1. You’re bantha pudu because you don’t want to be part of the “community” that builds audiences and food fandom and are somehow preventing the blogger, who is providing you FREE recipes, dammit, from climbing in search engine algorithms so their content rises to the top of the search like a successful souffle.
2. You’re probably fat and not really a fan of good food because all you want is a quick way to cook up something you can shove into your cavernous gob.
3. You’re lazy because you want that recipe fast, without paying respect to the blogger who brings it to you.
4. You’re too dumb to understand the genre of food/recipe blogging on the Internet.
5. You’re a man who hates women, and want them to be dumb, silent, servile engines of food preparation.
6. You’re a woman who hates women who demonstrate any fealty to domesticity, husbands, dumb stories about the dog, or – gasp – paying the bills by talking about their sponsors’ products.
7. You’re too technologically unsavvy to use recipe filter extensions or to use the search function to look for the keyword “ingredients.”
8. You’re a hack.
Or so this piece in Slate tells me.
The article speaks of “content collapse,” meaning the audiences websites are built for are open to anyone on the Internet, not just that intended audience. Content collapse implies that these non-audience folks are still going to come to your website and very likely be confused about what it is and what it’s for and maybe – if they can find a way – complain about it. Or they’ll just use it for what they think it’s good for, and go about their days.
I’m a writer myself. I get that the Internet provides avenues of unlimited expression that is harder to come by in printed matter, as is pointed out here.
But I also know there are simple things writers can do to deal with content collapse without having to excise a single word.
I spent ten years as a newspaper journalist, where we write using the inverted pyramid. That means the most important information comes first, with the least important information at the end. Meaning if the article had to be cut to length, an easy way to make things fit was just to cut off the bottom until it fit. Now, there were times we did not write using that style. A more expansive style has its payoffs, notably in expression. But it brings with it inherent risks of needing a heavier edit.
Not so needed online, where there’s infinite space for an infinite number of monkeys typing at an infinite number of typewriters. Take this blog, for example. I do no editing or cutting here.
But I also don’t expect anyone – not even my mother, who is dead – to read this. If anyone reads it and finds it annoying, that’s fine by me. This is for me. I’m the author and the audience, shouting into the ether.
You should be glad you’ve got regular readers. And readers who come to you via content collapse. So take advantage of such. Put the recipes first, or figure out a “Recipe Here” button that those fly-by-nighters can use to get to the recipe quickly if they don’t want to read your prose. (And honestly, the misogyny thing. I have looked up many recipes online. I’m far more interested in the recipe than the sex of the person who put it online. Not saying misogyny in this case doesn’t happen. But scratching around for reasons to be mad if someone says they simply want the recipe seems foolish.
My wife is the same way. We want the recipe. And here’s why: We’re short on time. We both work two jobs. We have three teenagers who also cook. We have school and other hobbies that don’t revolve around food. There are times it’s fun to slow down and read a good story about a recipe we want to use. That’s not going to happen every time. On the nights I cook, for example, more often than not it’s after I get home off the bus at 7 pm, and we’ve got kids doing homework and both mom and dad heading to the online classes they teach and We. Do. Not. Have. Time. to read your thousand-word essays. We want good food. But the story time doesn’t always fit into the schedule.
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