Nobody was actually into NyQuil chicken until the FDA made it a thing
An internet joke has turned into an actual trend thanks to an FDA warning
“NyQuil chicken” has been all over the internet this week. On one hand, this is good because we all need more absurdity in the news to balance out its typical levels of pure horror. On the other, it sucks because now the FDA has decided to turn what was just a dumb joke about a culinary monstrosity and help make it into an actual thing by warning against it.
To back up a bit, Nyquil chicken is exactly what it sounds like: A meme about cooking chicken in Nyquil. It was not something people were actually starting to eat all the time, and it wasn’t on the mainstream radar. That is, until the FDA released a warning last week that referenced the practice as being at the center of a dangerous “recent social media challenge.”
As Buzzfeed News’ Kelsey Weekman writes in an article about all of this, the FDA’s write-up led to mainstream news coverage and helped get “NyQuil chicken” trending on Twitter. Before this, though, it was an old gag that “has been internet folklore for years,” stemming from 4chan and eventually making its way to Reddit and a handful of “now-deleted TikToks from earlier this month in which people stitched themselves reacting with horror to those earlier viral videos, but did not make the chicken themselves.”