If you read this blog for nerdy tech shit, look away. This post is about bagels and religion. It's called "Liv's Thoughts" not "Liv's Technical Blog"

I was talking in a Discord server and my former friend dropped this bombshell in chat:

As a Jew, I took this personally. How dare they insult the very core of my being, delicious bagels. There is no single greater food in the world than bagels with good toppings. Since Jews invented bagels, I shot back.

I would have left it at that, a simple joke response to a one-off message, but of course things escalated from there.

I was puzzled for a moment, and then I wondered if they just ate them out of the bag, untoasted. It was such a preposterous idea that it almost wasn't worth asking, given that everyone toasts their bagels... right?

The answer was worse than "no".

How does any living being on the planet we call earth not know that bagels get toasted? Do they look at the "bagel" icon on their toaster and think nothing of it??

The revelation that they had never heard of people toasting their bagels was so shocking that I had a pause for a moment before responding.

Every day, humanity strays further from God.

I grew up eating bagels the right way, toasted and spread with cream cheese. It has only really hit me now that that could have something to do with me being Jewish. Regardless, people should still know how to eat bagels correctly!

I then sent an image (shown in the post header) of good and proper bagels

This of course made things worse, who could have guessed? They apparently have had all of the things that go on the bagel... without the bagel.

In the ensuing messages, they revealed other things, like not knowing what lox is, but further confirming that they have had all the bagel toppings, just without the bagel.

Welp, I need a soul cleansing. Maybe I'll go eat a bagel or something.

UPDATE 2024/1/27:

I was chatting with my friend again, and I decided to ask if they had eaten a bagel properly yet.

The answer, of course, was a resounding "yes, and they're now my favorite non-chewy food"...

This, of course, prompts the question, "why can't they fit bagel slices into their toaster?"

Using my extensive expertise from working in IT, I deduced that they may, in fact, not be using bagel slices.

This felt like the time I sat on the phone with some guy for an entire hour as I walked him through installing Adobe Acrobat. Am I going to have to sit there on the phone with you as you make a bagel, Sonyrobat? I imagine it would go something like this:

"Then, you need to press on the button that says bagel on it"

"The power button?"

"No, the bagel button"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, press the bagel button"

"Nothing's happening"

"Did you plug in the toaster?"

"Was I supposed to?"

UPDATE 2024/1/29:

The Bagel Redemption Arc

I spotted my friend in chat again, and asked the all-important question...

I got a little nervous as I received an enthusiastic yes.

I, of course, had to see just how badly they screwed it up. I was prepared for the worst, but also something as minor as "fine and just butter"

...

Ladies and gentlemen, we got em.

The moral of today's story is clear:
Eat your bagels properly or else you become a blog post.