Chiveman and a mountain of margarine

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Anne-Marie Sievertson, how are your knife skills? Really timid. Really quite... Timid? Yeah. Okay. That's not the way you want to be around a knife, but, you know... Even the people on Chopped and stuff would slice themselves open. So I'm doing fine. I have yet to do that, knock on wood. Great fear of mine, though. How about you? I'm a rustic cook.

We could say like, I like things kind of rough around the edges, but you know, we don't work in the food industry and a lot of people do. You've by now have heard Shirley. of the chive challenge, chive gate, et cetera, et cetera, right? The chive chopping frenzy that has overtaken the Kitchen Confidential subreddit. I know just a little bit about it. I know one chive, chopped chives worth of information. A sprinkle of chopped chive. Okay.

So Kitchen Confidential is supposed to be for food industry professionals. That's what it's supposed to be for. Uh, obviously it's, you know, it's not, I don't think it's as hardcore as ask historians or some of the other subreddits that sort of like require or, you know, require you to, to, um, Like a certificate, no certification necessary. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like these other subreddits that require you to be certified or positively ID'd as somebody who works in the food industry.

So when you look at the history of this subreddit... you know, because it's for food professionals, there are the sort of like, hey, I chopped this thing. How'd I do? Hey, I cooked this thing. How'd I do? It's like people asking for feedback from their peers, right? And so I should say that like this chopped chive craze that has taken over, it's not brand new. Like people have chopped chives before and asked for their.

peers on the Kitchen Confidential subreddit to tell them how they did. A user named F1Exican. So maybe like Flexican. OK, something there was a Mexican reference in there. I'm not sure what the choice is for this username. But this person, when they started chopping chives. chopping it up, if you will, and asking for feedback. They really committed. They're basically going to do it every single day and tell the subreddit, people in the subreddit.

tell the user that they're perfect. So this person is like already setting themselves up for like to, you know, for, to be scrutinized, to be, you know, criticized. you know, for this to turn into a silly thing. Right. And I think they're basically referencing past posts of people chopping chives and saying, how'd I do?

The likelihood of the other Redditor is saying, yeah, you missed a spot, right? How many chives are they chopping? Oh, let's say a couple of handfuls. A couple of handfuls every day. But essentially what starts to happen is this person starts to chop the chives every day, post the chives that they have chopped. I think it's a he that they have chopped every single day and ask for input. And of course you start to see.

Redditor is actually take the image, zoom into the image of this like incredibly tiny, delicate vegetable that has been chopped in an incredibly tiny, delicate way and find. chives that just weren't quite chopped right. Little pieces of chives. Just like the level of investment on both sides here of this person.

who's going to chop chives every day, wants to know if they're perfect, and then the other Redditors who are going to take the time to zoom in like a map or something to make sure that it all checks out. Listen, anything to give us a break from... The real world. The real world. And if it's chopping chives, so be it. Yep. You see this image? Oh, that's an imperfect chive. That's an imperfect shot, right? It's far too thick. Far too thick, whereas all the others are beautifully thin.

Completely chopped. I mean, I like this style. It's not totally uniform. So if uniformity is what we're going for, I give this a fail on that. But it's perfect to me. To me, these chives are perfect. Oh, by the way, I should say that the amount is actually pretty specific. Cutting a cup of chives every day. Until this Reddit says they're perfect. That is just a cup of chives. That looks like a lot. This... That person essentially completely took over the subreddit with this exercise.

People are memeing it. They're focused on it. This post that I just sent you, it has 9,000 upvotes and 424 comments. And that's like little, that's like... small potatoes to how it's gone since then. I mean, this thing has really blown up. We've gotten to the place where it's a thing that everybody's talking about.

This person is doing it every single day. Everybody's like losing their minds over it. 55,000 upvotes on day 34, for instance. But here's the thing. There's controversy. Controversy pops up. Something happens. So first, the user Flexican or F1Xican, they don't post for one day. And everybody freaks out. What happened to Flex again? What's going on? He didn't post today. What's the deal? Too many chives. Death by too many chives.

Well, Flexigen just got a little bit over his skis, I guess, and didn't post that day. But then he comes back and posts, and then people realize he's posted the same photo twice. The exact same photo? the exact same photo, which you wouldn't realize unless, like many Redditors have been doing, you are zooming in on the photo and looking for imperfect chives. It's sort of a where's Waldo leads to the discovery of chive fraud.

if that makes sense. It's true. I was kind of picturing, you know, when you post the exact same photo of almost anything else, you would know right away, except when it's like...

a person in their kitchen using maybe the same cutting board and knife, and it's the same amount of chives that are being chopped, that you wouldn't necessarily know that that's the same picture. Yeah. So then Flex can... has to come clean because redditors have called him out he has to come clean he says look guys i had some car trouble

And I made a bad choice. I made a bad decision. I couldn't pick up more chives. I just couldn't get my chives together and chopped on this day because I had some car trouble. But anyway, Flexican is back. They're cutting chives. The merriment and ridiculous continues. Reddit, the main Reddit administrators posted about the fake chive post. This is really gone.

mega viral and people are like you know people are asking like what is chive gate what is this so someone came in from kitchen confidential a mod and responded and said answer hi KC mod here. Guy started cutting chives a month ago, stated he wanted to improve knife skills in the kitchen, turned into a very popular post, spawned its own memes. He missed a day a couple of days ago. He was on the verge of missing yesterday, too, and made a poor judgment call to...

post a week old picture and call it that day's effort. Other users exposed his behavior and that became its own mega thread as people call them a fraud. A lot of people are still salty about it, but mostly he seems to be forgiven. We'll see how much longer this saga continues. Wow. There you go. Now you know what Chivegate is, who Chiveman is, as he is now being called. And by the way, yes, brands Emory are already capitalizing.

Philadelphia Cream Cheese has made posts referencing Chive Man and the whole fiasco. And the chive chopping and memeing, it continues for now. All right. Well, when we come back, I have another very inconsequential, very heated topic of discussion that also has to do with food in a minute. Give big, save big with Rack Friday deals at Nordstrom Rack. For a limited time, take an extra 40% off Red Tag clearance for a total savings up to 75% off.

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Perhaps by helping the company find its core values. Who are we? What is our vision? What is our strategy? As an organization, what is our ethos? What are our morals and values? Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast to preview a recent episode. Hit me.

Hit me with the goodness. Okie doke. Well, we'll start with a subreddit that I know you have heard of, which is LifeProTips, LPT. Sure. Are we talking ethical or unethical? That was going to be my next question. So I had never heard of unethical life pro tips. Oh, that's where I live, baby. Okay. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I know of it, but I don't. I don't spend that much time. I'm not looking at unethical life pro tips. No, no, no, I don't.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay, well, for the uninitiated, according to the subreddit, an unethical life pro tip is a tip that improves your life in a meaningful way, perhaps at the expense of others and or with questionable legality. So it was a post in this subreddit that made it to best of that then got endless thread tagged by someone who said, endless thread, come get your story.

You know we can't resist that when we get the cajoling finger of a fellow Redditor drawing us towards a story. It was so delicious to see. Okay, so the title of the... ULPT or unethical life pro tips post that they tagged us in is ULPT. I need a way to move 13. 2,000-pound pallets of margarine side to side and then down into a six-foot hole and then cover it with dirt. What?

Okay. I've got a thousand questions. All right. Well, I'm going to let you do the honors of reading the body of the post, which I just sent to you. Okay. Occasionally vertical is the user's name, which I think is kind of interesting considering the fact that they have to wiggle this margarine into the ground. Yep, yep. Okay. It must be quiet and fast.

I'm not opposed to renting heavy machinery, but they must be quiet and able to be operated in low light conditions. For the record, I don't think there's anything unethical about this, but it was recommended I post here, and I'm desperate. The margarine cannot be harmed. No melting or changing its shape of any kind. Afterwards, I will dig it up and whatever is left, I will need to either dissolve in some kind of acid or burn it some way that has little cleanup. Thank you.

This is this is AI engagement bait. Come on. Well, this got a lot of response. It continues to get a lot of response. There are a lot of comments on this post. A lot of people, you know, basically just being like, what? What are you doing? And is this legal? And every time the response is something like, oh, just move in some margarine. Nope, nothing to see here. I just had some extra lying around, the OP says sometimes.

So one commenter did link to a news story from 2011 about a guy in Iowa who stole a trailer full of margarine, $50,000 worth of margarine, and asked, is this you?

OP responded, no, it's mine, period. So yeah, so this is ridiculous. I reached out to Occasionally Vertical. like we do. But in the meantime, I also started doing... my own digging into this. There's a post that this user made in the heavy machinery subreddit that has a very funny diagram that I would love for you to describe for us. I'm sending it to you now.

I'm like scrolling through the comments and seeing these posts from the OP like months and months and months ago, I feel like. Yeah. Asking for help with the same problem. Yes. So there's a post in. They did the math. How much margarine would it take to power an average off-grid house if you burned the oils and fats inside of it and used it to make steam and spin turbines to power a generator?

And these posts, like, they have some pretty serious responses. That one in particular, probably because it is they did the math, it's like it has people taking this very seriously and trying to help this person solve. Yeah. Whatever this margarine problem is that they have. Do you see the heavy machinery post that I sent you? Yeah. I mean, this guy's this. He looks, they, the OP is drawing diagrams that, you know, are pretty close to what my eight-year-old would draw. As near as I can tell.

There's like margarine and arrows going right and left. And then at the bottom it says machine in parentheses quiet. And what's this thing on the left? It looks like it's either like a tank of water or it's like a little or it's the Declaration of Independence or like, what is this thing? It's got squiggles on it. Yeah, it kind of looks like maybe that's.

I don't know, like a vent? I mean, none of this really makes that much sense. There's another post in Ask Chemistry that asks about the possibility of dissolving the margarine, quote-unquote, without a trace. And below the diagram, another very silly diagram. It says, I'm getting desperate and I'm running out of time. I cannot liquefy the margarine as I cannot risk damage to it. Yeah, it's pretty wild. There's another post in the diet.

subreddit that asks what might happen to someone if they were to consume, say, three pounds of margarine every day for a month. But the body of that post says, just have some extra margarine lying around that I'm hoping to put to good use. If not three pounds, how much could I eat a day and still be OK? Thank you. I mean, I'm getting worried about this person. Like, is this like a mental illness thing or is this is it legit?

You know what I mean? It's very hard to know. And I did a lot of digging into their post history to try to get more context. There's obviously a lot about the margarine, but then there's a collection of posts that are... maybe illuminating in some way, maybe related to some extent. So there's a post in the off-grid subreddit made around the same time as these margarine, some of these margarine. posts. The post says, what kind of struggles do newbies face when starting off grid?

So this is a person who's considering living off the grid, away from society. There's a post inquiring about heavy equipment machine rental in San Gabriel, California. There's a post in the Death Valley National Park subreddit. What's the most beautiful area in Death Valley?

In a comment, they say, I really enjoy spending some time on some good deep dirt. Something about the vibes of it is refreshing when there's no one else around. Are you allowed to be there at night? So people are like, is this guy going to dig? in Death Valley and bury some margarine there. The OP also posted to the Side Hustle subreddit about a month ago saying they were trying to find a side hustle that would give them an extra like $500 to $1,000 a month.

And someone recognized the OP's username. in that subreddit and said, I know a guy trying to get his hands on a shit ton of margarine if you know where he could find some. And the OP just said, it's mine. So... Not try to sell the margarine. Okay. They've said before money is not an issue in terms of trying to solve the problem. So they maybe have some money to play with here.

They have certainly an obscene amount of margin. And they also have a lot of questions for Reddit, which, like, if you're really a mastermind trying to orchestrate some, I don't know, discreet... heist, burial, storage, something. They're really relying on Reddit to be able to hold their hand through it. Okay. I'm not the only one who went down the rabbit hole on this margarine quest. I spent...

Oh, goodness. Two or three hours probably going through all of this user's post history up through the last year or so. Just looking for more information. What could I glean? And the answer is not very much. This is Autumn Olson. Autumn spent some time as a linguist in the Air Force, speaks Arabic. and now has a consulting firm. So Autumn has a wide variety of skills and has been on Reddit for a long time and knows that sometimes people use Reddit as...

an attention-gathering playground, which did cross Autumn's mind with Occasionally Vertical's posts. The easiest thing to say is to write it off as a creative writing experiment or some kind of... troll post. But as I dug deeper into occasionally verticals post history, I found that more and more difficult to believe.

And difficult to believe, Autumn says, because this is not just one or two posts, as we've noticed. This is a jigsaw puzzle of posts that all seem to be part of the same puzzle and yet do not seem to go together. The fact that they are instead turning to multiple Reddit threads looking to be spoon-fed the answer, I just don't have a lot of faith in them.

So after this hours-long deep dive, Autumn left this comment on Occasionally Vertical's unethical life pro tips post, which is my top comment, shall we say. This is my favorite one that I've seen. And Autumn read it for me. This has been an issue for you for at least a year, OP. You've asked about eating it, dissolving it in acid, burying it, and moving it. You've stated that it can't be damaged.

but you've also looked for ways to dispose of it. The amount has increased from one pallet to multiple. You lived in eastern Washington, but now are working to hide this margin in SoCal slash West Arizona. You've made a post trying to find out the health risks associated with only eating margarine or supplementing with vitamins and protein. There's also a post about wanting to purchase 200 acres of land. And if it's possible for a commune of people...

to live off of said land. Then there's also the post of you recently buying your first glock. To put this plainly, you, as an individual, are not going to be able to do whatever it is you're trying to do. You've been unsuccessful for a year and have stated that the deadline you have is approaching quickly. I would love to help you. I really would. I think a lot of people here would, especially for the right price.

But without more information, I don't think anyone can help you. And you certainly can't do it yourself. So I have to ask, what the fuck is going on here?

So I mentioned I did reach out to Occasionally Vertical. They have not gotten back to me. But they do respond to comments sometimes, as we've seen in these posts. So... Autumn and I found a post that had some pretty recent engagement on it, despite the fact that it was made six months ago. It's a post in the subreddit Anarchy Rice that reads, The time is near, brothers.

Be ready. So even though this was made six months ago, someone commented just two weeks ago saying, where is it now? Occasionally Vertical says near. So Autumn and I decided this. this is the post to comment on and here's autumn's thinking on on how we should proceed i wonder if adding something you know matching the tone of i of the other posts in this single thread to be like you know

Are we to take this as success, brother, or something like that? What if I say, will we know when it happens, brother? I like that. I'm going to hit send. I'm going to hit comment. Okay. I got a response very quickly. Ooh. Occasionally Vertical just said, everyone will know.

Which is similar to things that they've written on other comments, saying like, someone said, I'd love to write a book about you. What's the deal here? And occasionally Vertical wrote something to that being like, when this is all over, you won't need a book to know. People won't need a book to know who I am and what I've done. Everyone will know. So, yeah. I think we're going to go with marketing play. Yeah. Final answer. Marketing play.

You'd think I would have thought of that sooner given that Soylent episode that we did forever ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe this is big margarine. I like the theory that this is a marketing ploy because that turns all of us into the... experiment here like we are we could be a hell corporate situation yeah yeah yeah or you know maybe they're gonna bury it maybe they're gonna lift it up 55 feet maybe i'm looking at you earth balance

I've got my eye on you, Earth Balance. I may use you every day because you're delicious, but I wouldn't put it past them to try to slide this one in, if you know what I mean. So we'll see. The time is near. Everyone will know. But how near is it? That's what you're trying to find out, right?

I mean, I'm just I'm just seeing if I can get any kind of response, you know, like. You got one once already and you asked when, right? I said, when will we know when it happens? Oh, that's right. Everyone will know. So everyone will know. And in the meantime, we're all this this this Redditor is becoming a Reddit legend. We're watching a Reddit legend be born before our very eyes.

You'll start seeing references to margarine person everywhere you go on Reddit now. Oh, boy. All right. Well, I mean, listen, chives and margarine go together pretty well. So... Get your chives, get your cup a day, get your stick of margarine a day, three cups a day that you're going to eat and cook them all together. I mean, I'll join a commune that lives off that.

Margarine and chives. That sounds good. Just straight margarine. I'm a little skeptical, but if you toss some chives in there, sounds delicious. All right. Well. We've got to get Flexican and Occasionally Vertical to team up. And when we find out more, we promise to update you, dear listeners, on what the heck is happening with either and both of these things. Stay slippery.

Endless Thread is a buttery production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was shucking and chiving thanks to the production work of Rough Chop Man, that's me, Emery Sievertson, and Grace Tatter. It was mixed and sound designed beautifully like butter by our production manager, Paul Vykus. It was edited by Meg Kramer. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, Frannie Monaghan, and our managing producer, Samata Joshi.

Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and whomever did Chivegate. That would be F1 Exican or Flexican. And also, Marjorie and Man, if you want to talk, just let us know, man. We're here. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or another wild story from the internet or about the internet that you want us to tell, you can hit us up, endlessthread, at wbur.org.

Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mayrothra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode that asks how boards should navigate geopolitical tensions. Kurt, I think that your intuition about board dynamic... Dynamics being stressed is exactly the point.

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