By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff
I recently introduced my coworkers to the newest Generation Z craze — at least in the German-speaking world — pudding mit gabel or “pudding with a fork.” To host a pudding mit gabel gathering, simply advertise a time and place for people to meet, then wait. Thousands of people attend these events with their own fork and pudding cup and, after counting down together (with pudding cup percussion), they all sit and eat. It’s as simple as that.
This baffles most people, as do many Gen Z trends.
It’s next to impossible to explain why it’s funny without ruining it (like Reader Editor Zach Hagadone did for the Gen Alpha meme “6-7” in his Oct. 23 piece, “Switching Geertz”). It’s also next to impossible to explain why it’s funny because, well, it just is. Pudding is funny. Eating it wrong is funny. If it isn’t, explain to me why.
Still, my perspective on the why of this pudding party is easier to understand.
Gen Z has grown up in an often-overpopulated, economically insecure and technology-reliant world. Unlike Millennials, we weren’t told that the world was our oyster, only to hit our 20s and learn that the rich and powerful were actively working to destroy the planet.
As soon as we were old enough to comprehend language, we were taught that the world is on fire — a very preventable fire — and that people are throwing gasoline on it because they don’t believe life is sacred unless it’s their own or a pea in a uterus. We learned about all the animals going extinct and the children starving and the soldiers living with PTSD on the streets and we were shown how the American government could work to fix these issues, and it just doesn’t.
But hey, as a reward for surviving all those school shootings, we got the choice to vote for either the incompetent party or the fascist party.
In America, especially, while Gen Z was in the first stages of developing various anxiety disorders, we also saw — and continued to see — the loss of after-school programs and safe outdoor spaces. So, when your playground is razed and made into pickleball courts and the state cuts funding for your daycare or art club, the most addictive platform left to create connections is technology. The virtual replaces the tangible out of necessity. This issue doesn’t go away as we age, because eventually the third place outside of work and home becomes the bar, and that has its own issues.
This increasingly isolating age has made it more difficult and more important than ever to find community.
What can you do when your social needs aren’t being met, but going to a bar or trying to find a book club just isn’t working? You eat pudding with a fork. Pudding mit gabel provides a safe space for groups to interact and leverages the absurdity of the act to break the ice between strangers. Moreover, unlike a bar or a regularly scheduled activity, it requires very little time and money.
Absurdism is Gen Z’s comedy and philosophy of choice for the same reasons listed above. We have grown up believing that we never stood a chance and that everything we do is meaningless. Whether or not you believe that, Albert Camus and the absurdists taught us that you can spend your life searching for meaning in the meaningless, or you can rebel and enjoy life, knowing there is no greater purpose.
Gen Z often feels that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain, so rather than waiting for the metaphorical Godot, we embrace the fact that nothing matters. We free ourselves from the bigger picture that we can’t control and instead focus on what makes living life bearable.
This can lead to hedonism and consumerism, sure, but also a strong desire to build up and protect our communities. If all we have is what’s before us, then we make the best of what’s there, laughing as we do so. Sometimes that means joining a protest dressed as Captain America because our government doesn’t see our friends as human beings; or, sometimes, it just means eating pudding with a fork.
