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This may just be bc I usedy to watch filthy frank a lot, but I tend to give him more credit than I do the others. I like to think he saw what kind of audience he had and bailed, but who knows. I would probably hate his content going back now and watching
this is an underdeveloped thesis, but ive been thinking about the rise of foodie culture and the declining rate of profit
food is a great commodity for capitalism because its necessary and it gets consumed after purchase, but of course theres a limit to how much volume can be sold, and of course basic staples are much less labour intensive to provide in enough volume to feed everyone than they used to. and processing/packaging of staple food is one of those areas that has become particularly automated. so if you can make food more labour-intensive, theres much more scope for profit. both in terms of fancy ingredients that are more labour-intensive, and the rise of restaurant/cafe culture that adds a tonne of labour to the food production process. and for what its worth, the restaurant side is mostly labour directly involved in the process of production, which is something thats increasingly rare in the west, and the initial capital requirement is relatively very low (which i guess is also why so many restaurants are allowed to fail)
so selling a bunch of alienated middle-class drones on food consumption as an identity and class signifier that they can build their whole personality around seems like a deeper push from capital that was running out of pointless shit to sell people
also i have never watched epic meal time and have no idea what it is
This “foodie culture” has always been a thing. Or at least, has been around for a very long time, more than a century. I would look at a lot of data before saying anything like what you said, I doubt that “foodie culture” has really been an increase in people interested in fancy dining. I think it’s more likely just a change in what fancy dining looks like.
But I also haven’t looked at any data very closely, so what do I know.
I am old enough to remember the cultural overreaction to “foodies"
a lot of us hated those pricks because they gentrified everything
Everybody gets really into the food they can afford to eat
This is completely false. Plenty of well off white people eat the most boring food imaginable simply because that’s what they like
Epic Meal Time was like Starship Troopers in that the people whom it was making fun of also thought it was cool.
