Have your cake, but don't tweet it, too

Who knew that Ivor Tossell, "Technology Culture Columnist" for the Globe & Mail, would be so influenced by our humble Grenoble photo blog? My post on "French" cuisine affected him so much that it drove him to write an entire article on why you should never post pictures of your food online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/ivor-tossell/have-your-cake-but-dont-tweet-it-too/article2359740/

"It is time that we had a talk about taking photos of our food. The act isn't merely an extension of this documentary compulsion; it's a phenomenon unto itself. Dishes parade across the social networks like the stars of a drive-in concession commercial: Stacks of pancakes; pork served however you like; Eggs Whatnot; wine bottles and smudgy wine glasses. Things people stewed. Things people fried. Things people ate. Sure enough, there's a group on Flickr, the photo-sharing site, entitled “I ate this.” People have contributed more than 400,000 photos of things they ate. People do eat a lot of things."

[...]

"So, I beg of you: Stop tweeting your food. Stop Facebooking your food. Stop Instagramming your food with a vintage-yellow filter, so it looks like it's been solidifying in a display case since 1981. You'll be doing a favour for both the food photography that comes with purpose, and for the rest of us, adrift on this sea of indistinguishable cupcakes, shortbreads and omelettes. Brunches, brunches everywhere, and nary a bite to eat."

He even spoke against my beloved (see two posts ago) Instagram! Sorry, Ivor.


[Update: later today I was reading some research papers that ultimately led me to the original publication of Google's PageRank algorithm that forms the basis of its search engine technology ('The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web', January, 1998). In the introduction and motivation section, Page, et al. note:


More importantly, the web pages [on the Internet] are extremely diverse, ranging from "What is Joe having for lunch to day?" to journals about information retrieval.

So, it looks like talking/posting about what you eat is nearly as old as the Web itself!]