How The Internet Turned Weird Pizza Orders Into A Meme

When you consider that 350 slices of pizza are sold every second in America, it's easy to see why pizza delivery places may encounter the occasional odd request (via Washington Post). However, it's not every day that one of those requests becomes a meme. In 2007, the humor blog The Sneeze, decided to put Domino's new online delivery ordering system to the test when they custom ordered a sauce-less, cheese-less pizza with ground beef added only to the left half of the pie. Dubbed "The Great Pizza Orientation Test," the blogger published screenshots of his experiment.

Although the box's contents shifted slightly during delivery, their pictures revealed a mostly barren, crust-centric pizza landscape speckled with beef topping that they called "None Pizza with Left Beef." The novelty creation found a rousing reception among Tumblr bloggers, who followed up with their own copycat orders and subsequent photos that they posted online. Before long, news and entertainment sites such as BuzzFeed, were releasing numbered lists and accompanying visuals illustrating the weirdest special delivery instructions for pizza places. They ranged from requesting pizzas be cut into isosceles triangles to having the store draw real and fictional animals on the box, like unicorns.

In 2010, Reddit saw users posting photos of their unique specially-ordered concepts including pizzas cut into pentagram shapes and sliced into concentric circles, challenging their fellow Redditors to raise the bar. A few years later, a different Reddit post asked delivery drivers to comment on the strangest delivery instructions they have ever received. One person told of a request in which they were asked to enthusiastically yell "Pizza, pizza, pizza!" as they approached the house instead of ringing or knocking on the door. So, just how popular did the original pizza meme become?

There's even a Gizmodo article commemorating the 10-year-anniversary of the Domino's order that launched a meme, which has since inspired countless others to share their bizarre special pizza delivery instructions with the world. And in an example of art imitating memes, fashion trendsetters can buy a None Pizza with Left Beef Necklace on Etsy. However, if you want to get in on this trend, you might have to wait a minute. Domino's and other pizza chains are currently experiencing a delivery driver shortage, so you may have to exercise patience if you're looking to make your own weird meme contribution. But the next time you conceive of a wacky pizza delivery order idea to share online, remember the iconic order that started it all.