Facebook Recipe Videos

There I was, sitting in my AP statistics class, watching a pair of hands prepare a brownie dish, a chicken pot pie, quesadillas, and literally any other kind of recipe, because it was better than reviewing the difference between a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis. I had the class 7th hour, so watching food videos got me excited to go home and eat before dinner. Something about watching people make a full meal in 60 seconds is so satisfying, even though we never actually eat the prepared dish. I would consider this a "guilty pleasure" when it comes to food, even though we don't gain the calories from it.

I think the dopamine that releases into our body comes from a mixture of thinking about the food itself, as well as the satisfaction of seeing it be made to completion. If you've ever seen Big Bang Theory, there is an episode in the middle of the series about Sheldon's need for closure, whether in a game of chess or a math problem. No one would watch these Facebook videos if the producers teased us and only gave us half of the process and kept the final product from us. By speeding up an hour long procedure, involving us in all the steps, we feel connected to the person making the food, as well as the food. Seeing a steaming plate of spaghetti, or whatever gets prepared, makes our mouths water, but also satisfies our urges.

Latour's idea of instruments can be applied here; the instruments used in these videos are various: the music in the bathroom, the short video length, as well as the use of anonymous hands. The music in the background aids in making the time feel like it's passing by, like we're not wasting 10 minutes or 10 hours on Facebook. The short video length goes well with the short attention span of today's human, so we can watch 50 different foods being made instead of one meal on an hour long episode on Food Network. Seeing the anonymous hands from a birds eye view makes us feel as though it's actually us making the food instead of some annoying middle aged white woman behind a counter trying to make jokes and relate to the youth of today.

I guess the point of my food rant is that the way food is presented on social media is as addicting as the idea of food itself. Without any of the tools previously mentioned, these videos wouldn't be as addicting. It all comes down to marketing a product, even if the consumer never physically obtains that product.