A Monument to Spicy: The Flamin’ Hot Cheeto Sarcophagus and What It Says About Modern Ritual
A Monument to Spice: The Flamin’ Hot Cheeto Sarcophagus and What It Says About Modern Ritual
In 2022, a 3,000-pound concrete tomb was buried in Washington State. It wasn’t for a person. It wasn’t for a beloved pet or a national treasure. It was for a single bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
This is not satire. This is anthropology.
The Artist: Sunday Nobody
Seattle-based meme artist and performance provocateur Sunday Nobody masterminded this unusually spicy legacy project. Known for blending absurdist humor with commentary on internet culture, he constructed the “sarcophagus” to preserve the snack as a time capsule. The idea was simple: create confusion for future archaeologists.
One can only imagine their faces. Probably serious. Probably confused. Possibly hungry.
The Structure
The tomb, weighing 3,000 pounds, was cast from black-dyed concrete, reinforced with rebar. The Cheetos bag inside was sealed in resin and suspended in the center of the tomb to prevent decay, collapse, or spiritual digestion. On top: a granite headstone engraved in gold with the ingredients list and the hauntingly specific command:
“Do not open for 10,000 years.”
This wasn’t casually buried behind a 7-Eleven. It was placed ceremoniously on private land in Washington, with the help of a tractor and some very patient collaborators.
The Purpose
The sarcophagus is performance art. It is also a semi-ironic cultural artifact. It is a commentary on consumerism, brand obsession, the internet’s relentless memification of daily life—and, on some level, it’s a funeral.
A memorial to flavor. To shelf-stability. To the modern American ritual of assigning spiritual value to novelty snacks.
It’s also, somehow, a perfectly preserved example of grief’s strange and beautiful flexibility. What do we leave behind? Sometimes it’s ashes. Sometimes it’s letters. And sometimes, it’s a laminated bag of spicy corn dust.
Implications for Future Civilizations
Assuming this tomb is left untouched, and future civilizations uncover it in 10,000 years, they will encounter:
A culturally significant food item sealed in resin.
A headstone with the words “historical artifact” and a date that strongly implies reverence.
A 3,000-pound cement structure with no body, no tools, and no instructions—just calories and capsaicin.
They will make assumptions. Most of them will be wrong. And that is exactly the point.
The Flamin’ Hot Cheeto sarcophagus is not a joke. Or rather, it is a joke—but one delivered with a straight face and a concrete mixer.
As cemeteries, memorials, and crematories expand their understanding of mourning and legacy, perhaps this moment serves as a reminder: not every sacred object is sacred to everyone. But meaning, once sealed in resin and buried six feet under, has a way of sticking around.
Forever, if necessary.