor at 11:10 AM on November 21 [1 favorite]
Gen X guy here - had hummus + kimchi on a piece of folded over toast that I wiped a knife covered with some Marmite on for breakfast. WAR HAS BEEN DECLARED.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:14 AM on November 21 [4 favorites]
posted by ryanshepard at 11:14 AM on November 21 [4 favorites]
I am increasingly convinced that having a subscription to the Daily Mail is a sign of traumatic brain injury that should be investigated by a medical professional.
posted by aramaic at 11:26 AM on November 21 [2 favorites]
posted by aramaic at 11:26 AM on November 21 [2 favorites]
Is there a law akin to Betteridge's Law of Headlines that any article that has a headline with the word "woke" in it can be safely ignored? I feel like "woke" just means something that a headline writer knows the readers won't like, kind of like a 2020s version of "hipster".
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:37 AM on November 21 [5 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:37 AM on November 21 [5 favorites]
Unless the headline also includes the name "Rip Van Winkle," I think your theory has merit.
posted by nickmark at 12:04 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
posted by nickmark at 12:04 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
Woke is very useful as a verbal marker. Anyone using it in a serious sense can be pretty safely ignored, guaranteed not to have useful and/or truthful contributions to discourse. They have crawled into the qanon hole and come out with their brain eaten. Perhaps by parasitic worms.
posted by bonehead at 12:18 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
posted by bonehead at 12:18 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
"...kind of like a 2020s version of "hipster"."
Don't know. You had "hipster(s)" sneering at hipster(s) then. Can't see the equivalent now.
posted by aleph at 12:29 PM on November 21
Don't know. You had "hipster(s)" sneering at hipster(s) then. Can't see the equivalent now.
posted by aleph at 12:29 PM on November 21
On the other hand, those readers are going to die off soon, and then what?
They'll switch their hatred to some other generation or ethnic minority presumably.
posted by epo at 12:53 PM on November 21
They'll switch their hatred to some other generation or ethnic minority presumably.
posted by epo at 12:53 PM on November 21
On the other hand, those readers are going to die off soon, and then what?
Someone will complain bitterly about it on Reddit, obvs.
posted by 1adam12 at 12:53 PM on November 21
Someone will complain bitterly about it on Reddit, obvs.
posted by 1adam12 at 12:53 PM on November 21
Gen X guy here - had hummus + kimchi on a piece of folded over toast that I wiped a knife covered with some Marmite on for breakfast.
I like the cut of your jib and would subscribe to your newsletter. Perhaps this is it?
posted by 1adam12 at 12:55 PM on November 21
I like the cut of your jib and would subscribe to your newsletter. Perhaps this is it?
posted by 1adam12 at 12:55 PM on November 21
The Daily Mail writers know what they are doing: a 2014 survey found the average age of its readers was 58 and that was 10 years ago, so it's probably in the high 60s now. So the idea is to flatter the readers by explaining how much better they are than young people.
Look at their ads.
I’d bet they are advertising expensive things like cruises, luxury cars, 2nd vacation homes, expensive furniture suites, and etc.
What TDM is trying to do is convince relatively wealthy seniors that the grandkids and grand nieces and nephews don’t really deserve 'all that money you were thinking of leaving to them, so you might as well live it up in the time you’ve got left — and buy our advertiser's products.'
posted by jamjam at 12:57 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
Look at their ads.
I’d bet they are advertising expensive things like cruises, luxury cars, 2nd vacation homes, expensive furniture suites, and etc.
What TDM is trying to do is convince relatively wealthy seniors that the grandkids and grand nieces and nephews don’t really deserve 'all that money you were thinking of leaving to them, so you might as well live it up in the time you’ve got left — and buy our advertiser's products.'
posted by jamjam at 12:57 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
Say what one will about traditional British sandwiches, but in a refectory where I was studying 35 years ago, the shredded cheddar with a slice of rubber tomah-to on a bap remains one of the best things I've ever eaten. Two mid-quality ingredients on mass produced bread. Ate it regularly, with equal joy every time.
posted by bendybendy at 12:59 PM on November 21
posted by bendybendy at 12:59 PM on November 21
…they’re doing what to sandwiches?
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 1:04 PM on November 21
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 1:04 PM on November 21
I am one of the relatively few US people who likes Marmite (also gen X). After experimenting with it in several ways, I decided to combine it with another vaguely European thing I like on bread, and lo, I invented the Mar-Mar sandwich. Which is, as you may have guessed, Marmite and marmalade on wheat bread. Not only has this horrified every British Marmite lover I've explained it too, it also offends most other people too. But it's tasty. The war is on, let chaos reign!
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:08 PM on November 21 [3 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:08 PM on November 21 [3 favorites]
> Marmite and marmalade
My grandma introduced me to that! I sometimes do it in opposing gradients on my morning toast (with lots of butter), so you get a sort of salty savoury start shading to a sweet end as you eat.
posted by lucidium at 1:22 PM on November 21 [3 favorites]
My grandma introduced me to that! I sometimes do it in opposing gradients on my morning toast (with lots of butter), so you get a sort of salty savoury start shading to a sweet end as you eat.
posted by lucidium at 1:22 PM on November 21 [3 favorites]
Suddenly fascinated. What 3x3 toast would have Marmite and marmalade?
I’m assuming a savory-to-sweet gradient on each slice so the sandwich as a whole has a sharper corner-to-corner gradient. But maybe one side is savory and one sweet.
I should bake some square bread.
posted by clew at 1:26 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
I’m assuming a savory-to-sweet gradient on each slice so the sandwich as a whole has a sharper corner-to-corner gradient. But maybe one side is savory and one sweet.
I should bake some square bread.
posted by clew at 1:26 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
There isn’t a fainting couch big or soft enough to catch all these “in my day, a sandwich was a sandwich, two slices of packed earth studded with shreds of gravel, with a slice of asbestos smeared with sewage runoff!” people if they ever happened into a Japanese convenience store and saw yakisoba (fried noodles with trace amounts of pork, cabbage, and other bits of veggie) stuffed between two slices of shokupan (fluffy, trending towards sweet white bread).
Hell, I’ve seen it, and it damn near staggered me. But chicken?! Have these sandwich prudes never heard of a club sandwich? Know they not of the magic a couple of sprinkles of oregano bring to the holy communion of bread and whatever savory happiness that lies, uh, sandwiched within?
Meanwhile, friends, Mefites, gather round, for tis the season, the season of the greatest thing since bread was sliced and someone thought to put things betwixt bread and bread: the THANKSGIVER.
You will need:
Two slices of good, happy bread
Sliced turkey
A secondary meat, if you have it (I do a Cuban roast pork shoulder for Thanksgiving, too, but good bacon will do)
Provolone or Gouda cheese
Cranberry sauce
Gravy (with giblets, if possible)
Smear the inside of one slice of bread with cranberry sauce, coat the other slice of bread with gravy. Turkey on the cranberry, the other meat on the gravy, and the cheese between. Toast gently, and experience bliss.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:36 PM on November 21 [3 favorites]
Hell, I’ve seen it, and it damn near staggered me. But chicken?! Have these sandwich prudes never heard of a club sandwich? Know they not of the magic a couple of sprinkles of oregano bring to the holy communion of bread and whatever savory happiness that lies, uh, sandwiched within?
Meanwhile, friends, Mefites, gather round, for tis the season, the season of the greatest thing since bread was sliced and someone thought to put things betwixt bread and bread: the THANKSGIVER.
You will need:
Two slices of good, happy bread
Sliced turkey
A secondary meat, if you have it (I do a Cuban roast pork shoulder for Thanksgiving, too, but good bacon will do)
Provolone or Gouda cheese
Cranberry sauce
Gravy (with giblets, if possible)
Smear the inside of one slice of bread with cranberry sauce, coat the other slice of bread with gravy. Turkey on the cranberry, the other meat on the gravy, and the cheese between. Toast gently, and experience bliss.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:36 PM on November 21 [3 favorites]
I think the people who run the daily mail - and also the telegraph, the times, and various other newspapers- are aware that the reading population for their products is running out, but they’re going to wring as much bile as possible out of them before they die. The pathway is quite well-trodden at this point, so when the newspaper drops beneath a certain circulation it becomes a free sheet (Nme, evening standard) and then after that, web only. By that point nobody really cares, and the names of the product is sold off.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:40 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 1:40 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
“...two slices of packed earth studded with shreds of gravel, with a slice of asbestos smeared with sewage runoff!”
Asbestos? Luxury! We used to dream of 'avin' asbestos. All we had was warm tar scraped off the highway in the summer!
(Also +1 Ghidorah for the excellent sandwich building)
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:50 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
Asbestos? Luxury! We used to dream of 'avin' asbestos. All we had was warm tar scraped off the highway in the summer!
(Also +1 Ghidorah for the excellent sandwich building)
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:50 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
The older UK generation do love their very plain sandwiches. We were over at my mum's (in her eighties, a Telegraph reader [alas]) last year, and she put out some lunch things. The fillings included sliced turkey and cheese. She was horrified when I put turkey and cheese in my sandwich. She meant that we could have turkey or cheese. Not both.
posted by scruss at 1:56 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
posted by scruss at 1:56 PM on November 21 [2 favorites]
Warm tar? In the summer? You had it easy. We had to go out onto the highway in the middle of rush hour in winter, before the sun had come up, and pull up chunks of frozen road with our teeth!
posted by nickmark at 2:30 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
posted by nickmark at 2:30 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
> What 3x3 toast would have Marmite and marmalade?
I propose [Marmite / Sweet Chilli / Marmalade] x [Cheddar / Cucumber / Ham]
posted by lucidium at 2:33 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
I propose [Marmite / Sweet Chilli / Marmalade] x [Cheddar / Cucumber / Ham]
posted by lucidium at 2:33 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]
We had to go out onto the highway in the middle of rush hour in winter, before the sun had come up, and pull up chunks of frozen road with our teeth!
But you try and tell these woke Gen-Zers that, they won't believe you...
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:13 PM on November 21
But you try and tell these woke Gen-Zers that, they won't believe you...
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:13 PM on November 21
I don’t know about sandwiches but I fear we might be in danger of feeding the troll here.
posted by Phanx at 3:34 PM on November 21
posted by Phanx at 3:34 PM on November 21
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posted by Kitteh at 9:24 AM on November 21 [1 favorite]