According To TikTok, Cereal Is The Official Food Of Lockdown

As adults, we yearn for the days spent in pyjamas, feasting on cereal in front of the television.  Given the circumstances of lockdown, sometimes, there's nothing better to do but watch TV in our pyjamas all morning. Now is as good a time as ever to revisit your favourite childhood cartoons (or delve into some newer ones, like Netflix's Midnight Gospel). And cereal, is no doubt, a key component of this ritual.

This week, we're seeing the resurgence of a popular cereal box-folding hack on TikTok, originally made viral around the end of April. The hack involves folding in the sides of the cereal box like a paper bag, folding in the back flap flatly against the inside of the box, and tucking the front flap into the rear fold. I tried it with my own box of Lucky Charms, and while it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in its ability to maintain the cereal's freshness, it is an attractive way to fold in the flaps of your cardboard cereal box.

This creator viral hack calls herself "the CEO of cereal box" and her TikTok account only has two videos: the one you see above demonstrating the hack and a follow-up ensuring the folding technique is spill-proof. Her first video currently has over one million views.

This isn't the first cereal TikTok to go viral and it likely won't be the last. If you look at TikTok, you'll find that we're now eating our pancakes in cereal form. Arguments about how much milk to pour into your cereal and when (before or after the cereal) are older than social media itself, but they're being revisited now that we're all at home and downloading TikTok. One such TikTok user went viral for her choice to freeze, then lightly thaw her milk before adding cereal.

Something about lockdown has us upping our cereal game — be it by turning pancakes into cereal or paying extra attention to how it keeps in the long run. Surely cereal is mostly popular because it's delicious, it requires no cooking skills, and can be eaten any time of day. But the lazy Saturday morning is one of the few rituals that hasn't been disrupted by shelter-in-place orders.