Instagram Is Unimpressed By Martha Stewart's Lobster Hack

Martha Stewart isn't just the queen of clean, the empress of entrepreneurship, the ruler of rules. She's also a social media-savvy sister, often posting photos to her Instagram that are as charming as they are pretentious. Take her chow chow door knocker, for example, modeled in an ode to her precious pups. Or a recently posted dinner of Black Diamond Ossetra caviar, with homemade chips and a side of Veuve Clicquot. Stewart is always smart enough to serve a side of sarcasm with each glimpse of her OTT lifestyle (e.g. the caption for the latter Instagram post reads, "I had cranberry juice on @jetblue from Orlando") lest we think that her life is all homemade waffle potato chips and rainbows.

But every now and then, the master of the home arts lets the curtain slip a little, revealing that to navigate over 80 years as a capital B Boss (and a Lady Boss at that) in this culture, one must sometimes become a student of the dark arts, as well. Remember when she made a sinister confession about her dating life? Or that time she spilled the beans about where Thanksgiving dinner really comes from? This time, Stewart posted an obviously well-intentioned lobster hack, aimed to help her friends and followers make the most of their next crustaceous meal. But the return fire on Stewart's latest post makes it seem less like a direct hit, and more like a shot in the dark.

Read the room, Martha. Between rising gas prices, the cost of living, and sky-high inflation, your average Joe isn't exactly filing his nails with a golden file, contemplating his next lobster meal as his feet soak in a Himalayan pink salt foot bath. But Stewart's recent Instagram post — in which she shares "My Lobster Trick!", a method for getting the most meat out of a cooked lobster — has even the normally-supportive Instagram audience up in arms. A bib-clad Stewart uses an upside-down fork to excavate her lobster dinner.

"This is great advice for me when I can afford the lobster tail lifestyle one day," one commenter posted. Another said, "Trick #1: Be a millionaire that can afford to eat lobster." Ouch. But lobster isn't an incendiary food simply because it is emblematic of all the things rich people can do that people with lesser means cannot; the snappy arthropods also get those Nor'easters all riled up about the right way to eat them. "I don't mean to Mainesplain this," one clever commenter writes, "but it works much better if you stick the fork in the underside of the tail and pull!" Another says, "Or you can just do what us locals do ... break the back fin off and push it through." We love the enthusiasm, but since only the brave would dare to tell Martha Stewart how to eat a lobster, we'll be cheering you on from the back of the room. Silently. In our minds.