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    Cereal Isn't Cool In 2016

    Cereal is bullshit and it's not worth it.

    The New York Times published a piece on the challenges facing cereal companies in the 21st century. It included this paragraph.

    Many were aggrieved at this.

    But here's the thing – cereal IS fucking bullshit. It doesn't make any sense in 2016.

    It does take way too long to make and eat and clean up after a bowl of cereal. You could just have a cereal bar, which can be eaten on the bus to work, so you don't waste time that could be used creating value for your company.

    Some young people will just have coffee! They need some chemical stimulant to stay awake in front of their screen for more than an hour.

    Even when eating at home you need way too many things in order to have cereal. You need a bowl, a spoon, the cereal itself, and milk. Then, and only then, can you actually have your bowlful.

    But milk is a nightmare. Who has enough milk, ever? You're probably using a pint of milk every two or three days. But not always. Sometimes it'll be more, sometimes less.

    So you have to buy milk on random, unpredictable evenings when you remember that you ran out nine hours earlier. Sometimes it's a Monday, and it's fine because you were shopping anyway. On the other hand, sometimes it's half 11 on a Thursday and you just left the pub and fuck remembering milk then.

    You could, theoretically, just store more milk in your house, so you always have some.

    That fridge is shared as well, because the housing market is fucked and you live with four other people and one of their cousins who was only supposed to be sleeping on the sofa "temporarily", each of whom also needs milk.

    So either you all have your own milk, and literally no other foodstuffs in your tiny fridge, or you all share milk, in which case it will run out once a day, in time for the very last person to leave to not get any milk. So fuck cereal, because milk is hell to deal with.

    It's also hell to deal with because it spills. You need a bowl for this breakfast-soup bullshit, so you have to sit down. This is a whole new batch of time you need to spend having breakfast, and not doing anything else.

    You could sleep earlier to make waking up easier, except that it turns out young people have also ended up working more hours, so it's even harder to get sleep. Also, having fun is good and it often makes it harder to get up the next day.

    But there's also no excitement with a bowl of cereal. No one wants to see it on Snapchat or Instagram.

    Which all means that millennials just aren't interested in taking a minute to plan their day and read a newspaper as they savour their cereal. They have shit to do and they got their news before they even got out of bed. Cereal is a hassle. Fuck cereal.