Japanese farmers engineered square watermelons by growing them in tempered glass boxes so they would stack perfectly in tiny urban refrigerators and be easier to transport across the country.

A closer look

Japanese farmers engineered square watermelons by growing them in tempered glass boxes so they would stack perfectly in tiny urban refrigerators and be easier to transport across the country. Despite solving a genuine logistical problem, these geometric fruits are completely inedible because they must be harvested before they are ripe, turning them into absurdly expensive ornamental centerpieces. It is peak late-stage capitalism to take a delicious, naturally occurring food and torture it into a cube just so wealthy people can display it on a coffee table for two hundred dollars. We have completely abandoned the primary function of agriculture, which is feeding human beings, in favor of creating structurally sound produce designed exclusively for aesthetic social media flexes. If aliens ever visit Earth and see us paying premium prices for luxury fruit that we cannot even chew, they are going to immediately vaporize the planet out of sheer secondhand embarrassment