Social Media’s Shameless Shaming Of Reese’s Peanut Butter Trees

By
Robert L. Franklin
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social media shaming reese's peanut butter trees
Image by Evan-Amos, available under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

I sometimes feel like we take Christmas way too seriously. When we’re not shouting at each other over where extended family are going to stay, fighting the alleged “War on Christmas,” or punching people when retail opens its doors, it sometimes seems like we have to go looking for something to unnecessarily shank with candy cane shivs. After all, did we not just lose our freakin’ minds over Starbucks cups last month?

Starbucks is not the only recognizable brand that has drawn the ire of many a bored Christmas warrior. Reese’s peanut butter trees have recently become the subject of shaming on social media.

Every year, Reese’s peanut butter cups evolve into Reese’s peanut butter trees. No one is sure of the exact biological processes in play, but they’re pretty sure some kind of intelligent design is at least partly responsible.

This year, for some God-awful reason, social media denizens have taken it upon themselves to point out that the Reese’s peanut butter trees don’t have the exact appearance of Christmas trees, shaming the candy and shaming the manufacturer in a way that only people without anything better to do can.

No, Bucky Keen, it looks like brown Grimace. It’s always looked like brown Grimace.

Why is it 2015 is the year when everybody suddenly realizes that Reese’s peanut butter trees do not, in fact, look like Christmas trees? Furthermore, why is this such a big deal, especially when there are plenty of other things more deserving of our holly jolly outrage?

Reese’s took notice of the confectionery shaming and crafted an eloquent response to the scores of posts treating their tasty treat like grandma’s Christmas fruitcake.

“It’s not what it looks like, it’s what it tastes like” is the best response Reese’s could have used to combat yuletide trolling. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters. It’s ridiculous to keep finding things to get mad about. Why not just take everything in stride? Maybe just sip some cocoa and eat some Reese’s peanut butter tress on the couch while watching the greatest Christmas movie ever. You know, Die Hard.

I mean, there’s no reason to get so worked up about some arbitrary thing that really isn’t deserving of our outrage. After all, we can’t all be Joshua Feuerstein.

Robert L. Franklin
Robert could go on about how he was raised by honey badgers in the Texas Hill Country, or how he was elected to the Texas state legislature as a 19-year-old wunderkind, or how he won 219 consecutive games of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots against Hugh Grant, but those would be lies. However, Robert does hail from Lewisville, Texas, having been transplanted from Fort Worth at a young age. Robert is a college student and focuses his studies on philosophical dilemmas involving morality, which he feels makes him very qualified to write about politicians. Reading the Bible turned Robert into an atheist, a combative disposition toward greed turned him into a humanist, and the fact he has not lost a game of Madden football in over a decade means you can call him "Zeus." If you would like to be his friend, you can send him a Facebook request or follow his ramblings on Twitter. For additional content that may not make it to Liberal America, Robert's internet tavern, The Zephyr Lounge, is always open

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