Fat-Cat Tuna Executives Are Killing The Internet, And Other Wild Assumptions

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal ran a story under this headline:

"The Trouble With Tuna: 'A Lot of Millennials Don't Even Own Can Openers'"

So clicky, amirite? The story covers the shrinking demand for canned tuna fish and what the "big three" tuna companies—StarKist, Bumble Bee, and Chicken Of The Sea—are doing to fight the decline. And it takes a certain declaration from one Andy Mecs, vice president of marketing and innovation for StarKist, and just runs with it:

In a country focused on convenience, canned tuna isn't cutting it with consumers. Many can't be bothered to open and drain the cans, or fetch utensils and dishes to eat the tuna. "A lot of millennials don't even own can openers," said Andy Mecs, vice president of marketing and innovation for Pittsburgh-based StarKist, a subsidiary of South Korea's Dongwon Group.

I'm one of those pesky cusp-millennials, born near the beginning of span of years commonly associated with that designation (1981–1996, which we'll call the avocado-toast window). Perhaps because I'm an old millennial, I have always owned a can opener. Or maybe it's just because I'm poor and eat food. Who knows. Regardless, I never got the memo that said I'm not supposed to own a can opener. I've owned a couple, in fact! At the moment I have two, because I have not yet thrown out the kinda-broken one I replaced a few months ago. I even had one of those fancy electric ones for awhile. So this is the first I've heard that we of the avocado-toast window don't fuck with cans. (My full-to-bursting cupboard, with its plentiful supples of canned stuff, would like a word. It contains tuna. )

In short, this dude argues that millennials aren't eating tuna because we can't be bothered with, or are incapable of, opening cans. It's for sure the cans—not the mercury, or the dolphin thing, or the smell, or the fact that there's also just regular fish out there.

But if we millennials are incapable of opening cans, we are, at least, very good at making broad assumptions about rich tuna executives that have no basis in fact but just feel right, know what I mean? We are at least as good as the fancy tuna bigwigs at that particular activity. Here goes.

• Tuna execs love wearing top hats and swimming in coin vaults
• Tuna execs hate dolphins—like, hate 'em
• Tuna execs think eating tuna from a pouch is for peasants
• Tuna execs only wear leather if the leather comes from a cow that they knew personally
• Tuna execs only like the Michael Bublé version of "All I Want For Christmas Is You"; they think the Mariah version is way too screechy
• Tuna execs are pretty sure they own can openers, but they'll have to ask Hildegard to be sure. Hildegard handles the cooking and shopping, except for the pastries. (Henri does pastries.)
• When the tuna execs ask Hildegard about the can opener, she says they have one, but the tuna exec isn't quite sure what one looks like, can he see it please? What is that thing? Could Hildegard demonstrate?
• The tuna exec really does not care for that tuna smell, could Hildegard get that out of the library immediately?