The dump dinner: spaghetti is now being served straight on to the table – but why?

Name: Dump dinners.

Age: Horribly new.

Appearance: Feeding time at the zoo, but for humans.

I’ve just Googled this. Apparently a dump dinner is a make-ahead slow cooker recipe. Oh you poor sweet fool. Things have changed.

Please explain the new definition of dump dinners. I’d love to. For reference, please remind me how you prepare dinner for your family.

Well, first I get some plates and cutlery, and I … No! Wrong!

I don’t understand. Well, if you want to do a dump dinner properly, then the first thing you need to do is cover your entire dining table in tinfoil.

I don’t like where this is going. And then you tip whatever you’ve been cooking all over it. No plates. No serving dishes. Just the fat wet slop of food on table.

This cannot possibly be a thing. And yet it is. TikTok is is now saturated with dump dinners, with parents posting videos of themselves hurling mountains of spaghetti and sauce straight on to their table so their kids can sort of dive into it with their hands.

Oh, so this is something that the kids have specifically requested? Nope. In almost all the videos, the children react with noticeable alarm, with some even screaming: “What the hell are you doing?”

So what the hell are they doing? Hard to say. One TikToker claims that their dump dinner is part of “Fun Fridays”, a tradition where they apparently do dumb stuff and post it on the internet for likes.

Is it always kids? No. In one video a woman does it for her elderly mother, who yells: “What the fuck? Don’t you believe in bowls?… You’re a real lowlife.”

Did this trend begin anywhere specifically? Older hands might look to traditions such as Maryland’s communal, eat-it-off-the-table crab boil – but at least those happen outdoors. Internet historians might also point you towards the “potato party” – a brief South Korean fad whereby groups of teenagers would pool their money, head to McDonald’s, order huge amounts of fries and then dump them all over their table.

Do people do potato-based dump dinners as well? Apparently not. From all available footage, this seems like a strictly spaghetti-themed fad.

So it just appeared out of nowhere. It’s hard to say, but perhaps its inception comes even earlier, in fact. Don’t forget that, in the Magical Mystery Tour film, there’s a scene where John Lennon shovels spaghetti on to a woman’s table.

The Beatles: the first TikTok influencers. Yes, I’m sure that’s a reputation they would all be happy with.

When will it all end? This is a TikTok fad, so expect it to die of natural causes in the next couple of weeks. The only thing that will hasten its demise is if some idiot attempts it with soup and ends up scalding their immediate family.

Do say: “Dinner’s on the table.”

Don’t say: “Don’t forget to like and subscribe.”