The dying specimen of the Instagram foodie
Comes an economic crisis with high inflation after a global pandemic, gone is the high street foodie. But with their demise, new beasts are surfacing.
We went from a jolly time when Instagram was a nice place for showing our circle of friends our whereabouts and snapping pictures of Sunday morning cappuccinos, to the professionalization of the influencer and the picture-foodie.
Once upon a time, the pictures were accompanied by texts and replies, dialogues on screen. Now all are gone with the push for short videos, dancing moves and a request for an incessant flow of colours through the screens.
The older millennials are tired, and Instagram is slowly losing its central space as a social aggregator. Because socially, we communicate: we do not just consume a stream of video, a more onanistic and intimate (dis)pleasure that completely counters any meaningful relationship.
But something else is contributing to the slow death of a species of Instagram user that thrived on the platform: the foodie.
Foodies were, by definition, normal people who liked to eat - to some extent - but also they liked to tell others what they were eating and where, through the usage of nice and likeable pictures, to tell a story in images.
Foodies never passed that stage of amateur enthusiasts: some have acquired hundreds of followers, but very little gastronomic knowledge. They focused on the accumulation, the search for popular places, new places where they could be the first in the reportage and very expensive places to fuel their ego and ignite the viewer’s envy.
Foodie now has become almost a bad word, with a slightly mocking and negative connotation. Yet, there is no other word than “food enthusiast” to describe this crowd.
Few still self-identify as foodies, trying to disguise this tainted label under something else.
Nowadays, you can recognize them by sentences under their posts or stories such as:
It becomes more and more difficult to find a restaurant that impresses me.
In my case, as I already carry some gastronomic baggage, I can say that I ate one of the best dishes that have ever been served to me.
See?
They are sentences in which they hint at their experience made of (gastronomic) experiences (like a square root of experiences).
But digging a bit, you realise they have about the same understanding of gastronomy in its broader sense that I have of plumbing. Which is: very little, and barely sufficient to understand when something is not working, but absolutely unable to pinpoint any issues.
Moreover, with the pandemic and the rising cost of living, the large majority of these self-purported foodies only visit establishments when they get an invitation from a magnanimous benefactor, or a press campaign (they are still useful to generate content, which is the measurement of Instagram success still).
These two sentences above are Google-translated from two self-purported foodies. They are incredibly different in nationality, language, gender, interests, education, age, and profession.
And yet they are the exact same, endless copies of the “foodie” format.
They generously employ terms such as “experience” to describe a dinner (in all those cases where they enter the realm of fine dining), and they like to indulge in “concept” instead of using the word restaurant, eatery, and whatnot.
They are a bit too eager for new places to discover, as this will bring a reputation as novelty-seekers to their crowd (composed of equally ill-equipped people), and they try as much as they can to queue behind more renowned people in the industry, by attending “events”.
Only when they are cheap, offered/gifted, or for free.
In this, they are not unlike the journalists: most of them are devoid of anything meaningful whatsoever thing to say, and move only following someone else who pays the bill.
Where are the foodies now?
Well, some of them made the unfortunate decision to think that if their pictures and a couple of accompanying words were liked by many followers, they could be the perfect fit to work as communication specialists in gastronomy.
In the past year or so, they started flooding the market, some creating their own company, others joining an existing establishment. All with the innocence of a completely blank mind and palate, having missed reading most of the gastronomic literature and eating what needs to be eaten.
I feel honestly sorry for those who employ them, believing that they could add something meaningful to their business. If twenty years ago fashion was fashionable, the Shein-ization of fashion and the death of haute couture have moved the attention of fame-seekers to another basic necessity of humankind.
From clothing to food.
This is also one of the reasons the gastronomy sector is in disarray: there are blinds (former foodies) leading other blinds (restaurant owners and chefs) and posing as communicators, or worse, consultants.
The trick is that communicating gastronomy is really not enough
Because a gastronomist needs to have eaten certain things, in certain places. Needless to say, in most cases as a gastronomist you have also had to enter the mechanics of food. How else could you have an opinion about, for instance, a hollandaise sauce, if you’ve only eaten something out of a package?
Moreover, there are some foods that need to be tried almost by the hand of those who created them.
Other former foodies have found new interests: parenthood, self-help, design, and hotel dwelling. They must have understood that even if eating as an act is simple and everyone can do it, eating in a gastronomical way is incredibly complex and requires a lot of time spent thinking, writing, and studying.
Hardly a pastime, it becomes as compelling as a job.
The future is not a foodie one
Or so we hope.
Instagram is dying a slow death, now that its cohort of users (Gen X and Millennials) are getting more and more annoyed by the changes in the platform, pushing ads and videos to people whose only interest is to share pictures with a circle of friends. It will probably become the parking lot of the older generations like Facebook has become a care home for the elderly (boomers).
TikTok is now the living environment of Gen Z until something else arrives to compete for their remaining attention span (very little) and interest in video and short snappy content.
Almost nobody anymore reads newspapers and magazines. Once someone discovers how most articles in gastronomy are created, media outlets are dead. Their choice to disinvest in quality journalism and let underpaid interns rewrite press releases from communication agencies will soon make ChatGPT the next intern, and the only hope we have is that AI will become really better than interns.
What will people interested in gastronomy do?
On the one hand, I see more and more people going back to blogs and self-expressive means of communication where pictures and videos take the back seat, whilst words can be combined with visuals.
Substack, for instance, is growing exponentially, and this might well be the main reason. Even mainstream journalists are opening their own little worlds here, and writers are a silent legion.
On the other hand, I see a lot of fatigue and overload.
There are too many restaurants that are opening and too many media outlets (including social media) fueling a sort of FOMO (fear of missing out). But as many open, the same amount closes before having made any impact whatsoever on gastronomy.
In this frenzy, I follow with curiosity the trajectory of a communication agency that is accumulating new customers at a rapid pace.
Almost as quickly as they are losing customers - because they go out of business. A lot of these are “concepts”, not restaurant businesses with a sustainable approach (in work-life balance, ingredients, and so on), and this explains their short lifespan.
Who is killing the foodies?
Put simply, foodism is being killed by the same communication agencies that have recruited/have been founded by some of them, and their impact on gastronomy and the food scene.
So, how do you, a food lover, escape the cage of foodism?
There are simple solutions, and all of them require quite a lot of investment: in time, money, and education.
To jump from foodie to gastronomist, you have to invest a lot in eating out. But not just mindlessly wandering to supposed cool places because Instagram tells you to. No. You have to find a path in gastronomy and explore it. And so on, with every path. Gone is the brunch with avo toast, it is the journey through Michelin-starred restaurants, humble taverns, local food and products.
And not ONCE, nor ONE of them. You have to taste several things, several times.
To escape the foodie trap, you have to travel.
Across borders, cultures and prejudices.
You have to be able to differentiate kitchens and traditions, you have to be able to chase innovation (which is different from a “new concept”) and vanguardism and plunge back into the classical tradition.
To never go back to foodism, you have to read.
A lot.
Cookbooks, literature, PhD papers, dissertations, scholarly articles.
EVERYTHING but the conventional press release articles touting new places.
Those, you can skip and rest your eyes. And as you can imagine, none of this is Instagrammable.
And none of this is easy to share with the non-initiated.
But beware, the journey to becoming a gastronomist is a life-long one.
Even after twenty years of relentless seeking, studying and eating, you will only feel like a novice when you will discover something new.
And you will have to start all over again, even challenging your own paradigms.
Gastronomy is more like philosophy: a balance between arts and sciences, memories and forward-looking.
And the journey never ends.
Do you remember the Gastro Boy, the first specimen of our very own Bestiarium Gastronomicus? It was the hilarious story of a journalist trying out a temple of Gastronomy, and getting defeated by a meagre wine budget (it WAS 40 euro, indeed).
I have found three others: the Snarky Foodie, the Old Guy Foody, and the Foodalist.
Two of them have a story that is more of a trajectory, and their trajectories are opposite. Snarky Foodie began their career as a well-heeled foodie, roaming Michelin-starred restaurants and drinking expensive wines till the moment they could not afford them anymore. They had to reinvent themselves, stepping down from their pedestal to try to get back in tune with an audience.
Foodalist is the exact opposite: began as people’s person, relatable and all with simple food outings and cheap eatings, till the moment they started roaming Michelin Starred restaurants and had to change their paradigm.
Both are based on true lives, of course.
Groigne qui groigne.
The third one is also based on true specimens.
The Old Guy Foody is a wealthy, middle-aged man that finds solace in food (and oftentimes, in wine). He desperately NEEDS to write in DETAIL his own opinions, unable to shut the fuck up. He needs to MANSPLAIN everything and write A LOT and talk A LOT in a sort of measurement competition with others who need to show off larger, more numerous bottles. Or probably their privates will fall off, who knows?
He (it is always an ageing male) resorts to Instagram because in the family there is likely no one anymore who can tolerate their blabbering and the likes and follows give them some dose of dopamine.
The Tale of the Snarky Foodie
Let’s analyse two opposite trajectories of former Instagram foodies, that are trying to change their skins.
We will call the first one “The Snarky Foodie”.
This is the tale of a person who, for a brief period of their life, was living a very intense wine and exemplary fine dining gastronomic life. At least for a couple of golden years, squeezed between a Starbucks and Frappuccino era and an era of more economic modesty.
If we take a look at their Instagram page, in fact, there’s a turning point from their previous self of pink doughnuts and mediocre éclairs and Starbucks cappuccinos, to pictures taken in Michelin stars restaurants, and snapshots of bottles that their intellect could probably not grasp.
Neither at that moment nor now, years later. Imagine pouring some Romanée-Conti down the drain, and you’d get the picture. A total waste.
The change this Snarky Foodie makes is so abrupt, one can pinpoint the date (and the post) when their life changed, and from going to cinnamon rolls at bakeries and feeling fancy they started going to Michelin-stars restaurants, drinking French wines, and lounging in the Ritz (any of them).
But all dreams come to an awakening.
After living a high life for a couple of years, this person gets literally yeeted away from this golden, luxurious and hedonist life. For a couple of years, Snarky Foodie could truly be themself: snappy, cruel, snobbish and repulsive all in the same, with an entitlement and feeling of superiority that only a very insecure person who is climbing the social and reputational ladder has.
If we go by their Insta account, life afterwards for this foodie is a collection of sad pictures with poetic captions trying to relive the old splendour.
The tendency of freeriding and snapping pictures with expensive bottles is still there, but in all the years following, we can only count a handful of starred restaurants, which was the bread and butter of their previous life.
This decayed (formerly known as) Snarky Foodie, that in all right we can now call Everyday Foodie thus had to reinvent themselves - trying to be nice and sympathetic, something unnatural to them, more akin to being snappy, entitled and overly conscious of their golden life.
But they tried.
Befriended “normal” foodies, and started hanging out with a famous foodie that yes has a lot of followers, but that until the moment before was being addressed, behind their shoulders of course, as “a stupid person with no brain”.
What a “nice” friend and person this (formerly known as ) Snarky Foodie must be.
Dante Alighieri said that it was very hard to climb someone else’s stairs, and having to eat their bread was even more so: similarly, for this decayed foodie, smashing themselves into mediocrity must have been extra hard.
Gone is the time of hedonism, now the time is for toiling and selling oneself for a second-class dinner ticket at an event, or hopping on the bling circus of some award to snatch a fancy meal and a brushing with the chefs that before she could address from the powerful position of a customer.
Years of being an arrogant prick do not pay off well when trying to insert again among the same people this person has not only snubbed but talked badly behind the shoulders for years.
As if people didn’t know…
What goes around comes around, and in some cases what comes around is a smack in one’s smug face, and it is probably well deserved.
This gastronomic world, and every societal segment really, is filled to the brim with people like this deprived of talent, arrogant and unpleasant (formerly known as) Snarky Foodie.
The Tale of the Foodalist
This is a tale instead of a person who always worked and spent their free time around food and communication.
We will call this person “The Foodalist”, as they have been steadily building an image of a friendly, neighbourhood reference point for all things food.
The Foodalist mapped street food as one of their side projects, and always had a penchant for everyday eateries, in a sort of reverse snobbism.
Yes, they went to places: sometimes invited, sometimes out of work duty - because it is a good excuse for a while, to claim “I was invited, it was my job, I HAD to go” to a starred or expensive restaurant.
It fits their pauperism-friendly narrative as much as the indignation they demonstrate for the usual tropes: gentrification, the disappearance of traditional eateries, lost memories, and all that jazz.
Until, almost silently, the Foodalist starts eating out at high-end places more frequently.
It starts, of course, with pop-ups by famous chefs and events, but soon it spreads to real restaurant visits.
For a while their storytelling is still all geared towards faux pauperism "(“I was invited” “I helped the organisation” “I ended up here against my will” “I missed the entry door to the cheaper place around the corner and I ended up fine dining”).
If you follow them and have performed some semiotics analysis and profiling on them, however, you will start seeing a pattern.
It is an upwards spiralling trend that slowly but steadily the Foodalist is, almost unconsciously, following. At some point, they travel - accompanied by others of the gourmand-gourmet-gastronomy-foodie world.
They venture abroad and end up necessarily in one of the 50Best or whatever list is fashionable, and if you are lucky enough to catch their unfiltered, emotion-filled immediate reactions (stories are better to this effect, as they are more immediate and less filtered by the mental superimposition of what we could call conscience).
They will display amazement and some regret.
They will state something along the lines of never having eaten and drunk so well, with a reasoned and convoluted motivation. They will try their best to convey the speciality of said place to their audience.
At that exact moment, the social contract between Foodalist and the best part of their follower audience is cracked.
But this is not the only change happening.
The Foodalist itself is changing, morphing into a Gastronolist if we want to find a name for what they are becoming.
This refinement trend in the long run will have disastrous effects on the initial Foodalist user base, the thousands of followers that liked them because they felt a connection “of the people”, a bit like white poor people felt when the late Diana went around hugging little African kids.
But the change will be slow, almost impossible to detect, and buried under a lot of noise. It will be there though, and will drive less and less of the initial fans to them while bringing more of those followers of the venomous kind.
Like real gastronomers.
The like of people who will squeeze their eyes, remembering when the Foodalist was saying “I just like eating food” in their old and forgotten pauperism crusade against high-end fine dining.
The Foodalist will have three choices.
They could climb harder and farther. But this would require an investment in knowledge and time that perhaps the relaxed life they are used to is incompatible with. They can try to become like the affluent ones, and finally dine out wherever their new and acquired taste will bring them. Or they will desperately try to hold on to their old self and try to silence their unique, newly acquired self.
The Tale of Old Guy Foody
Old Guy Foody is a man well past their prime age. Single, divorced, or abandoned by the family, he finds solace in expensive wines and expensive dinners.
After a life spent talking and being listened to, their new condition of irrelevance in their family situation leads them to find an alternative audience. Frequently, Instagram: gives them immediate dopamine through likes and comments and connects them to other humans.
They crave this connection. They would do ANYTHING to connect: from posing for ridiculous pictures with every chef they meet to organising wine bacchanals to surrounding themselves with youth and carefree free-riders.
Old Guy Foody is not, generally, a bad human.
It is a sad human: abandoned and alone, inevitably on the brink of physical and mental collapse the more they spin their remaining life around a life of hedonism and excess.
In some cases, pathologically obese or ailing of visceral maladies, young people often take advantage of these (especially the Snarky Foodie type) as they provide a stream of incessant access to luxurious dining experiences and wines.
Old Guy Foody will die soon, of heart attack or organic collapse: let them live what remains of a happy life. Maybe, just mute them as the more they age, the more pedantic they become.
And you, what other specimen of the Gastro-Foodie system have encountered so far?