“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 707 (Friday) – soup stress

There are Facebook groups for practically every interest. Old stuff. New stuff. Ancestry-dot-com Users. High school classes and reunion groups. There are groups where residents of particular cities and towns argue about the best donuts and complain about their municipal leaders and potholes, and the posts and comments can be either entertaining or exhausting to scroll through.

Soup!

One of the more recent Facebook groups I’ve joined is called “Soup Lovers.” It seemed innocent enough. Many people love soup. It’s one of the most popular comfort foods. And people who don’t like soup wouldn’t likely be in the group. People post photos of soup, ask questions about soup or specific ingredients, there is a section for recipes. What could go wrong? 

It turns out that even a group called “Soup Lovers” is not free from conflict. There are some very strong opinions that cannot be contained. The past week has seen some heated discussions, sanctimonious comments, and condescending lectures. About soup.

The most current batch of trigger words includes “ramen,” “chili,” and “canned.” Mention the use of canned broth or vegetables and expect a dissertation from someone who doesn’t believe in shortcuts, uses only homemade broth, and insists on chopping the freshest vegetables to precise dimensions. The worst sin in a can seems to be any “Cream of” soup, which leads to a 27-ingredient set of directions that takes about a million hours to make fresh cream of something soup. Clearly, this is perfect for any professional chef or homemaker, and people who are pressed for time or ingredients and sink to the convenience of canned cream soup clearly do not deserve any soup.

Posts about chili inspire passionate arguments. One debate is whether chili is or isn’t soup. Lord help the person who mentions adding beans to chili. That inevitably opens the door to lectures from people who claim it’s not true chili if it has beans, and will write at length about the history of chili and how their way is the one and only true, authentic style of chili and everyone else is just wrong.

Ramen soup!

Mention of ramen invites a tsunami of lectures about sodium intake and the deadliness of ramen. The critic will deliver a lecture along the lines of “You shouldn’t eat ramen, it’s not healthy. There is too much sodium. You idiot, have you ever bothered to read the ingredients? Your last bowl might be the last thing you ever eat if you don’t watch it.” This is done without differentiating between dry ramen bricks and fresh noodles from a market. According to some of the commenters, it’s all poison, and all the ramen eaters are just tempting fate and deserve what they get. 

The soup group has been an eye opener. Who knew something as seemingly innocuous as soup could cause so much stress?