#whogivesashit

Judging by what I see on the internet, "meal prepping" is all the rage these days. In case you haven't heard of meal prepping, it goes like this: people cook food, then put the food into containers to eat later in the week. Oh yeah, then they take photos of the food-in-containers and post the photos on social media with a stupid hashtag, to much admiration and "Liking" from their peers.

I'm having one of those milestone sorts of birthdays this year so it pains me slightly to have to say this, but - social media aspect aside - back in my day we called that "leftovers." I think it's well understood that every generation believes they've invented sex, but it boggles the mind to think an entire generation seriously believes they invented leftovers. Even more so that anyone else would care to see your leftovers in their Instagram feed, or that you are somehow deserving of praise for the blindingly obvious time- and cost-saving measure of producing said leftovers. My foolish young friends: what do you think you were eating for lunch the next day your whole childhood?

Can you just envision our pioneer forebears, kneading up the week's bread and being all like, "Hashtag MealPrepMonday!" Then maybe getting out a sketchbook to draw each step from three different angles and write a smarmy blog a mile long before finally giving you the damn bread recipe. Hell, maybe some did, and so quickly succumbed to natural selection pressures that no one's heard of them...

I like to think about all the things that, in retrospect, will be understood to have been signs of the pending fall of modern civilisation. We've heard about the excess of the Romans and the environmental collapse of the Mayans; what will our downfall be? The more time I spend on Reddit et al. the more I think the pointless farming of Likes/upvotes/etc. by whatever ridiculous trendy means necessary is a serious contender for the honour - the only people left after the fall will be the ones who had been successfully eating meatloaf sandwiches for lunch the next day without ever having taken a photo or said a damn thing about it to anyone. Because #honestlywhowouldevencareaboutmyleftovers?