Soup memes calm millennials' discomfort

Soup is the best remedy against the cold, literally and metaphorically. The first is more than obvious: nothing feels better than a steaming broth on a winter day. But soup not only warms the body, it is also pure comfort for our souls full of anxiety, fear of the future and helplessness in the face of the horrors that occur in the world. Or at least that's what the internet thinks, that has turned soup into the definitive meme to transmit that warmth that we long for, a warmth capable of calming our heads in these turbulent times and providing us with a certain feeling of shelter. Just think about the “there is broth” signs that hang in some bars and that could well be the equivalent of “welcome to my home” on the doormat of a house. If a recipe was capable of giving you a hug, it would surely be a soup.

“Life has no meaning, there is only pain and suffering and failure. OMG, soup, hellooooo!” or “a bowl of soup will fix me” are some of the messages that appear in the countless soup memes that proliferate on the internet. For their part, the hashtags #soupseason and #souptok They have been accumulating videos on TikTok for a couple of years and Alfie Steiner, better known on networks such as @alfiecooks_has managed to make her soup recipes go viral and even turn it into something sexy thanks to that deep and calm voice.

It is difficult to find a haven of peace online as pleasant as the one that exists around soup, a space free of cynicism and evil, where spoon dishes seem to be the solution to all problems. What is it about soup that the Internet has turned into the quintessential culinary antidote to the malaise of our times? There is no doubt that it is one of the dishes that provides the greatest well-being most instantly. It is easy to make and, although there are very elaborate soups, generally their charm lies in their simplicity. With a pot, a stove, water and a few ingredients, you have a soup.

In the recipe account Good for youwhich defines its content as “easy and successful cooking for depressed millennials,” are soup fans and they have their own theory about why they succeed on the networks. “Spoon food gives us an illusion of adulthood. Our generations are not having the traditional milestones of that life stage. I'm talking about buying a house, getting married, having children… All of that has disappeared or is being reformulated and the soup gives us, a little, the illusion of that home that we don't have,” says Elvira Ambite, the creator of the Bueno Pa dishes. You, who look so beautiful on screen, thanks to the art direction of Miriam Persand. “I don't see it as crazy that soup becomes fashionable on social media, right now when everything is so turbulent. Everything is very unpleasant, the news is very unpleasant, our life takes steps for the worse and adulthood seems to never come. If I set up a spoon dish, it seems like it's closer,” she continues.

In your recipe chowder vegan They forcefully affirm that “there is no act of love truer than a thick soup.” And it is true. Making soup or preparing it for other people is the gesture of care par excellence. “The act of sitting down and eating a spoonful meal is like putting a mask on your face and saying 'I'm treating myself well.' Furthermore, soup is something very cultural, in almost all cuisines in the world the emblematic dishes always include a soup, so it has that thing of tradition, of stability.”

The journalist from Bon Appetit Ali Francis, created a genealogy of the fervor for soup on the internet, dating back to 2014, when a clip of one of the most memorable episodes of the series began to circulate Seinfeld: The Soup Nazi. In this scene, George was seen saying, “I have to concentrate, I'm going into soup mode,” while he was standing in line to order a crab bisque. The “soup Nazi”, an ultra-demanding cook who only served you the prized delicacy if you complied with his strict rules of behavior (limit yourself to asking, no comments, questions or compliments), was inspired by a real person who ran a restaurant. in New York where, according to the article dedicated to him The New Yor
ker in 1989, it smelled so good that “it made you want to take a bite of the air.” This character mixed two apparently antagonistic universes: that of the pleasant and comforting soup with that of the strict rules that had to be followed so that it did not leave you without your portion. Only Kramer, the most eccentric of the group, understood the character of this genius who demanded perfection from his soup, which is why he could not expect less from his clients.

Then they came the frog from “soup time” or Baby Yoda with his broth in his hands. But the memes we see now convey a candor that we see in other social media trends such as cutecore or aesthetics coquette (the latter has also reached food, filling everything with ties), which claim naivety and a certain evasion of the problems of an increasingly hostile and unpredictable world. This overwhelming global scenario makes us turn, more and more frequently, to what is comfortable, what is cozy, what makes us feel good even on such a micro level. It is precisely that feeling of lack of control that is so palpable and that generates so much helplessness that pushes us to look for a refuge in small things that warms our spirit a little. What is soft, what makes you want to hug, or what simply makes us feel good without any other pretensions than that have often been concepts ridiculed for their childish or feminine reminiscences. However, perhaps we are realizing that the lack of pretension and the feeling of well-being, characteristics that define a good soup, are an excellent goal to aim for.

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