Comment by plastic-enjoyer
3 hours ago
You have a whole strand of German and French cultural pessimism that foresaw the convergence of mass media to the current point to some degree.
> Staying with the articles example, by adding artificial strawberries flavour to everything those that could have enjoyed the natural experience never get the opportunity to do so, preventing them from acquiring the taste.
I would go so far to say, that even if people tasted the real thing, they would prefer the artificial product. For example, we have Sauce Hollondaise in my country, and most people were probably raised on the convenience product. The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh. So, I've noticed that even if people taste the 'real' sauce, they prefer the convenience product.
Maple syrup is a big one. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to even fancy breakfast restaurants and had real maple syrup.
Cracker barrel used to, decades ago now. It's all garbage corn syrup now. I'd rather not have syrup at all than that cloying, thick, gross stuff.
A Canadian friend brought me back 2 bottles of local maple syrup as a gift. Ok, I'm a pretentious Frenchman when it comes to food and I do think most North Americans have no idea how real food tastes.
But that stuff, I didn't know how it really tasted before trying the OG thing.
Globalisation gave us the illusion of experiencing the world.
Heh, I thought of maple syrup as well. And I'm ashamed to say I prefer the fake stuff! Although it's likely because it's what I had as a child, so there's a strong nostalgia factor.
the real stuff was arguably improved upon with the thicker replacement. I don't want wet pancakes.
>French cultural pessimism
Specifically Jean Baudrillard describes copies of copies with decreasing relavence and quality. But more sinisterly, the loss of knowing what is real, important, safe, efficacious.
His work builds extensively on Plato, Lucretius, and Deleuze's concept of the Simulacrum.
I was fully triggered by the hollandiase bit. This is something I look for constantly when I travel for real eggs Benny. It's never real, even at higher end hotels. They just use better quality fake stuff. And it's so good when it's real.
I don't know the real sauce is incredible compared to the fake stuff. It really is a massive hassle though :/
I know! But a lot of people prefer the fake stuff, because they were raised on it or harbor nostalgic feelings for it. For them, it's the real deal.
When it comes to these lines of thinking, and to romanticism which is closely related, I have a hard time not seeing some of it as disdain for the middle class and nostalgia for the stories classic aristocracy told about itself.
I’m American and grew up inundated with cultural disdain for the suburbs, tract housing, malls, all those things, and at some point I asked, well, what then? What’s better?
Sauce made slowly by hand is better. Carefully curated culture is better. Hand made, artisan, intentional.
Rare. Special. And if it’s rare and special few can have it, making it also expensive and aristocratic.
As soon as you try to give everyone that experience, you get chain stories. You get tract homes. You get mass culture. Because it’s a mass. It’s million, billions of people, and we are not as unique as we think we are. None of us are.
I’m not saying the whole critique is this. There’s another side to it that’s about exploitation and addiction and that one rings true to me. But I find that it’s hard to peel the two things apart.
It’s not exploitation to raise the standard of living of masses of people, and if you think it’s inherently tacky maybe you’re a neo-feudalist reactionary and don’t know it yet. There’s a reason that stuff took hold so easily among certain kinds of hipsters.
I see a lot of leftists where if you could get them to let go of one idea, namely equity and equality, you’d instantly have a “trad.” Most of their other opinions are already aligned.
I don’t see my post as making any judgement, let alone offering criticism. It’s simply my observation that many people prefer the artificial stuff to the original product.
But since you’ve brought this up, I’d argue that it’s not a question of elitism, but rather that 'the masses' simply isn’t given access to these products. What they get is an abstraction of the original, which merely imitates the flavour but abstracts anything else away. Take, for example, meat or vegetable stock, which is now a staple in every kitchen in the form of powder or stock cubes. If you take a look at the ingredients and nutritional values, they’re rather disappointing. The masses may get access to the taste, but not to the nutrients.
I didn’t mean to come off as criticizing you, just providing a balancing counterpoint on some of the ideas.
The question is: can you give billions of people the “authentic” version?
In some cases you can. In the US at least there’s boutique groceries and farmers markets that sell more authentic organic food that usually does have better nutritional value. But it costs more.
The artificial mass market imitation is cheaper because it is thermodynamically cheaper. It takes far less labor (the most costly input to almost all processes) and it substitutes things that can be bulk produced at a lower unit cost. Being less nutritious probably directly correlates since nutrition is chemical complexity is lower entropy, higher energy, harder to scale.
There’s a lot of rare “authentic” experiences that cannot be scaled. That means most people can’t have them, ever.
> The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh.
No it's not.
It's not at all difficult if you have gained the basic survival skill of cooking. I mean, take a couple egg yolks in a double boiler, add the juice of a lemon, whisk until it's thick then add butter. 10 minutes and you can use a bowl over the pot of boiling water you're poaching your eggs in if you don't have a double boiler for your camp stove in the wilderness.
But that's still more of a hassle than putting the carton of that yellow plastic liquid in the microwave for a minute and a half. People will prefer their slops and the farmer brings it right to you; what could possibly be a better life?
Nothing kills a discussion like when someone just saying "I disagree" with zero explanation. They're not really contributing just cluttering up the comments. At least give a reason why.
(Not the person you're replying to.)
The original sauce is, in fact, a pain to make. However, it's not the 17th century any more. You can, with an immersion blender (which is not a particularly obscure piece of kitchen hardware), make it very easily. There's a bit of a knack, but only a bit of one, and if the sauce breaks you can just restart the emulsion with a new egg.
https://www.seriouseats.com/foolproof-2-minute-hollandaise-r...
The same basic technique can be used for mayonnaise and is even harder to screw up.
For the record: you basically take a stick blender, the container that came with it, crack an egg, pour over some lemon juice, then blend while pouring in hot butter (use the microwave!). Takes ca 2 minutes, including the 1 minute 30s of microwaving the butter.
Instant _real_ sauce hollandaise as the stick blender creates a vortex that emulsifies it. No need to hand whisk it over a bain-marie at careful temperatures.
Cant / currently cooking creme diplomate.
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