Twitter Spends All Night Debating Whether Olives Are Good
You never know what's going to go viral these days. It's catching lightning in a bottle, really; you have to strike the right nerve at exactly the right moment. Apparently, the way to get people riled up last night was to ask them whether or not they like olives, as Twitter user Corey Edward soon found out:
Is... is there anyone who actually LIKES olives? Are we sure those people exist? Who keeps buying olives to consume? I demand you reveal yourselves.
— Corey Edward 🧙🏻♂️ (@CoreyEdward2) October 4, 2020
"Is there anyone who actually LIKES olives?" Edward asks incredulously. "I demand you reveal yourselves." I have to think this person was being knowingly contrarian here—but I say that as a person who loves olives. "Buying olives to consume" is a broad category that encompasses both full-on snacking and chopping up some kalamata olives to throw into some pasta with lemon and feta, and I tend more toward the latter than the former. But in either case, olives are a delicious burst of concentrated brine flavor, and anyone who's ever craved a bag of salt and vinegar chips can surely understand the appeal.
Almost unanimously, Twitter rushed to the defense of olives, sharing pictures of their blue-cheese-stuffed martini garnishes and canned black olives affixed to each finger. Mara Wilson unequivocally stated she was pro-olive. Then the takes shifted from how good olives are to speculation about why on earth the original poster wouldn't think so.
The food-is-better-in-Europe defense is one that arises in any discussion of chocolate candy and store-bought bread, so it makes sense that it would rear its head here too. But then people took issue with that, recommending Amish olives as an example of a quality American product. The takes kept rolling in all night, and the original tweet with the thesis "olives are not good" now has 18,000 responses and counting.
But what about you, readers? Where do you stand on briny, salty, fleshy, admittedly-never-quite-entirely-pitted jars of olives? Do you reach for them on a charcuterie board? Do you add them to your pizza? Is the original poster as wrong as Twitter made them out to be? Please share your thoughts. And if you love olives, we've got a recipe for that.