What the f*ck is up with the Zuck? Aside from everything going on with Facebook right now, anytime we see Zuckerberg in the news he’s doing something weird that leaves people scratching their heads in confusion. Last spring, he donned a full face slathered in sunscreen while surfing in Hawaii then made the entire internet cringe when he celebrated July 4th by flying an American Flag while riding an electric surfboard. Now he’s inexplicably snuck a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce into his presentation for the Facebook name-change pivot, Meta.
At least there is no water involved in this one. But on its face, it seems even more absurd than a rich dude trying to avoid too many UV rays.
Seriously, just what the hell is going on here? Why the bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbecue Sauce? Why is it on a bookshelf and what does he think it says to us about him? How did it get there and better yet, who put it there? This would be coffee-cup-in-the-final-season-of-Game of Thrones-levels of carelessness, so I refuse to believe it’s an oversight. I’d like to think someone pointed it out to him and he simply replied, “I’m going to answer you the same way I’ve answered my wife for the last nine years of our marriage: ‘The Baby Ray’s stays.'”
Alas, the answer isn’t quite that fun. According to some internet sleuthing, it appears that Zuckerberg’s love for Sweet Baby Ray’s goes deep and was first revealed in an early Facebook Live presentation where, according to this Ceros article that chronicles the whole thing, he uttered the word “meats” about 13 times in a single video and name-dropped the sauce constantly.
Of course, this was given the meme treatment.
Also, who could forget this summer bop, which is the coolest thing the Zuck has ever been involved in, even if it wasn’t intentional.
That means that the Baby Ray’s bottle is actually an example of him being meta in a presentation about Meta, which itself is an anagram for meat. Our minds would be blown if this didn’t seem like a shallow attempt at making the internet forget Facebook’s role in public polarization. Here is how the rest of the internet took the ploy:
https://twitter.com/zatara214/status/1453791677760561152
https://twitter.com/AubryAndrews/status/1453817164285284363
Can confirm that there is actually a bottle of Sweet Baby Rays in Zuckerberg’s living room pic.twitter.com/IiL5zvwuBp
— Weston Blasi (@westonblasi) October 28, 2021
https://twitter.com/feverspell/status/1453818070519189509
https://twitter.com/EmmReef/status/1453802401689964548
Would have respected it if Zuckerberg bought out Sweet Baby Rays and renamed the company that.
— adam (@illex) October 28, 2021
Oh wow.
Sweet Baby Ray’s slogan is “The Sauce is the Boss”.
Mark Zuckerberg is the boss of Meta.
This is truly meta 🤯 https://t.co/dX4gV0d39t
— Andrew Gregory (@lunchboxbrain) October 28, 2021
If you write 95K words speculating on this bottle of Sweet Baby Rays barbecue sauce, how it got in that position (and why!), and what its owner hopes it says about him, I will read every single syllable before doing anything else. https://t.co/FCwwxDLjFR
— Steve Bramucci (@stevebram) October 28, 2021
https://twitter.com/Jack_S_Wolfman/status/1453811502109138954
Facebook will be changing it's name to "Meta," following the lead of companies who branded themselves into oblivion in hopes to run away from the nightmares they created (ex: Blackwater » Xe » Academy » Frontier Services Group.)
The bottle of BBQ sauce is just the cherry on top. pic.twitter.com/tMh5KWfK5j
— The Sparrow Project (@sparrowmedia) October 28, 2021