Did You Know That

I am a grumpy old man now

I recently hopped back on Instagram after a 3 month hiatus. The slop feed has gotten even sloppier. My addled mind is spending 2 hours a day braindead scrolling stupid reels, unable to finish the books I’ve started or engage in any kind of creative practice, trapped in a consumption loop designed to keep me addicted. And I love it 🥰 🥰 🥰. But there’s one thing I don’t love: All recipe reels take the form of “Did you know if you take [insert all ingredients here] and you [insert recipe here] you get [insert dish here]?”

dietitianrose

A post shared by @dietitianrose

I guess it’s obvious why this is happening—phrasing something as “now you know something new” is an clear hook, and not revealing what the end product will be until the end is also just clickbait 101. But man, why did this make me so mad?

It’s because of the sauce to juice ratio on this.

I made this up, by the way. So it’s probably kind of bullshit. It just pisses me off when someone makes something that’s dictated by the juice direction instead of the sauce direction. Food media is already juice direction heavy because it’s just hitting the part of our brain that is visually stimulated by seeing food—a much needed evolutionary impulse—so adding extra juice on top of something that’s already just sort of squeezing our glands for chemicals feels extra stupid.

That’s the main thing I’ve been feeling about re-entering the world of watching algorithm video. I can feel myself getting actively stupider. Open mouthed. Drooling on myself. Saying “durr” often. Scratching my head in confusion. No depth of thought. No patience. No sauce. I have all the tools to know in which ways I am being manipulated for attention, and I’m still too chemically weak to fight off the addiction. Real ego-killer. Need to log off and learn how to have sex from the below video.

By the way — not sure if you guys heard, but

nobel prize winning economist

Nabeel’s Footnote