Lacroix is club soda with delusions of grandieur. I had a soda siphon in 2006; it's kinda nice that greater culture finally caught up. It sucks ass, however, that they overshot and went fucking retarded with it. Fuckin strawberry lemonade natty light? That's a failure pile in a sadness bowl in beverage form. I liked it better when we called 'em trasheritas and made fun of people for their self-loathing. This is what you get when you celebrate "sketti."
You think it started with "sketti"? Come to Nebraska, Klein, and let me show you the fucking culinary tragedies mass-produced by the midwest. Y'ever had uh fuckin' HAHTdish o'er there, bud? It's a starchy mixture of whatever food is too gross to eat by itself topped with cheese and tater tots, baked into a bubbling mess. And it killed America. Look at your god and despair.
sigh You're not wrong. To be fair, I wouldn't argue that it "started" with "sketti" but that "sketti" is where it metastasized. I grew up in the Southwest surrounded by ancient Chicano tribes (Baca land grant! 1823 bitchez!) and ancienter native american tribes (you are now aware that "anasazi" means "enemy of my ancestors"). Indian fry bread is not delicate cuisine, nor are Frito pies but then, we didn't pretend they were. Midwest cuisine was something we all universally agreed to look down upon - east coast, west coast, southwest, south, it has been universally acknowledged that other than Chicago deep dish, nothing of value came from the middle. And then we started ironically eating funnel cakes and then it wasn't ironic anymore. Now? Now you can buy mutherfucking gourmet poutine. Irony.
I've been giving this some thought as a member of the media octopus. I'm obviously reluctant to accept the blame wholesale. I think it's fair to say that in a high-effort media production environment, the focus is on things that you can convince the audience they'll love and can only get from you. There have been a million takes on "hospital" but "ER" or "Gray's Anatomy" are particular takes that resonated. In a low-effort media production environment, the focus is on things you can throw in front of the audience that they won't bother switching away from. "here's an industry with people in it that do stuff" is Orange County Choppers, is Duck Dynasty, is Property Brothers, is Pawn Stars, is whatever. They're completely interchangeable. We can all switch hit from one dumb hosted hickfest to another. I once shot a "pickers"-type pilot that finished at the Pasadena antique fair, something that happens every month. We were one of three "pickers" - type pilots shooting that day. It's fucking pathetic. Thing of it is, we'll all do the high-value shit over the low-value shit (I'm lucky enough that I don't have to bother with the low-value shit anymore). But very few people put the effort into an "ER" or "West Wing" or "Game of Thrones." They'd rather half-watch 4 episodes of Intervention because they can get other shit done while they're doing it. I'm certainly guilty of this.
I am too, and I suspect half the userbase of Netflix does the same thing. Good dichotomy, though - your perspective as someone who's part of the industry is interesting! As a complete aside, I think it's cool how you can take a half-hearted riff on an easy target and turn it into food for thought. Stuff like this is why I like Hubski