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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4327 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 23, 2023

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Who's behind those really weird Facebook recipe videos? The ones that always start with some sort of (even beyond) innuendo, and then are just insane? Cabbage stuffed with ground beef wrapped with bacon, with a "cheese cream" (not cream cheese!), heavy cream, and pickle sauce, for instance. Aside from the use of non-American names for things (afore-mentioned cheese cream), all I can tell is that they use grams with ounces in parentheses.

Eastern European "content" farms. Freddie deBoer had an article about the overoptimized for virality content enviorment we are in with short form videos. And a video doesnt need to make to make sense for it to go viral. What boggles the mind is who is watching and sharing this nonsense though, I know it happens its self evident but i cant comprehend the sheer mass of subhumans who derive "entertainment" from this shit.

There was an Economist article about this sort of thing a while back: https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/07/28/hocus-focus-how-magicians-made-a-fortune-on-facebook

In summary: Weird stuff gets people to watch long enough for an advertisement to play, which earns the creators money. Weird stuff also gets people to comment, which increases reach in the algorithms.

I think they’re LLM generated, bout a month ago one went viral because it’s hilarious.

These videos have existed long before LLMs. Just because LLMs are the hot thing right now doesnt mean they have to be shoehorned into every discussion, in less annoyed terms dont fall for the Bader Meinhoff effect.

I genuinely had never seen a fake or ridiculous recipe before seeing a chatgpt generated one about a month ago. I know it was chatgpt because the poster explicitly called it out.

Just because there’s some fancy psychological effect about it doesn’t discount my anecdote, sirrah.

Huh. I distinctly remember thinking the “life hack” videos were sufficiently alien to be AI.

The sticking point, of course, was always the video itself. Someone went to the trouble to film these cursed life hacks, regardless of whether it was a human or an AI churning out scripts. Insert usual doomerism about plausible fake footage, now.

Looks like it's possible to monetize Facebook reels if you're popular. So I'd guess it's people from poorer countries trying to make videos just weird enough to keep people watching.

There's also a trend of making troll cooking videos for lulz.

Although that recipe doesn't sound that crazy from your description.

What makes cabbage rolls insane? Or do you mean that they hollow out a cabbage head and fill it with stuff, kind of like a bread bowl?

Cabbage stuffed with ground beef wrapped with bacon, with a "cheese cream" (not cream cheese!), heavy cream, and pickle sauce, for instance.

Yeah, are cabbage rolls somehow unfamiliar to Americans? It's a pretty normal Finnish recipe, I haven't heard of people using cream cheese and pickle sauce in them but sounds like a pretty logical modification tbh.

I'm from Pittsburgh and they're definitely not unfamiliar in areas that have historically had heavy Eastern European immigration; they're occasionally called "Hunky Hand Grenades" and are a staple of weddings, graduations, communions, or any other large gathering. I can understand, though, that someone from the South or West might not be familiar with them since they don't seem to have had the same level of penetration as, say, Italian food, though I'm sure I'd be surprised on that front as well.

But it's hardly only those places that eat cabbage rolls though. Its common in northern and south eastern Europe as well, in addition to Asia and the middle east.

Surely people have at least had steamed cabbage rolls at a Chinese buffet at some point?

Just seeing this now, but some things just don't have the penetration you'd expect. For instance, in Pittsburgh, Italian bread is a grocery staple. I rarely buy anything other than Italian bread, unless it's rye or something. Every grocery store large enough to have a bakery has fresh, unsliced loaves made the same day, even national chains like Wal-Mart (where it's attractively priced at a buck and a half). The deli has the local brands that some people swear by, Cellone's and Mancini's, and even the bread aisle has inferior but still acceptable mass-market versions from Nickles and Schwebel's. Then a couple years ago friends who had moved to North Carolina some years prior were visiting and mentioned how they needed to grab a loaf of Italian bread before they left. Apparently, the stuff is virtually unheard of in the South, even in major metros like Charlotte, and it's not the kind of thing that lends itself to ordering online. Even Schwebel's and Nickles, which I had long assumed were major national brands based on the volume they sell here, are evidently only regional. All kinds of stuff you'd think other people would know about, they just don't know about.

Cabbage rolls are the sort of thing people in the south are familiar with but consider exotic.

I wouldn't say they're unfamiliar, but cabbage rolls are uncommon outside southeaster meat + 3s.

Largely, Americans consider themselves "above" cabbage which is crazy cause it's so cheap.

Not to mention incredibly tasty.

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