You are not to blame.

In our advancedly sanitized world, I can only assume something must have gotten lost in translation when people started confusing your fresh, fruity scent as appetizing. It is not hard for people who are less than logical to understand that you are not some sort of candy-flavored cream puff.

But there has to be some sense of accountability here.

It is easy to point fingers at the Twitter accounts that started this deadly meme. Many teens want nothing more than the short-lived fame that the internet has to offer.

Or maybe it was their parents’ fault. Millennials love to blame things on Baby Boomers and vice versa, so why not add one more thing to the list?

After all, they were the ones who washed our mouths out with soap as punishment when we started to lie and swear as kids. Maybe that is why so many young people joke about you being a ‘forbidden fruit’.

I cannot say for certain who the blame falls on here, but hopefully it will not come back around to the Millennials. Especially since so many of them are still living with at home—and we all know they are not doing their own laundry while they lounge around on their parents’ couches.

I propose we compromise and put the guilty verdict on Gen Z. They are still young and are not carrying their fair portion of weight in this juvenoia blame game.

So, where do we go forward from here?

Tide has already taken to social media to combat those who want to take the Tide Pod Challenge, but if this craze continues, it can only be assumed that they will take further steps to prevent their consumption.

An option that would bring an immediate end to the public health risk, would be take you and your fellow Tide Pods off the shelves entirely.

While it might be a sad and unnecessary demise, it might be worth it to save lives.

However, as a laundry-doer, I am personally rooting that it does not come to this.

Being college student who uses you on a weekly basis, I do not know how to use detergent that does not come in a small, shiny plastic package. I would assume regular detergent has a very similar instruction manual to Tide Pods, but I have too many other things that I could be doing than trying to figure out the old-fashioned way of doing laundry.

Another option could always make the pods smell worse. Your sweet smell is what ignited this fad in the first place.

But then again, laundry detergent with a foul scent is just a bad idea in general. Nobody wants people walking around and smelling worse than they already do.

Besides that, I do not know what other options there are for you besides hoping that this is a passing craze. And it likely will be.

In our fast-paced media world, trends like you do not normally have a very long shelf life. Especially with the upcoming award show season and the Trump presidency, which seems to be generating new meme content every day.

I send you the best of wishes in hopes that people will stop trying to eat you, so you can get back to doing your job. Because let’s face it: the Gain Mighty Pac pods smell a whole lot more mouthwatering.

Sincerely,
Renee Borcas

P.S. SERIOUSLY, DO NOT EAT TIDE PODS.