![]() ![]() Its appearance in your timeline signals status: You went to the place. It’s elusive and aspirational, something instantly recognizable yet only minimally available, the product of a long line (a ramen burger or matcha croissant) or a trans-continental flight (going all the way to Tokyo for a Gudetama waffle). ![]() Over-the-top, intensely trend-driven, and visually arresting, Instagram food is almost always something to be obtained, rather than cooked or created. Food thrives on social networks because of its easy, graphic appeal and pan-demographic interest - we all have to eat, right? But while Facebook has become a repository of time-lapse recipe videos for quick weeknight dinners that often prominently feature, for some reason, canned biscuit in dough, and Pinterest traffics largely in mason jars, do-it-yourself projects and the protein-packed simplicity of an egg baked inside half an avocado, Instagram has thrown its lot in with spectacle. That’s not only because Instagram is a widely used and intensely visual medium, but also because its emergent aesthetic tropes are as essential to the zeitgeist as baby tees and brown lipstick were to the 90s. When I say “Instagram food,” you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. This, of course, presents a problem for marketers: How do you sell food to a group of people that American culture has harassed into a near-universally fraught relationship with your products? It turns out the answer is easy: Just give them something to do with food that isn’t eating it. For the young women who constitute Instagram’s target demographic - the desired audience of both for the corporations that sell products and the influencers who pretend not to be advertising them - even eating something as innocuous as a sad desk salad at work can come along with casual policing from whoever happens to be within view, and I can’t think of a single category of food that, in my 31 years on earth, I haven’t been warned about by some busybody whose opinion I haven’t asked for. Social media has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone loves to gaze at food (if that were a thing that even needed proving), but the question of who’s eating what, and how much of it, is a much thornier one, especially when it comes to women. Here’s the important part: Even if you just did it for the 'gram, you’ll have to swear up and down that you cleaned your plate. Maybe a sushi donut, or something covered in glitter that isn’t usually covered in glitter, or a confection so full of food coloring that its bitterness needs to be evened out with massive amounts of sugar. Fourth, you are obligated to, at some point, post pictures of food. No one needs to know why, or what you’re vacationing from, you’ve just got to go on vacation all the time. Second, as in most public-attention-based endeavors, be young, female, and conventionally attractive. First of all, be famous, or at least related to someone famous, and if you can’t be famous, at least have the decency to be rich. ![]() There are rules for being an Instagram influencer. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. ![]()
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