The whole idea of living online more than offline is something that has been troubling me. Are we curating spaces in the virtual world to feel something we are missing in the real world? However, in doing this, aren’t we also the ones creating the void we are so consciously trying to escape with a dopamine hit? These thoughts make their way into my mind by observing how we’ve begun consuming food in both online spaces, offline spaces and what I like to call in the hybrid space as well.
I am guilty of having started a “food blog” back when I was in college. My friends saw my love for food, which reflected in the way I photographed the food I ate and they therefore encouraged me to start a food blog. I was a proud food blogger back then. With time, however, as people called me a food blogger, I began to feel a sense of shame associated with it. I preferred to call it my personal blog where I shared my observations and experiences with food. I realise now that this sense of shame set in because of the complete sham that the entire so-called “blogging” industry has become. With sponsored and funded posts, the bloggers have merely become a mouthpiece for those who pay them and are not fuelled by their own likes and dislikes.
This becomes a larger problem because media plays a strong role in our mind when forming our own opinions. On relying on public figures, we allow them to curate taste. How the food is presented is more important than the quality of the food itself. With the risk of coming off as a snob or an elitist, the ability to assess quality over aesthetics is only in the hands of a few.
There is also the usual herd mentality factor which plays in here, where if everyone is saying something is good – the aesthetics are on point, there are large queues to gain access to this product (not food, product) that everyone has been going on and on about everywhere – one must like it too. In other words, we are fuelling mediocrity simply because we do not wish to be left out.
The number of breweries, dessert parlours and essentially spaces where food plays a role are essentially selling the same experience in a different font. Therefore, we are celebrating the homogenisation of our experience. Now, coming back to my initial argument on how we are engaging with food online, more than relying on our five primary senses, is because many of us engage with the food online first and then experience it offline. This is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It is simply, a thing. One can make of it what one will. However, it is important to note, that the experience might not entirely be one’s own experience but is rather an experience curated by someone in the online space which we further live out. Therefore, we are living out the dining experience in a hybrid mode where we are engaging both online and offline with the food served to us.
Scrolling through the multitude of information available to us at our fingertips we often forget to feel the feelings which we feel when engaging with something for the first time. For instance, when we taste something spicy (rather than seeing someone eat it like a glutton and then have tears upon eating it- if you have seen these videos, you know what I’m talking about), when we see soft bread being pulled apart in front of us (than seeing someone pull it apart and react to it) or anything of the sort. Unconsciously, these dictate to us how we are supposed to feel. Now I might have gone into a tangent, but I must return and state that my point with all this is that we need to engage with our lives first hand rather than relying on curation. The void only exists because we are creating it by relying on presentation and curated aesthetic rather than feeling and experience. One might argue that aesthetic is part of the experience and I whole heartedly agree, but is that the only factor in determining the experience?
Nikita Chung 