Pineapple on Pizza Debate

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Overview

The Pineapple on Pizza Debate refers to the longstanding argument surrounding the merits of Hawaiian pizza, which is a pizza topped with pieces of pineapple. The pizza has long been a subject of internet debate, as vocal critics and supporters have made image macros and various posts taking sides.

History

The Hawaiian Pizza was created in 1962 by Sam Panopoulous at the Satellite Restaurant in Toronto, Canada.^[1] While pineapple has been a popular pizza topping since then, it has also long been the target of hatred. The earliest known internet thread about the topic was posted to Neogaf on January 17th, 2009 by TheGrayGhost.^[2]

Developments

The debate has continued online with various degrees of rigor since the early 2010s. On December 19th, 2009, a Facebook page named "Pineapple does NOT belong on PIZZA!"^[3] launched and gained over 1,600 likes. The first image macros related to the debate appeared in 2011 in various Advice Animals (shown below).

The pizza remained a popular topic of online debate as people created more image macros, posts, and advice animals related to being Pro or Anti-Hawaiian pizza, until it started being covered by news outlets. On February 4th, 2014, The Thrillist^[4] posted an article ranking pineapple as the worst pizza topping, citing "its inherent wateriness muddling the texture of the pizza." Elsewhere in pop culture, in the 2015 Pixar film Inside Out, the character Anger shouts "Congratulations, San Francisco, you ruined pizza! First the Hawaiians, and now you!"^[1]

2016 Peak

The debate peaked in August 2016 as a sudden influx of posts and images related to the debate spread on social media. Two threads were posted to /r/OutofTheLoop^[5]^[6] in the first week of August asking about the debate's spike. Though its unclear what caused the spike, commenters in both threads point to a sudden influx of image macros pertaining to the debate spreading on Facebook (ex. shown below).

2017 Resurgence

The debate raged again in January 2017. On January 28th, Twitter user @OriginalSDM tweeted^[7] an image of a slice of pizza overloaded with pineapple, saying "wuss poppin twitter, retweet to ruin a pineapple on pizza haters timeline". The tweet, shown below, received over 120,000 retweets and is credited by Buzzfeed^[8] as reigniting the debate.

On Tumblr, an image of #SaltBae sprinkling pineapple into a garbage can posted by catoverlord^[9] turned into a long thread where various Tumblr users added more photos removing the pineapple but then feeding it to raccoons, etc.^[10]