Love all of a sudden, with a pineapple in the shopping cart. Anyone who boasts a single past in Northern Italy already knew it and the story of going grocery shopping to find company is not new to them. About twenty years ago, in what was the world of marriage agencies and not dating apps, in Milan the supermarket of new loves was the Esselunga in via Papinianonext to the San Vittore prison. Better if it was aperitif time. No coded signals or exotic fruit. Just show up alone and willing to have a chat, to start with. Generations change and so do social networkswith Tik Tok recording and then multiplying endlessly – for a few days, then there is no trace of it – every trend. This time it’s the turn of the pineapple in the cart, also renamed by Bbc come “pineapple gate”.
If for at least a small part of Italy this strategy of conquest between the aisles of the supermarket is not a novelty, Spanish Gen Z liked the idea so much to be replicated in half the country, with chaos in a fruit department in Madrid due to a man dressed as a giant pineapple on the occasion of his stag party and complaints among the workers in the sales outlets Mercadonaforced to clean up used but unpurchased merchandise. The signal to make it clear that you are looking for love is to put a pineapple, upside down, in the cart.
The choice of tropical fruit is not accidental, because It is a symbol used by people interested in swinging. According to SlangLang.net, the origins of the pineapple as a means of public identification are unknown, but its popularity began in the 1990s, with the first Urban Dictionary entry mentioning “upside-down pineapple” appearing in 2006, followed by its own definition on the site in 2017. The Spanish take on the whole thing is decidedly less spicy. The trend started with a video that has been viewed millions of times posted on Tik Tok by Spanish comedian Vivy Lin, then replicated. It’s aperitif time and you have to choose a Mercadona store. The Spanish supermarket chain didn’t miss the opportunity and in the past few weeks it published a video of the new “fruit of love” on its social media profiles. The description? “The pineapple on the Mercadona shelf is waiting for you to get you a date.” Within a few days, the dedicated song also arrived. Once it was clear how to do it, the only thing that is unknown is whether it actually worked for someone.