The internet can be a useful source of information. There’s a vast canon of knowledge at your fingertips, more than can be physically archived on paper, collected into tomes, and shelved in physical buildings—and that doesn’t include multimedia. Instead of relying on handwritten notes surviving for decades, we can go back and look at digital archives of our social media to know how everyday people felt about the events and circumstances of the day.
The internet is also full of shit.
Sometimes it’s intentional disinformation to influence election outcomes or open satire that occasionally is too good to check, resulting in enough people biting the onion, with that itself becoming the actual news. The latest work from DoctorPhotograph, which specializes in product and packaging parodies, got the internet buzzing enough to attract the attention of the lampooned brands.
Enter Mayoreo, a heady combination of Heinz Kraft mayonnaise and Oreo cookies, a satirical taste sensation worth passing around the interwebs. The success of Heinz’s condiment flavor mashups—like Mayochup, which has expanded to six other flavor combinations to include Buffaranch, Honeyracha, Kranch, Mayomust, Mayoracha, and Sweet Ketchili—resulted in a pretty convincing photoshop job from Doctor Photograph. Leave it to ketchup, mayonnaise, and ranch to cleave deep chasms on the internet to successfully troll the world for a couple of days.
In a frightening twist, however, Mayoreo may have become subject to Poe’s Law, the internet adage stating that parody of extreme views is indistinguishable from reality when the intent of the original author is unknown. Some took the joke further by attempting to create the fake condiment. Heinz and Oreo added kindling to the internet firestorm by retweeting the image and expressing interest in the concept.
There’s no official word on when or if this culinary abomination will be available for purchase. But like Dogecoin, Mayoreo could engender enough passion and excitement to go from an internet scam to reality.
