Okay, I'll play. When I sit down to eat a meal, I'm somatically enjoying the flavor, the smell, the appearance, the texture. I'm enjoying it in an unmediated environment that surrounds me, which I have no ability to curate, which changes in real time and which satisfies all my senses. I am enjoying it as a part of the people who surround me, some of which I know, some of which I don't, none of which I can control, none of which I can filter. I am partaking of an experience within the real, the environment as it exists, the place we are born, the place we die, the one mother experience we are all blessed and cursed to endure. When I sit down to eat a meal on Instagram, I'm curating a mediated experience for the loose connections I barely know, whose personalities are also carefully curated avatars of their desired attributes, whose involvement is subject to the whim of Instagram and themselves, which is limited to your pithy comment on your carefully crafted food shot. You are enjoying it as performance, as the aspect of your mediated life whose perspective you wager to inflict upon others in your mutual game of one-upmanship. You offer your food shot as a gambit towards greater prestige within an arbitrary environment crafted by others to increase your participation in a game whose ultimate beneficiaries are large faceless corporations, through methods and means subject to the whims of fashion and technology. You are taking an ephemeral somatic experience and transforming it into a catalogued and searchable intellectual gamepiece. More than that, you're dragging me down with you. Sherry Turkle lists chapter and verse studies in which your inattention at your laptop damages my attention to my laptop. Your inability to experience your life unmediated interferes with my life unmediated because guess what, mutherfucker, I'm eating a meal, not voluntarily providing a backdrop for you to attention-whore your breakfast for meaningless internet points. And while I'm not on Instagram, every time you whip out your phone to tilt-shift your toast you're refusing to participate in my environment, the one here, in the diner, where we're eating, not performing, where we're enjoying each others' company rather than screaming senselessly out into the void to seek approval and accolades for your fucking orange juice. "Healthy eating." Bitch, you know you only share your extravagances. You only show me your triple bypass burger, your $17 mojito. You ain't socially signaling shit other than "I am at a fancy restaurant, like me!" You are carefully crafting a fake fantasy of fabulousness because you can't enjoy a stack of fucking pancakes without seeking the approval of 600 people you met once, 300 people you met twice, the eight people you actually speak to in person more than once a year and the several thousand friends of friends that you know don't give a shit about your breakfast but you hope will think positively about you because the act of sitting down at a restaurant without OtherSpace following you every step of the way makes you feel empty inside. Right. The change in people's health is because of Instagram, not because we've been calling it "the obesity epidemic" for the past ten years. Gimme a break. Next you'll be telling me selfie sticks increase exercise. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ You asked. Personally? I give a fuck if you take a picture of your food. If that's what you need to round out your existence hey - it's your life. Just understand that every bit of available research laughs in your face and feels sorry for you at the same time. The rest of us are out here, eating sushi and talking to each other without the need of five corporations and three networks to do it.Regarding pictures of food, I never quite understood the hate.
So quick story time, it's anecdotal but it fits with what you two are talking about. I'd like to start with, in my defense, that a lot of time nuances escape me. I had made some friends with some younger coworkers. I'm still youngish, so they weren't radically younger than me mind you, it was about a ten year age difference. The difference is enough though that we worked on slightly different wavelengths. They used a ton of shit like snap chat, tinder, instagram, etc. where I just use my phone as a phone/sometimes internet box. We all decided after work to go to a new barbecue restaurant in town. When we all sit down, they take the first two or three minutes taking pictures of their food and saying "Oh, I'll send this to so and so" and "blah blah blah." Kind of wanting to fit in, I took a quick picture of my dinner and texted it to my wife with the message "The new barbecue place. Don't you wish you were here right now?" I didn't get a response from her, but sometimes she doesn't text me back on the most simple things until half a day later, so I didn't think one thing of it or another. When I got home that night though, I came home to an angry wife. My sending her that text genuinely made her upset with me. I was out with good people, eating good food, and that one picture, that little text, was like rubbing it in her face. "I'm having fun, you're not. I'm eating good food tonight, you're not." Now, in my defense I did tell her what I was doing and where I was going, so it wasn't the dinner that made her mad. It was solely the text, something that was supposed to be a gag. Did my execution suck? Sure. Did she over react a bit? Probably. But also, like you're pointing out, maybe this whole taking pictures of our food and our vacations and our new cars is all a bit silly to the point of being damaging. I talk about my car on here sometimes, and I worry about coming across as bragging. I share some of my antiques on here, and I worry about coming across as bragging. I don't mean to brag, ever. I like to share. I think the line between the two though is nebulous at best.
Yup. Your wife is too strong a connection. We aren't allowed to do these things to strong connections because it's implied that if you're enjoying it, you wish they were there. Weak connections? It's an acknowledged fact that you don't give a fuck about them and they don't give a fuck about you (beyond clicking "like" on their personal victories and occasionally posting a "sorry for your loss" on their tragedies) so you can rub it in their faces 'til rapture. Instagramming food in the presence of friends sends the message that your weak connections have more value than your strong ones. Instagramming alone sends the message that your head is in your network, not above your shoulders.
Do you have any difference in this opinion when it comes to purchase food (dinners out, etc) vs. a meal which has been made by hand at home? I get wanting to share photos of food you've made, especially when it's a more challenging dish. I'm not saying one justifies the other but I am wondering if your opinions would change any depending.
One you bought. The other you made. Everybody with an interest in food has toyed with the idea of being a chef and showing off from time to time is appropriate. Hell, taking pictures of that crazy margarita is appropriate - but when you do it at your house, you're sharing. When you do it in a crowded restaurant, you're opting out of the social experience. Which, again - okay. I'm just saying that "the hate" has legitimate roots and legitimate causes.
I believed it did. I was pretty sure you would perceive a difference in the two, but I wanted to know what that difference was as you saw it. I had looked at my own food pics on Instagram and a lot are my own creations, which I shared because - well, I put in work and it worked and I was proud. I ain't gonna be ashamed of a photo of from-scratch Danishes, imma tell you wut. I like to figure out where exactly people's hate extends. When I found out my coworker didn't like tomatoes, we had several conversations where I pried into exactly what she meant by that. I think those sorts of boundaries are interesting. I like to know the whys.
Keep in mind, though - Instagram was not designed for deep sharing. It is not a place where you connect with the people who matter. It's a tenuous network for tenuous connections largely supported by camwhoring. So if you care what half a thousand people you barely know think about your cooking, Instagram is the way to go. If you want your parents and your buddies and your siblings to care, it probably isn't.