December 29, 2024
Mid by Design
The capitalist machinery produced its latest victim. To funnel more gasoline into the endlessly thirsty engines that drive us towards the illusion of infinite abundance, the intransparent mechanisms of the so-called ‘free’ market bastardised a once great childhood delight: the milk-slice, or as it was known to me, Milchschnitte (MS), now available in a (limited) peach-flavoured edition. The end result: a horrendous, shockingly bad, again, bad, product.
I used to commit atrocities for a Milschnitte. At merely 4 years-old, I would wrestle my cousins down onto the harsh floor of my grandma’s moldy flat just to beat them to the highly inaccessible freezer compartment that stood at twice my height. I haven’t wrestled since.
This doesn’t exactly make sense. By any objective metric, the milk-slice, Milchschnitte, MS, is a disappointment. It lacks any structural integrity. Its flavour profile is as bland and uninspiring as its highly illustrative name. It’s an AI-made, generic, and utterly meaningless snack from a time well before the internet. It’s mid.
Who craves a milchschnitte? What makes you crave a milchschnitte? Not quite a cake, not quite a sandwich, it’s more solid than a pudding, softer than a cookie. The worst of all worlds. Jack of all trades except that his union got busted, master of none etc.
The Milschnitte is pure mediocrity. It is 'inoffensiveness, the product'. Blandness commodified. You don’t really have to “think” before you chose to eat a Milchschnitte. It’s an option so fundamentally “meh” that nothing could possibly go wrong!
It’s mediocre, and yet I feel devastated and frankly offended by the peach edition. I might be an easily manipulated, mindless consumer, but even I have standards. Oh how I crave to feel the blissful consumerist ignorance that infatuated me so immensely with the original Milchschnitte that I willingly fought my loved ones just to taste it one more time. Time for a new religion.