Apologies in advance if this isn't the place for this!

I just learned about this item for the very first time, when Saggi asked for it in a quest and yikes this description:

This is... really not cool. Is it possible to have the description changed to something less... awful? This item definitely doesn't reflect the inclusive, 'be yourself' nature of Subeta at all, and I'd rather never lay eyes on those words again!

(maybe it could be changed to just refer to it filling you up despite being super tiny, a la Paris Hilton and the nanodrop (sodastream) joke ad?)

This has been brought up before in a thread about items with questionable descriptions and names. Surprised it hasn't been changed yet, this was awhile ago.

Yeahh when someone pointed that one out on the thread mentioned, my heart sank a bit. No fun for someone who's had those thoughts forrealzies before.

I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek joke at first.....

But yeah, I understand the concern about triggering people who feel that they need to starve themselves to lose weight.

Maybe at least remove the last two sentences?

It was written by a literal fatty who is perfectly familiar with phrases like that being used to shame (or even coming from within!) because that is the whole point. The absurdity of feeling guilty/shamed for eating a whole single goddamned pea.

Just because the person who wrote the description (I am guessing you, because I am not sure you'd call someone else a 'literal fatty') can see the absurdity of it, doesn't mean that other people don't find it hurtful.

I am also a 'literal fatty', and as someone who has spent the majority of their life eating 1, maybe 2 meals a day, the smallest portions I could possibly find so that my family would not mock me, no matter how hungry I actually was-- this item has missed the mark that it was intended to hit.

I still struggle, to this day, to eat near ANY other person, no matter how much I trust them. So while you (or who ever wrote this) may be comfortable in their skin, not everyone else is and that's why it's being brought up. It is hurtful to someone like me, who struggles with this exact issue with their eating disorder.

Even if the description wasn't made with bad intentions, it can still be read as such and can still hurt people.

Like, I'm overweight and also super hard on myself for it, and descriptions like this aren't helpful. I know it's not good to starve myself and at my lowest, I consider it sometimes. It's easy for a description like this to hit something personal.

I don't have an eating disorder so I did get the "joke" but I can see how it would be really upsetting to people who struggle with this kind of thought.

Maybe the joke that it's a single pea and therefore not filling could be kept intact by focusing more on the price? I'm thinking along the lines of it being a fancy gourmet meal that is just a single pea. That would still keep the joke without the negative connotations about eating.

i'm a fan of absurdist comedy myself and this one just feels like a joke that fell flat. also, self-deprecating jokes removed from their context can come across as mean spirited or just in poor taste. and yeah, this is kind of in poor taste.

Let me be clear here, the punchline of this joke is not overweight people. The name, “Ultimate Miracle Meal,” is reminiscent of fad diets and snake oil peddled to make you think weight loss will be super easy. And then the image is a pea, a single tiny pea on a big empty plate. And EVEN THEN when you have resigned yourself to this fate, that you will eat this one pea and be content with it, EVEN THEN, some faceless person then calls you a pig for daring to eat the whole thing. That attitude is the punchline.

And that’s the last I’ll say on it. I’ll be extremely disappointed if it’s changed, but I can’t force people to find it funny. I truly think it’s absurd to be hurt by it, because it’s meant to be making fun of the things that hurt us. That blunt language is a part of that, because I think it loses its bite if you tone that language down.

I don’t know. I don’t want to write an essay on the silly pea item on subeta dot net, but it does bum me out in a way I can’t quite articulate. I think maybe because that type of humor is just how I’ve always approached my item descriptions on here.

The last word could be removed, and it would be perfect. I don't really think it needs more editing than this, tbh

i could understand this being the description without the word "pig" and making it more apparent that it's literally a single pea. i get that it's intended to be humorous, but right now it def doesn't come off that way (to me, at least). like, imo it's clearly intended to be a joke given the entirety of the context (food item, pet website, etc...) it's just not a very good one that could easily be taken the wrong way to someone with a personal history with those types of intrusive thoughts.

kind of like when your coworker tells a racist/sexist joke that they find funny and has a clear punchline, but you don't think those ways so it's just kind of... ehhh.

the context it's removed from is "a fat person wrote this." the implications change a lot if a skinny person had written it. we had no way of knowing it wasn't, until now.

sometimes jokes just dont land and it is what it is.

As someone who's also struggled with disordered eating I can empathize completely with getting intrusive thoughts even when you're not eating nearly as much as you should be to be healthy.

Like, shit, when I felt my worst, I'd eat a single slice of toast and some water as my food for a full day and feel terrible eating even just that because of all the weight I'd put on. (And as a result, got down to half a slice of toast for a day! Thankfully I mostly have things under control now, but it does creep back sometimes.)

It's a joke item, yes, but I agree that it misses the mark or at least is pretty damn reminiscent of what people struggling with EDs might feel about themselves.

An extract from something Ricky Gervais said:

''There is something inherently funny, as well as deeply entitled, about those who believe that stand-up comics should be able to anticipate the personal boundaries of strangers before writing their material. ‘I want people to stop saying “That joke is offensive”. You should say you found it offensive because you’ve got to own the emotion. That’s all it is. It’s an emotion, an opinion. As a comedian you can’t please everyone. If you try you’ll end up pleasing no one and saying nothing.''

I guess I think that sentiment applies here. Not that I'm calling Bean a stand-up comic, but that they wrote a joke, it's just a joke.

I think it's very important to consider that MAYBE a joke is in poor taste when a lot of people bring it up, even if you, the writer, think it's funny, even if you're part of the group it's poking fun at

Hell I don't even have one of those kinds of EDs and even I cringe when I see that item description, it absolutely should be changed

As with many mental health issues, going 'Lol stop feeling that way' doesn't make the health issue stop. You cannot tell someone with depression to just 'be happy' and you cannot tell someone with an eating disorder to just 'eat normally and stop worrying'.

I don't see many people saying "I don't get the joke", instead I see people saying "This isn't funny." or "This joke wasn't done well." I think the joke of this could be reworded to make sense and keep the meaning is so adamant about. But this is a 10 year+ old description by the looks of it, and IDK about everyone else, but 10 years ago I was an idiot and said a lot of things that were funny to me, but probably not very funny to others.

There are a lot of things Subeta posts in descriptions and item names that I bite my tongue on because it's not worth fighting over, but this item isn't one of those. It contains language that people with ED not only hear, but tell themselves, and it makes the disorder worse. Maybe some people don't struggle with this, and that's great, but some of us do and we're politely asking to be taken into consideration here.

10+ years in recovery from anorexia here, I find the item's joke description relatable and hilarious. I wouldn't want to see this item's description change. Don't treat everyone with a mental illness like they're fragile shells, that's more insulting than this item's joke.

I don't see a single person saying this item is hurting 'everyone' with an ED. I only see people sharing their own personal experiences and feelings, and showing concerns it could possibly effect others not posting here.

Your recovery is very impressive, and I'm glad you've gotten to a safer place. Unfortunately, not all of us have.

Not wanting to see this kind of language in a safe place doesn't make me a 'fragile shell' either, thanks. I'm not triggered into having issues with my ED, I'm just saying that this joke could have been executed better, without the hurtful language.

If safe spaces really existed, anyone could say whatever was really on their mind without fear of being condemned for not having the 'correct or popular opinion'. As it stands, there is no such thing.

There's loads of items on here that are offensive to somebody, but they can't all be changed for a loud vocal minority. Props to for standing up for herself.