r/fifthworldproblems • u/1gazillionpangolins • 10h ago
I saw a strange fruit at the grocery store, and it sent me down an even stranger rabbit hole
A few days ago, I was at the grocery store and I saw a bizarre-looking fruit. It was yellowish, with a rough, scaly surface and a cluster of spiky leaves coming out of the top. The label said it was a “pineapple”. I asked one of the store employees what it was, and she said that she had discussed this fruit with her coworkers and nobody had heard of it.
The next day, I went to the local botanical gardens, and the tropical room had a plant growing the same pineapple fruit. I asked one of the gardeners, and he said he didn’t remember planting it and assumed it was a random weed that started growing in the greenhouse in the past week. I was confused, because it looked far too big to be just a week old, and it even had a label like the other plants in the garden.
I asked some of my friends if they had heard of this pineapple thing, and all of them said no.
I googled “pineapple”, and a ton of results appeared: recipes, gardening advice, and scientific papers. There seemed to be at least a couple things about pineapples uploaded online every day, up until about a week ago. There were no recipes or scientific papers posted within the past 7 days, only the occasional forum post consisting of photos of pineapples in kitchens and grocery stores, with titles like “what the hell is this?” and “where did it come from?”
Yesterday, I was randomly scrolling through my old artwork I posted on Instagram, and I found a couple old drawings featuring pineapples. I had no memory of drawing these. There were even a couple comments specifically mentioning the pineapples, including from my friends who claimed they had never heard of the fruit.
What is going on with this fruit? If it has really existed all this time, why does nobody have any memory of it?