Saying "the best (insert food/restaurant) of my life" makes us look stupid. So why are we still saying it on social media?
Enshittification of social media starts from taking ourselves too seriously.
There are thousands of them.
Thousands of micro-midi-maxi foodfluencers and Insta-TikTokers “content creators” use this endlessly and constantly.
“The best (insert food) of my life”.
Oh, dear, sweet little mind of yours.
This sentence, we are all guilty of it. In a moment of mental obliteration, most of us has uttered it.
Except that it is:
False
Ridiculous
Amateurish
Childish
Stupid
Showing how little experience you have and how limited your worldview is.
This sole sentence won't seem to discredit whatever you post in the future and whatever you have posted so far. But…
Your opinion will be less worthy (to me).
Why?
Because your experience is limited.
Your experience means nothing.
As does mine.
Nothing.
There is a minimal number of individuals that I would perhaps trust in their judgements, and it is only because they eat around 400-600 meals per year out and around the world.
We may poke fun at them too, occasionally, but if they say (and even more, if many among them say) that such and such is among the best things they tried, I tend to believe them.
Because they have often tried thousands of similar things in varying contexts across five continents.
The number of followers does not count.
The most influential gourmet of our time in Italy has just a few thousand “followers” on Instagram.
Yet, he is not only a scholar and a professor of taste but also a relentless seeker and a professional searching for the best food—professionally—for restaurants.
He is not an overexcited bro or a twerking girl who chews on camera, saying, “This is the best thing in the world”. And even he, whenever he writes, sometimes places the caveat that his judgement is still biased by his taste.
Because even he knows that we are all, with no exceptions, individuals with limits.
The limits are:
our objectivity
our experience
our taste
We may like something so very much, but we are—being human—limited.
Even the best gourmet, gastronomer, and gourmand of a country can have their senses completely mesmerized by something that is a cleverly constructed trap for the senses.
Why so?
Because they lack the context, often.
We can quickly like and be in awe of something unfamiliar.
Much less so with a taste, we know how it should be, from trial and error, and for an infinite (or seemingly so) tasting.
We are more lenient with a cuisine we do not dominate.
We are more forgiving when we are out of context, and we still have childish mesmerization.
If you are, like me, on a journey to improve your gastronomic abilities, you will need to be aware of these intrinsic limitations to your judgement.
Does this mean we have to be just like joyless robots?
Not at all.
Do not let this awareness deprive you of the pure joy of discovery or alienate you from the pleasure of tastes.
Allow yourself to be silly, joyful and naive whenever you like.
Some examples.