A single tweet tore the jewelry-wearing faction of the Internet apart after the image above went out with the caption, “After my nineteen years of living I have now realized that you are supposed to take the plastic part off.” Holy shit.
Debate is still raging over whether the plastic earring back should be removed—some jewelers counter that it provides balance on larger pieces; other wearers claim they’ve always thought the plastic to be extraneous and removed it. @Chelsea__Smithh’s tweet clearly struck a chord because it upended a long-engrained concept many of us never gave a second thought to. I’ve gone several decades of wearing earrings daily and never pondered the plastic back.
More than 40,000 people on Twitter and millions more reading articles that have sprung up in the Tweet’s wake shared my sentiment. The earring incident reminded me of the video You’ve Been Eating Bananas Wrong, which demonstrated the most efficient way to eat a banana and has racked up almost 2 million hits. The video went viral because it provided the same kind of “Wait, what?” epiphany:
Where did we go wrong? Why didn’t we know?! Are there other seemingly simple hacks out there that drive you crazy because everyone’s doing it wrong?
[Twitter]