People are queuing for hours for scrolls. Why?

Back in high school, Home Economics was a subject taken very seriously. I only enrolled because the final project was a gingerbread house, and since I intended to be a writer, I figured all I needed to know about was things like The Drover’s Wife (a joke that’s been on me ever since).

My most vivid memory from that class, besides the indignity of getting a B on my Cure-inspired gingerbread tent, is Scroll Day. It was early in the term, and having mastered salad sandwiches, we were finally given access to the ovens and unlimited icing sugar. Despite the recipe’s copious amounts of flour and sultanas, I was incredibly excited, imagining something delicious. At the end of the lesson, we were sent out into the yard to enjoy our creations. I distinctly remember biting into the starchy, lumpy swirls and wondering why on earth people liked them. They were so basic, so underwhelming, so completely un-indulgent. As it turned out, scrolls just sucked.

Yet here we are, years later, and scrolls are apparently the new cool snack for Gen Z. Fancy micro-bakeries are popping up everywhere, selling 1990s corner-shop food as if it’s a desirable treat. You might think this means scrolls have evolved, but they’re exactly the same. They’re a bizarre trend, still the second-worst manifestation of “ye olde white person food” (after scones). They are simultaneously stodgy and insubstantial. Scrolls, dear reader, are wildly overrated.

I learned about this whole scroll phenomenon primarily from social media. After avoiding it for a long time, I recently got back on Instagram and discovered two things: first, the app is now a wasteland of AI-generated content and “time maximisation” gurus; and second, all the cool kids have fled to TikTok to post videos of themselves queuing for scrolls.

That’s right. In addition to being great at spreading conspiracy theories, TikTok is a master of groupthink, and it has somehow convinced an entire generation that boring, stodgy old snacks are cool. It reminds me of 2010, when Instagram was still popular and “twee” was in fashion. Grown women wore silly collars, socks with court shoes, and actually said things like “squee.” With the benefit of age, we now understand that we were idiots and that a fringe doesn’t make you Zooey Deschanel. I reckon scrolls are the same deal – a misguided attempt by the younger generation to make something old-fashioned cool. But unlike ukuleles, scrolls (or as I call them, “curly scones”) are beyond redemption.

Having said all that, I have a confession: last week I decided to try a fancy “modern” scroll from one of those TikTok bakeries. (I think I somehow convinced myself it would make me young again?) The whole experience felt a little intimidating. I also got annoyed with a P-plater in a Mercedes who was filming herself eating while I waited for her parking spot, my kids screaming in the back for me to play the Encanto soundtrack. When she finally moved, I bought five scrolls for just under fifty bucks. While they were much better than my Home Ec attempt, they were still just ... fine.

That night, I tried making some at home. The feedback for both the store-bought and homemade versions was essentially the same. My kids ate the icing off the professional scrolls and discarded the rest. My husband, who grew up with a Hongkonger mother and doesn’t have the same nostalgic affection for weird old white person food, asked if they were “meant to taste like that.” He was correct to ask and correct to be underwhelmed.

The experience fortified my belief that scrolls are the slightly prettier, slightly sweeter younger sister of the scone. They’re “nice” by comparison, in the way that Scott Morrison was “nicer” than Tony Abbott. Both underwhelming “treats” are composed primarily of flour and butter, but scrolls have a tiny bit of added sugar, which in some ways makes them worse. At least with a scone, you know you’re going to be disappointed. There’s a joke to be made somewhere about the whiteness of both snacks and both politicians, but given my limited Home Ec education, I lack the skill set to construct it properly.

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