Looks like YouTube might have some real-life fruit ninjas—only they’re a bit less flashy and much more practical.
For the second time in two months, a video of a woman explaining the proper way to cut and eat a pomegranate has made it to Reddit’s front page, racking up more than 1.2 million views on YouTube in the process.
The video was originally uploaded on Oct. 30, 2010 by a YouTube user named sproolinski. The channel only has 4 videos, and the simple pomegranate demonstration is by far the most popular.
On Reddit today, the video again made the front page and was countered by another video showing the “correct” way of eating a pomegranate. This method, posted in 2012 by Faissal BI, also has an astonishing 1.4 million views.
What is going on here? Both videos have stirred a lot of debate on Reddit about the right way to consume this seedy fruit. Whereas sproolinski’s video says to cut off the cones on the top and bottom and slice at the ridges to create seed slices, Faissal’s shows a man cutting the fruit in half and spreading each half out from the middle. He also taps the back of the fruit so that the pomegranate seeds fall out nicely onto a plate.
Equally popular, and continuously making the rounds in the comment sections of posts about the pomegranate videos, is this 2012 video of an older gentleman named Tom Willett explaining the proper way to eat a watermelon.
At one point, the mild-mannered man says that the reason people eat watermelon with a fork is because of a conspiracy involving “the fork cartel,” so unlike the other two, this fruit slicing video is meant to be comedy.
At one point, Willett says, “When you slice the watermelon, have an adult do that. Also if you roast the marshmallows, have an adult do that. That way, if your mom or an older brother or somebody cuts or burns their fingers or something, you can still go ahead and eat your watermelon comfortably.”
There’s no marketing or self-promotion behind any of these how-tos, a rarity among YouTube videos with more than 1 million views. On YouTube and Reddit, fans tried to explain the videos’ mysterious appeal.
“They saw a need and they filled it,” one Redditor wrote. Another found sproolinski’s video soothing because there’s “just something motherly about her.”
H/T Reddit /Photo via ShyB/Flickr