Facebook Food Posts

Well... I'm a food blogger, so...

Really, though, I hate the "share this so you can find it" posts more than anything! 99.99% of the time those are recipes stolen from an original source without credit given, which is underhanded at the very least. This blog post says better than I ever could how I feel about stolen recipes, because I know how much effort, time, money, and trial-and-error goes into creating a new recipe. I've had a few of mine stolen by different pages, and while I don't do it for money it angers me to see MY recipe in MY words posted as if someone else created it.

I have stopped posting so many food pictures on my personal page since I started my FB page specifically for recipes, but I do cross-promote some things if I think they're especially good. You've seen some of those here in the "What's for dinner" thread, but the whole premise of my Kitchen page on Facebook is to post a daily recipe with photo. And yeah, some of them are definitely a heart attack on a plate, but that's not my normal fare. My niche is diabetic-friendly recipes that don't cost a million dollars and have depth of flavour so you don't feel like you're missing anything by eating healthy.

 

For the most part I find it annoying unless as you said it is something you made yourself. I have family and friends that will post several recipes a day even though they will probably never cook a one of them. I have un-followed a few because of it.
I don't like any post that says I have to share it especially if is meant to guilt me into posting it. I am the only one who gets to decide what I post and don't post.

 

Based on what a lot of people on my Facebook choose to post, if they truly do cook all the recipes they share so willingly, they have considerably more spare time on their hands than I have, they cook and eat nothing but desserts, and none of them are allergic to anything. Except possibly fibers, vitamins, and lean proteins, since those never figure in the recipes in question.

And the "recipes" are videos, moving in high-speed to squeeze a preparation process that takes a couple of hours into a 3-minute YouTube montage. Which makes them utterly useless for someone who might actually want to learn how to cook what the video was demonstrating (and I use the terms loosely). Good thing I never do.

"Look how cool this is!"-over-sharing is annoying whether it's a video of two hands preparing yet another way of combining Oreos and Coolwhip into a cake by using a muffin pan, or yet another link to a heartwarming article about a baby and a large dog who shocks everyone around them by doing something cute and bonding over it. It's called spam, and it's annoying regardless of what the actual contents are.

Ahem. Excuse me while I put my soapbox away...

I get my recipes from blogs, since they tend to be so much better and easier to follow and learn from than Facebook posts. I actually want to know why a specific cut of roast is better than another, and what I should look for when I try to select a steak. Facebook pages just don't offer enough details. So blogs it is. Plus, someone who take the time to write about why they like a particular dish, and adds little details that helps the reader avoid the mistakes the blogger learned from, is less likely to have stolen that recipe. At least, that's what I tell myself.

 

Not as many as you'd think, but it keeps slowly but steadily growing. I think I'm at about 225 followers and my page will turn three in August.

I should point out that I never share a recipe I haven't made. The pictures are always ones I've taken (or on a couple of occasions a friend or family member will make something and take a photo so I can post it)... you can tell because they all have the same dishes, appliances, counters, etc. If a recipe is mine, and not stupid simple, I'll do a full blog post to go with the FB post, and at first I was doing that with other people's recipes as well until I was threatened with having my page shut down because if I provide a recipe even with credit (always a link, usually a FB tag) the original author doesn't get the ad revenue from page clicks. That never occurred to me since I don't get any income from it. Now I only post a list of ingredients and then a link to where I found something.

But yeah... In general, the people who post 847 recipes per day for all manner of crap annoy me. Unless they're also sharing one of mine. http://i.imgur.com/niXKW.gif

I HATE videos regardless of why they're posted. Not only do they suck up data if I'm mobile, but I always run with speakers off since I'm almost never somewhere I can have sound even if I'm home. Recipe videos are about as useless as decaf coffee as far as I'm concerned. If they don't also come with a written recipe I don't bother.

 

Totally off topic, so I apologize, but mentioning post on Facebook brought it to mind. Why do people feel the they have to post things like "Sue is at Applebee's" or "Joe is at Medical Center for a checkup" or my favorite "We are at the beach for a week." May as well say "Hey thieves we are not home so come on over and rob us." I just don't get it. And who cares where you are?
Excuse the rant.

 

I tried, I really did, and then I tried again...
But I can't 'Like' your post 3 times?

Off topic...
A while back I got a Fcaebook email asking me to like a page. I did and was taken to the page. It was a page promoting some 'pump up the plonker' supplement. I battled to unlike the page and out of frustration posted a message I cannot repeat here. The page is from an old school friend... who promptly unfriended me.

 

There's a little arrow in the upper right of each of those posts. click it, and pick one of the options offered to you...

Spoiler

Muahaha, spoiler tag works! I was curious.

 

I really only use the "hide ads/posts liked this" feature on those. It does seem to help.