I Stand With Cinnamon Toast Crunch: One Man’s Quest For The Truth Behind Shrimpgate

Let me start off by saying that if that headline seems like a randomly selected assortment of words that in no way come together to create a coherent message, that’s because you’re a Twitter casual. Or you’ve been away from your phone for, like, 48 hours. That’s all it takes nowadays. So let me catch you up.

On Monday, a guy named Jensen Karp tweeted out this image of what appears to be cinnamon covered shrimp tails he alleges he found in his box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

The Cinnamon Toast Crunch twitter account (because of course every brand has its own twitter account in 2021) responded shortly after with a standard “we may or may not have fucked up, but we don’t care enough to look into it” reply saying they’d report it to their quality control team and offering to send him a replacement box. So far, pretty normal human-brand interaction. 

And then shit went off the rails. Someone on the CTC social team chose to respond with this tweet, claiming that what are pretty clearly shrimp tails to everyone with working eyeballs are actually “an accumulation of the cinnamon sugar that sometimes can occur when ingredients aren't thoroughly blended.”  

And the internet lost its mind. There was talk of lawsuits, of police involvement, and the phrase “gaslight” thrown around more than a nerf football at a tailgate. And now here we are, days later, with no more clue as to how or why shrimp tails ended up in some guy’s box of cereal. This is unacceptable. I demand answers. The people deserve the truth. And since Netflix hasn’t responded to my email asking them to product a 6-part docuseries investigating this heinous act, I guess it’s up to me to figure out what happened. 

So, let’s start with what we know. 

Who Is Jensen Karp?

For a claim to be believed, it must come from a believable source. According to Wikipedia, Jensen Karp, the alleged victim of Shrimpgate is a “writer, comedian, producer, podcast host, art gallery owner, actor, radio personality and former rapper raised in Calabasas, California.”

None of that inspires confidence. The fact that he’s a comedian/podcast host/actor/radio personality actually gives him clear motivation to lie about this incident to increase his public exposure, and the fact that he was a rapper who went by the stage name “Hot Karl” is frankly even more disturbing than eating cinnamon-covered shrimp. I think we can all agree that being from Calabasas is also a point in the “do not trust” column.

On the other hand, he did write “(This is not a bit)” on his original tweet, so that’s pretty firm evidence he’s telling the truth. Damn. Back to square one. Let’s do a background check on the alleged perpetrator.  

What Do We Know About Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

I’m just going to state some simple, non-biased facts. Fact one: Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the best cereal in the game. Fact two: they are produced by food and snack giant, General Mills. General Mills products include hits such as Cheerios, Chex Mix, Lucky Charms, Annie’s mac n’ cheese, and Fruit Rollups. Clearly, they’ve done a lot more good for the world than Jensen Karp. I would trust them with my life.

Also, General Mills has been sued in the past for shipping blueberry scones that were contaminated with bits of shrimp, but I fail to see how that is relevant in this case. 

Now that we have a better understanding of the parties involved (Jensen, lame dude with lame name. General Mills, feeder of the hungry and innovator of new delicious ways for us to consume sugar and corn syrup), we can dive into theories of what actually happened. 

Theory One: Shrimp tails accidentally contaminated a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Look, I’m not going to pretend to know a lot, or even a little, about the logistics behind making and packing cereal into boxes. I’m assuming it involves a farm at one end and probably an assembly line at the other, and I refuse to do any research that would further my knowledge. However, I don’t see any way shrimp tails could accidentally end up in a box of cereal. 

As far as I can tell, General Mills doesn’t use shrimp in any of their products, so even if for some reason their factory packaged multiple products at once, which seems inefficient, there’s just no way a shrimp would end up within a thousand feet of a box of cereal. 

The only other way accidental cross-contamination could happen is if one of the assembly line workers were…eating unshelled shrimp on the job? That just can’t be true. I’ve never worked on a line but I’m assuming that A) there’s a very clear-cut no eating on the job rule, and B) you need two hands to do said job. Honestly, if there’s a worker out there who can keep up with an assembly line while also shelling and eating shrimp, he shouldn’t be fired, he should be given the CEO’s job. That’s amazing. And unbelievable. 

Theory Two: Jensen Karp is lying for Twitter fame.

I mean, right away this is the most realistic theory. People lie on twitter all the time, be it for fame or money or for the sheer thrill of fucking with thousands of people. I don’t think we can discount that as motivation. It’s a high like no other. All signs point to this being a classic hoax perpetrated by a comedian/media personality to drum up popularity and mess with people. I want to believe that’s what’s going on here, but I just…can’t.

I don’t know if it’s his commitment to getting the truth about the shrimp tails, or the sheer number of tweets he’s has put out, or the fact, once again, that he did write “(This is not a bit)” on his original tweet, but I just don’t think Jensen Karp is lying. Shit, he seems just as confused and desperate for answers as the rest of us. 

But if both parties are telling the truth, how could this have happened? Someone must be lying. Someone must have something to gain from this. And I know whom. I present to you, my theory.

Theory Three: Someone is playing a wicked prank on this guy and it’s gone way too far.

If we know that there is no way for the shrimp to get in the cereal by accident, and we know that the victim is telling the truth, there’s just one other way for this to have gone down. Someone close to Jensen Karp placed shrimp in his box of cereal to fuck with him, knowing it would break his mind, and has now realized they started a war that involves millions of strangers and a billion-dollar corporation’s reputation. 

But who would have the motivation and the means to do such a thing? It would have to be someone that lived with him. Someone that knew his cereal-buying habits. Someone, perhaps, that has found themselves on the butt end of a joke or a prank one too many times and is exacting revenge in the best way she knows how. That’s right. It’s his wife, Topanga.

Danielle Fishel, the actress best known for playing Topanga on Boy Meets World, after four years of being in a relationship with this jokester and prankster, decided to turn the tables on her husband. First, she got her hands on some shrimp tails. Did she use shrimp she bought to make a delicious paella for her family? Did she smuggle them out of Bubba Gumps in her purse? We’ll never know. But we know she got them. Then, she carefully baked these tails in a cinnamon and brown sugar glaze, let them cool, and buried them in her husband’s half-finished box of cereal. It was the perfect prank. But she forgot one thing.

She forgot to factor in the fury of a man who has been publicly scorned by a cereal brand. As soon as that poor social media manager told Jensen that the shrimp tails were probably just cinnamon clumps, he went off the deep end. And now the whole world is watching, and it’s too late to come forward with the truth…or is it?

Topanga, if you’re reading this, I want you to know it’s safe to break your silence. Speak your truth. Let the world know you crafted a prank that broke the internet and brought a cereal giant to its knees. Please, just give us all closure. We need it.

Still somehow need more about this damn shrimp in this damn Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Well, we’ve got news for you — Circling Back broke it all down. Spoiler: No one believes this guy (or really cares if he actually got shrimp in his cereal or not).

Noam