From an Internet amateur to a "foodie" expert: how Instagram Foodie is made

Author: Diaoyu Lang from the Far East (trying to study the two sides of history with social science methods)

It is said that the most "public" topic in Macau recently is an incident that seems insignificant at first glance, but is related to the lives of most people:

It happened that a certain restaurant in Macau published a dialogue between the two on a Foodie page dedicated to writing "food reviews" on local restaurants. For example, if the restaurant pays a "sponsorship fee" of several hundred yuan to the Foodie page, the Foodie's evaluation of the restaurant will be "more attractive". fair.

After the news spread locally, the Foodie was criticized from one side to the other, and even accused of being a shoda, which means that it was like the old underworld in Macau, extorting or extorting money from the restaurant.

Although "Shutuodi" seems to have local characteristics, the significance of the Foodie incident is not purely a local "commercial dispute". As an "emerging industry" in Macau in recent years, the speed of foodie reproduction in Macau can be said to be proportional to the frequency of local coffee shops opening.

The large number of Foodie makes even the Internet users who do not pay special attention to the information they publish directly and indirectly. What's more, the food reviews introduced and shared by Foodie have also become an important reference when it comes to food consumption choices (such as finding new restaurants).

But a question that may be "very scary" is why Foodies can, and how do they define what is "good" food? Foodie is not a "food critic" in the traditional sense. It does not have or does not need to master a professional food knowledge system and discourse. So how does Foodie create knowledge about "food"?

In this article, I will use cultural studies scholar Zeena Feldman’s research on Foodie in 2021, combined with the Foodie incident in Macau, to examine how food awareness is formed on Instagram, and this awareness reflects how kind of tension.

The paradox of the Internet

The reason why Foodie can appear in large numbers is that platforms such as Instagram actually have a tendency to "democratize". On these platforms, as long as users can master basic usage knowledge (such as taking pictures, posting posts, and searching for posts with keywords), they have the ability to publish and obtain different information. Since everyone (in theory) has the opportunity to contact and express different opinions, it is practically difficult for a single information to play a monopoly role on the platform.

And reviews about food are no exception. Traditionally, "food review" is actually a highly specialized field, with "experts" who have mastered specific ways of understanding food (such as origin), expressions ("jargon" about subtle differences in taste), and evaluation criteria ( Such as "gourmet" and "star chef"), have the power to define what is "good" food.

The emergence of the Instagram platform has loosened the authority of these traditional knowledge. The platform not only enables more people to have the ability to comment, but also enables more people to review and review restaurants. Under the circumstance that almost everyone can become a Foodie, commenting on food is no longer the patent of food critics.

But what about real images?

While Instagram seems to have a tendency to make all opinions equal, this attribute is further constrained by two fundamental forces.

First, the Instagram platform itself actually has some kind of hidden “rules” that make some posts more likely to be considered “good” than others.

Second, as revealed by this Foodie incident, business logic has completely penetrated into Instagram, so that commercial products such as advertisements, KOLs, and sponsored posts (higher visibility) coexist with individual and non-commercial elements.

The pull between different forces has created Instagram's unique "food review" style.

Produce images about food

So how exactly does Foodie make a post a good food review?

The seemingly straightforward introduction of food and restaurants actually contains a variety of subtle but important skills. And it’s these unique ways that Instagram food posts get noticed, while also shaping a specific food style and knowledge about what constitutes “good” food.

"Looks about the same"

Readers who have paid attention to Foodie on Instagram believe that they will notice an interesting phenomenon: Although Foodie has written about various foods and restaurants, there are always some coincidences in these photos.

For example, under the right lighting, the food will be surrounded by specific arrangements (such as cutlery) and decorations, and the food will be photographed from a specific angle. Some photos, after adding filters and post-processing, seem to be the same as what you can usually see in magazines and the media.

Although there seems to be limited space for the protagonist as food, whether it is high-end cuisine or tea restaurant, or Western cuisine and Thai cuisine, there seems to be some interesting uniformity in the style of food photos.

What is reflected behind this is how a particular way of presenting food implies a certain aesthetic style.

By placing, decorating, and presenting various foods in a similar fashion, these food photos create a "standardized" Foodie template, so that only in this way can food be imagined as "edible" or even "edible". desire". After the dissemination of the platform and the mutual influence between the Foodie network, it is conceivable that food reviews with similar styles seem to be quite a "natural" phenomenon.

Undoubtedly, this approach breaks the existing imagination of the hierarchy among foods to a certain extent (for example, the food in the tea restaurant seems to be able to be elegant immediately after being modified), but at the same time, it also strengthens the A specific vision of what constitutes "good" food.

"It's hard to tell the difference between true and false"

As mentioned above, the background of Foodie's birth is the platform's tendency for users to freely create and share various information. Therefore , in theory, Foodie should be a group that loves food and is eager to share their experiences and feelings with other users.

But Instagram is also a commercial platform at the same time. As Macau readers can observe, in different Foodie pages, it is not difficult to see the posts published in cooperation with the food and beverage industry, and even content clearly marked as "Advertisement" and "Promotion".

Then, with the alternating appearance of "food reviews", "ads", and posts that do not clearly indicate which ones are, it is actually difficult for readers to decide what is a food review that is "from the heart" and is not affected by external influences. , and what is actually part of the campaign.

What this phenomenon points to is that Foodie breaks the line between "amateur food lover" and "professional foodie" while mixing elements from both ends of the spectrum.

Unless there is an incident such as this Foodie incident, which gives us a glimpse into the opportunity of Foodie's "background operation", it is actually difficult for us to distinguish what is "true", "false", "non-true", or "false". Make Fakes Come True" review.

"Food and Only Food"

And Foodie's food reviews also have another feature that may be obvious, but hidden: in most food photos, we rarely see "people" appear. What appears in the food photo is of course food, but only food appears.

The "food" that we can see in our eyes is itself a kind of "artificial object". After various production processes and specific consumption patterns, it becomes the dish that is brought to the table.

But all the people, things, and things related to food, such as the chef who cooks, the handling method, the surrounding environment when eating, etc., are almost all hidden in the photos of the food review, and only the food that is about to be introduced appears.

It's not just a matter of material selection or presentation, but a way of choosing to take away the sociality of food as a purely "object" presentation. As for the various meanings contained in the food itself (such as the process of how it came to be "this way"), they are all evacuated in specific presentations.

We can imagine that if the restaurant party in the Foodie incident accepted Foodie's conditions, then all we can see is the food in front of us, and we will never know that it is the product of some commercial relationship. Interestingly, the traditional model of food review, which we generally consider "advanced", instead focuses more on the social and historical nature of food.

Summary: Can Foodie be eaten?

In this article, we see that there is a more complex picture behind both the Foodie and the food it presents.

Whether it is the construction of the image of "commodity" in capitalism, the presentation of aesthetic styles, or the classification and order of different foods in culture, they all participate in how Foodie chooses to present a "good" image of food, and at the same time affects us. How to look at this particular presentation.

Some readers may sigh that these various forces have made the "real" appearance of food disappear long ago. But is the true meaning of food dead (Die)? At least Foodie will tell us that we can still consume things in photos and text.

#Number of articles: 9️⃣9️⃣

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