Plagued Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

[The Real Slim Shady]

Obviously this person has chosen to read this drivel as a cozy Saturday morning activity and fine whatever, people can have fun and hobbies etc. But if I'm actively looking for a chili recipe, I lose my mind if a website looks this way. So I would equally be mad if my cookbook was 50% blogpost.

It's similar to some cooking websites when you want to find a chili recipe and the post starts with three screens worth of author's (made up) childhood story on how their mother used to make that chili or whatever. I'm sure some idiot from a marketing department concluded that emotion sells better. Some people, me included, want just the goddamn recipe.

 

[stupid frog]

The shitty stories can be copywritten, the recipes can't. That's what I was told, anyway.

 

[Catch The Rainbow]

For example, here is a random picture of someone on r/Cookbooklovers (archive) showing a cookbook, I'm pretty sure from an influencer.

Half of one page is the ingredients, a quarter of one page is the recipe, a quarter of a page is a picture of the ingredients posed next to a serving of the food.... And the entire page opposite is the author's meandering opinions on what is and isn't good in vegetarian chili- and it continues to the next page.

You picked the worst example of a bad cookbook. That's The Food Lab by Kenji Alt Lopez which is a beginner tier cookbook by a food scientist that explains concepts, his thinking in why he chose to cook that way, and the scientific reason why the food works. The only real criticism I have is that most of the book of available free online.

This is my go to Korean fried chicken recipe that's in the book.

https://www.seriouseats.com/korean-fried-chicken-recipe

As you can see, it's more of a small lesson with a recipe at the end than a bullshit filler story and then a recipe.

If you want a bad food influencer, look at half baked harvest. She can't cook worth a damn and her recipes don't work because she throws in fancy ingredients without thinking about the end result because she never tastes the food due to her anorexia. She is primarily interested in how the food photographs and is ignorant in how to cook.



Her cookbook was developed with the assistance of a professional team and even they couldn't save it.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Cookbooks are a dying breed like all picture-less book right now. You know how it's typically insufferable to actually get to the recipe in a webpage? You have to scroll past fifteen giant magazine-style images and five pages about the author's children's first day of kindergarten? Cookbooks are the same way nowadays: every other page is total bullshit that might have some entertainment value/eye appeal, but is basically fluff.

Usually I brave through the page and then turn the skyscraper-tall thing into a post-it sized piece of paper or two. When I started with cooking I vented to mom about so much useless shit taking up a space in these and later got some old no-nonsense cookbooks as a gift from her. Also got more use out of a post-ww2 pamphlet from the early communist era that was given out for free in every grocery store than someone's dumbass diary with some recipes that masquerades as a modern cookbook.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

The shitty stories can be copywritten, the recipes can't. That's what I was told, anyway.

this is partially why it's done, yes
not just from a legal sense, even those who publish books and don't care about copyright, or just write onto blogs where that's irrelevant, still feel like having that story and depth preface their recipe gives the audience something they can't find elsewhere, because otherwise, how do you have your recipe stand out from the rest? recipes are all so similar on the surface, since the process has been so streamlined and all recipes are written the exact same way, there's no way to make your slight variation stand out other than something you can really claim as your own, like a life story

all that aside- it's also just the fact that people see other recipe writers do it, so they do it as well, since that's the way it's "supposed to be done"
monkey see monkey do

 

[Yaks]

I do a lot of shopping on Aliexpress and it's always "buyer beware". Each "store" has individual ratings from prior customers, and it's a good idea to study those ratings carefully before buying. Some stores will have two types of reviews, wholly positive and wholly negative. This means that the store cuts costs by occasionally mixing counterfeit crap with legit merch, using their good reviews to offset the bad ones. Some stores have absolutely lovely people running them, some are flat out con artists and standover merchants, but most are in between.

My favorites are the negative reviews from people who are obviously sharing a braincell with someone else and probably shouldn't be online shopping. There's been quite a few items that I've bought (usually for a project) that are obviously fake/reject main brand items that are being sold for pennies, as shown by the seller, and people still leave a bad review for them being fake. My best luck has been in tiny electronic parts and bobbles though.

import from Taobao (aka the mainland china version of aliexpress) since it has a lot more aliexpress doesn't

I've heard the quality is overall better too since they actually gotta deal with the mainlanders.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

My favorites are the negative reviews from people who are obviously sharing a braincell with someone else and probably shouldn't be online shopping. There's been quite a few items that I've bought (usually for a project) that are obviously fake/reject main brand items that are being sold for pennies, as shown by the seller, and people still leave a bad review for them being fake. My best luck has been in tiny electronic parts and bobbles though.


I've heard the quality is overall better too since they actually gotta deal with the mainlanders.

the case with websites like Temu is that they let people who have entire warehouses of certain crap laying in boxes sell them off for cheap
calling it a scam is like calling the local flea market a scam, it's not, it's a platform, but scammers COULD be using it- most of them aren't tho, most of them are just some joe jin-poe in china who has a whole shelf of nothing but, say, 'silver' plastic earrings, so they'll go online, find a picture of earrings that vaguely look like what they're selling, and slap it on their listing
you're never getting the actual item in the picture because the picture is hardly theirs, they didn't set out to sell these earrings in particular, it's just an afterthought because they have a ton of em
if you know that that's how it works, you won't get scammed, since you'll only buy stuff that you could reasonably find at the dollar store in chinatown anyway- simple kitchen utensils, basic wires, pens and pencils, crap like that... you're bound to get scammed once you start lookin at something more complex, like if you think you're getting an actual xbox off of there, that's when you're asking to be ripped off

 

[Yaks]

the case with websites like Temu is that they let people who have entire warehouses of certain crap laying in boxes sell them off for cheap
calling it a scam is like calling the local flea market a scam, it's not, it's a platform, but scammers COULD be using it- most of them aren't tho, most of them are just some joe jin-poe in china who has a whole shelf of nothing but, say, 'silver' plastic earrings, so they'll go online, find a picture of earrings that vaguely look like what they're selling, and slap it on their listing
you're never getting the actual item in the picture because the picture is hardly theirs, they didn't set out to sell these earrings in particular, it's just an afterthought because they have a ton of em
if you know that that's how it works, you won't get scammed, since you'll only buy stuff that you could reasonably find at the dollar store in chinatown anyway- simple kitchen utensils, basic wires, pens and pencils, crap like that... you're bound to get scammed once you start lookin at something more complex, like if you think you're getting an actual xbox off of there, that's when you're asking to be ripped off

Looking at the Temu reviews is pointless anyway. You either get the mouth breathers or the reviews are pretty blatantly fake. But that's most websites.

My favorite personally is the Walmart review section! Products pretty regularly get a 1 star rating and when you read it it's just the person bitching about the curbside pickup.

 

[glass_houses]

It's similar to some cooking websites when you want to find a chili recipe and the post starts with three screens worth of author's (made up) childhood story on how their mother used to make that chili or whatever. I'm sure some idiot from a marketing department concluded that emotion sells better. Some people, me included, want just the goddamn recipe.

What the people who run these websites are trying to do is establish parasocial relationships, make the reader feel like they're personal friends with the writer. It's the same concept as idiots throwing money at streamers to get their name mentioned, but less overt. If the audience feels like they have a relationship with the author, they're more likely to keep coming back, even if the recipes are shit.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

You either get the mouth breathers or the reviews are pretty blatantly fake. But that's most websites.

the worst kinda reviews are "didn't arrive yet" "looks good but i didn't try it" "i don't know" from people who were clearly prompted to reply and didn't realize they could just choose not to, they always give 5 stars anyway which elevates the rating
but again, that's the case with every website

speaking of recipes, you see the same problem with those, too
a recipe that looks to have a pretty good rating, but it's actually ass, inaccurate or wrong, the writer left something out or used imagery that isn't theirs, and upon close look all the reviews just seem to be "looks good didn't make it yet"

 

[Kiska]

I've heard the quality is overall better too since they actually gotta deal with the mainlanders.

Yes this is genuinely true, but it's because most reputable chinese brands (xiaomi and the like) can't be assed to work with foreign markets so you end up with the 2nd rung.

 

[Yaks]

a recipe that looks to have a pretty good rating, but it's actually ass, inaccurate or wrong, the writer left something out or used imagery that isn't theirs, and upon close look all the reviews just seem to be "looks good didn't make it yet"

I love the ones that give it a 1-star rating and are essentially "I changed everything about the recipe and it turned out horrible."
Kinda gives you a good view of what the general public is like, as much as I try to remain optimistic.

 

[Hinttitroniikka]

I find it very consoom-y. What it boils down to, like most of the consumer culture products, is that it's easier to sell people books about the Idea of Cooking and "Feeling Like a Person Who Cooks a Lot of Good Food" than it is to sell actual reference-style cookbooks.

Devil's advocate - these are for different purposes and different audiences, so the problem is really that you can't flip through a book before purchasing it online to tell which are which. Or, better put, the problem is that they're all marketed as the same thing, whether by the author or their publisher or other PR. Some people who cook as a hobby do want books about the idea of cooking, so I can see a non-consoomy point to this, I just need to know what I'm buying, which is only possible in brick-and-mortar stores. But I'm a difficult person for wanting to buy physical books at physical stores I guess.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

the Ticket to Ride boardgame?

A cookbook made up of dishes and cocktails served during the golden age of rail travel would be pretty cool.

What the people who run these websites are trying to do is establish parasocial relationships, make the reader feel like they're personal friends with the writer. It's the same concept as idiots throwing money at streamers to get their name mentioned, but less overt. If the audience feels like they have a relationship with the author, they're more likely to keep coming back, even if the recipes are shit.

I thought the short story was trying to build up the authentic home recipe angle to get people to try the recipe. Personally, I skip those parts. I'm standing in a supermarket right now trying to get stuff to make dirty rice, I don't have time to read fluff.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

I love the ones that give it a 1-star rating and are essentially "I changed everything about the recipe and it turned out horrible."
Kinda gives you a good view of what the general public is like, as much as I try to remain optimistic.

not as bad as
>5 stars
>"recipe was wrong so i changed everything and it turned out great!"
>doesnt elaborate on what they did

 

[George Lucas]

With Trump coming I think there will be a new wave of consoomerism. However, went to UPS the other day and there was a huge line of people returning shit. Maybe I’ve never noticed before but it seems like people have taken of advantage of free returns and we are going to see a big wailing and gnashing of teeth from retailers when the final numbers come in.

 

[PandaChai]

With Trump coming I think there will be a new wave of consoomerism.

If Trump continues Biden's attempts to close the shipping loophole Temu and their ilk exploit (de minimis I think it's called), it might be the opposite; at least of disposable plastic Chinese crap, given his oft repeated Sinoskepticism. Or do you mean more of this sort of junk?

 

[pwintheth]

Now, we all know Rae Dunn bitches would never call Trump a cunt.

 

[Bloodrage]

A recent Predator Poachers video features a lawyer and would-be child molester who actually throws himself to the ground in despair when caught.

Despite being a grown man, and despite being a lawyer who presumably makes enough money to furnish his dwelling tastefully, he has a bunch of Funko Pops displayed in his living room. I couldn't help thinking of this thread.

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Do you have a link to the pp video?

 

[YouTube Autist]

Do you have a link to the pp video?

It's on Locals only.