We can't download a banh mi. | MetaFilter

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No, of course they aren't. What is wrong with you?

I think the article suffers from the fact that it's an op-ed and has to make a bold and idiotic claim like "FOOD TRUCKS KILL PUNK ROCK", but his point (minus the headline) isn't a bad one.

In late capitalism, where it becomes less about the consumption of the thing and more about the consumption of consumption, then infinitely available music doesn't really give you any sort of cache. Anyone can become conversant on any musical scene in the world through tumblr, spotify, and torrents. The consumption of music loses any significance because it's infinitely and cheaply available to anyone who wants it.

Being a "foodie" (jesus christ, what a word. I'm an 'airie' I'm really in to the aerobic aspects of the metabolic process. I'm a 'sleepie' I like to refresh my brain through REM sleep), however, is something which still carries meaning. Being knowledgeable about, and having the money to pursue good restaurants in your neighborhood has meaning. You can't, as he says, download Banh Mi, and more importantly you can gain status by being the sort of person who discovers and eats Banh Mi. By its nature food is a limited and gated commodity with direct implications about your cultural ties; like music used to be, but no longer is. In other words, it still functions as an effective symbol of position, alliance, status, class, connectedness, w/e.

I feel that where the op-ed misses the mark (probably simply because it is an op-ed) is that it mistakes causation and correlation. Foodies don't kill music scenes, rather, exclusivity of consuming music-culture being destroyed by infinitely reproducible digital media and instantaneous online communication instead creates new paths towards exclusivity and identification. The habits of late capitalism don't disappear, but simply reroute to new paths. So if you've made your life by being a taste-maker and cultural touchstone in the old world you look at the shifting landscape and mistake cause and effect, and then you write an angry piece in the NYT about it.

If/when we get to the point that we can, in fact, download the recipe for Banh Mi and our chemical compositors can create a near-perfect facsimile, you'll see washed up rockstar chefs writing similar holo-op-eds in the NNYT (that's Neo New York Times).

Some theorists think that this collapse of intellectual property through the technological affordances of the network are one of the hallmarks of Capitalism's inevitable coming collapse (for as long as it's been inevitably collapsing, it sure is like watching a building implode so slowly that you might as well just be watching a still frame).
posted by codacorolla at 11:01 AM on May 11 [71 favorites]

I tend to have some novelty value within some social circles because I am cool about food. I know where the good food is. I can, in fact, direct you to the best bahn mi in Albuquerque. (It's at that place in the old Ta Lin market and it's less than $5 and the best one is the grilled pork and if you can find a better baguette at high altitude then please tell me about it because I want to eat it, thanks.) I am obsessed with food. I can talk endlessly about food because I love food.

But, honestly, I read like one good food blog for reviews sometimes. I used to hang out with foodies some and I got a lot of good recommendations for food then.

Here's the thing, though: that's EXACTLY the same as my musical education. I used to hang around people who listened to lots of cool music, and so I listened to some of the stuff they do, and now I sometimes know about new stuff from reading about it here. But to people who are either not into music or into different genres than me, what I am into seems just as... I don't know, arcane?

But the whole "You're looking for a good bowl of ramen? Try this little Japanese place in a strip mall, I'll give you directions" thing tends to have a really similar effect to "Have you tried listening to Marian Call? You might like her" as far as social status is concerned.

The thing is the "foodie" phenomenon as we're seeing it now is something that's been going on for a long time really it's just more widespread connoisseurship of something that sort of bridges the art/craft gap, since you need to eat to live. But there's definitely a scene there. And it's not replacing any musical scenes, but it does operate on similar terms, in some ways-- you want to be in the know about new restaurants opening, chefs you like moving around, places under new ownership, daily specials, happy hours, chicken and waffle night, etc. in the same way you'd want to know about shows that just got announced, bands breaking up and getting back together, stuff like that.

But music and food, in this case, aren't competing for attention-- we're not going to stop listening to music because we're eating, we can do those at the same time-- but they occupy a similar social space, so I can see how that, combined with the fact that about 30% of adults seem to develop a weird terror that music is dying when they hit 35, could make it seem like they're playing a zero sum game.
posted by NoraReed at 11:26 AM on May 11 [7 favorites]

The consumption of music loses any significance because it's infinitely and cheaply available to anyone who wants it.

I think you've made a good observation, but I'd argue that this isn't true. One of the meanings of the consumption of music--that you have the money, and more importantly the dedication to the "scene" to spend that money--has definitely been lessened with the availability of free downloading.

However, it's not just about having the money to buy the music; it's about knowing what to buy. It's not true that music consumers these days are easily and automatically conversant in their music scene. Acquiring in-depth knowledge of any particular scene is easier with the internet, sure, but it still takes active dedication. Most people aren't that engaged. They download whatever tickles their fancy and don't put much "work" into it.

The online music blogging scene is, I think, a really great example of how this makes knowledge the new cultural capital among music fans. And the more obscure the knowledge, the better. People who run music blogs, who are creating an online identity as an involved fan of music, don't just upload the latest pop album. They upload stuff that most people probably haven't heard about, that is harder to find, and they often create stories about how they, the fan, encountered the music.

There are excellent blogs focused on vintage music, on music found in bodegas, about "world" music, and so on and so forth. Fluxblog, which focuses on pop, including many well-known artists, is kind of an anomaly these days. (And it's also really old in internet time.)

I've been involved in music blogging off and on for a long time and I've definitely noticed a change in what I feel is "worth" sharing. Everyone wants to bring something to the table. There's no real point in uploading the latest greatest pop single when it's so easy to get, so you have to find something else to offer.

And the side-effect is, unfortunately, a lot of snootiness and a valuing of "obscurity" over quality sometimes.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:37 AM on May 11 [2 favorites]

I used to run an Asian food blog. Get up in the morning, translate a recipe, buy the ingredients, cook, photograph, write, post, respond to comments, maybe do just a little bit of marketing. Every day. Often I'd hold dinner parties just to offload the food I was cooking, but my middle class foodie friends were constantly asking when the next one was, and whether they could be invited.. Anyway, the blog was distinctly niche, focused on a cuisine that was then little known in most developed countries, but it had a fairly loyal fan base (mainly the same middle class friends and other bloggers who were interested in relatively unknown and tasty foreign foods), a significant number of daily hits, and eventually someone came along and offered me a (very reasonable) advertising contract.

Then my host got hacked.

During the course of the the convoluted mess that was getting the thing back online in a form that wasn't selling fake Florida real estate, something came to mind that one of my medieval history profs had once said during a chat we had sometime around 1992. She was a funny, wise, charming woman with a set of interests that ranged from Indonesian politics through chess, maths, programming, science fiction, female medieval peasant authors and literature, Viking culture, the epidemiology of bubonic plague, etc. In short she was a friggin genius and a polymath to boot, but never the sort to rub it in. She said (and I paraphrase just a little) "What is it with all these dinner parties I go to where people just talk about food? The food's there to be eaten. The conversation is what makes the thing enjoyable. And if there's no discussion beyond the food on your plate, there's not a lot of wit or charm to it. Just seems recursive and soulless is all.."

Remembering that, watching the ever rising number of Western Iron Chef "Hey! Lets compete! With food!" rip-offs on TV, and questioning whether I as a western bloke really needed to be providing competition in a niche internet publishing market that was just beginning to be entered by the real people whose food I wrote about, left me with the sense that I didn't really want to be spending all my time talking about food. I put the project to bed at about the time the term foodie gained widespread currency.

I still translate cookbooks, I still eat wonderful food, but (mostly) the need to talk about it is gone. The desire to share it with people who want to talk about food and nothing else is gone too. It's food, it's good, the pleasure in it can be taken quietly and without fuss while having a decent conversation about something else. Perhaps even music. At a stretch, rock.
posted by Ahab at 7:53 PM on May 11 [8 favorites]

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