Day 144 - online experts

A partly typical Saturday -- laundry and cleaning -- somehow those chores seem never-ending <smile>. I spent time catching up with someone I'd not spoken to for a long time. It was wonderful to be able to chat for 2 hours about anything and everything.  The other part of the day was spent with the MOOC -- this began over the past week. It is a 6-week course on food critics, authors and chefs.  Today when discussing the evolution of the food critic as we currently understand it, the course materials went from newspaper and magazine writers to the current social media writer where everyone is an expert.  This reminded me of other blog posts I've done recently. While we all eat and are experts in what we enjoy and our own cultural food norms, perhaps we are not all food experts. Do we all understand what a perfect creme brulee should look and taste like? If a chef switches things up a bit by altering a traditional dish with an updated ingredient, will we all recognize that?  Do we need to fully understand food to pronounce opinions on it? There are a lot of self-proclaimed experts in all fields -- the interactive nature of the Web has ensured that we all potentially can speak to masses of people - yet without ever seeing them. The writer remains anonymous -- something that is seductive and unnerving.

That said, we've all met or know people who post photos of everything they eat. I enjoy seeing some foods posted on friends pages, but would find it overdone to see everything eaten being posted to my news feed. A friend sat beside someone on a plane who took pictures of the beverage and snack and proceeded to explain that he'd taken and posted photos of everything he'd eaten for a period of years. To me that seems obsessive, but there may be a reason that was not shared that would explain this behaviour. I find a photo of amazing plating to be inspiring, but seeing everything that one person eats would get old fast for me.

The selection for today comes from part of the MOOC course materials. It is a bit of fun for a Saturday. Enjoy!

Eat it Don't tweet it -- American Hipster and Key of Awesome