One Redditor has the entire internet cracking up after pulling a prank on their conservative cousin — by convincing him that beans in chili were “woke.”
“AITA for pretending to think beans in chili are ‘woke’, to prank my Cousin who is obsessed with being “anti woke” and who loves chili?” the aptly-named u/WokeBeans asked on the r/AITAH subreddit.
“My cousin is known for making chili. And he’s good at it. He makes his own chili flakes from his ‘secret combination’ of various dried chilies, it has a very nice kick. It’s like the perfect amount of spice, it’s hot but not too hot. He also always adds kidney beans. Not canned beans either.”
OP went on to explain how their cousin has become fixated on what is or isn’t “woke,” so they decided to ruin his “famous” chili by claiming “beans in chili are so woke.”
“Anyways for the past 2 or 3 years [my] Cousin has become obsessed with all this bullshit about what is or isn’t ‘woke’ and how ‘woke’ things are the end of the world. He’s always been a good dude so I don’t know what his bag is but he is completely obsessed. It’s annoying.”
“So the other weekend I was at his place and he was making his famous chili. So I got the idea for a little prank. I was like ‘I’m surprised you still put beans in your chili.’ He was like ‘What? Why?’ I was like ‘Beans in chili are so woke. Everyone is saying so.’
When the cousin questioned OP, they spun a tale about how chili was originally made with meat, but vegetarian hippies began adding beans to chili in the 1960s.
He was like ‘What do you mean?’ And he was like genuinely concerned. As if this was something serious. I said something like ‘Yeah beans in chili are woke, the original conservative Texans who made chili only used meat and chili. San Francisco liberals started adding beans to chili in the 60’s because so many hippies were vegetarian. Now all the woke scientists are saying beans are a better protein source than meat.’ He didn’t say anything to that.”
The prank worked—when OP saw their cousin again, the chili was bean-free.
“I kind of just assumed he’d know I was f*cking with him and get the joke. We have always f*cked around with each other and jokes about and all. But he was quiet all dinner. Just yesterday I was back again at his place and he was making his chili again. There were no beans. It was a totally different chili. This guy has been making his chili with beans for like 15 years. I was like, whats up? ‘Where’s the beans?’”
“He was like ‘I don’t f*ck with that woke s*it.’ I was like ‘What?’ He was like ‘Beans in chili are woke. Even you know that.’”
“Everyone else was like what? Because….what? I was like dude I was just f*cking with you. He got REALLY angry. He dumped his chili in the sink and told everyone to go home. I thought he was pranking me back or something but he was serious. The dude totally lost it.”
OP’s cousin was furious to discover he had been pranked about the woke chili and blew up.
“He texted me later and said this exact thing: ‘I researched this online and it turns out u really were lying to me, beans r not woke. How could u do this?’”
“We went back and forth for a bit. His position is even though we have historically pranked each other I went ‘too far’, that I ‘betrayed him’, that I ‘made him question his chili’. I tried to ask him if this at all made him think he cared too much about ‘woke’, like what if beans in chili WAS woke, so what? He ignored that and demanded I apologize.”
“Did I take this too far?” u/WokeBeans asked.
People on Reddit and BlueSky loved the prank and said that OP should have doubled down on the original woke claims.
What does ‘woke’ mean?
The original meaning of “woke,” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means that a person is “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” It stems from the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s, per Dr. Damariyé L. Smith in an interview with KPBS in 2022. The concept of being “woke” has shifted with conservative rhetoric over the years, until it has mostly lost its original meaning and has become a form of anti-liberal political talking point.
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