Let’s Stop Pretending These Viral Recipes Are Real
Last night, trying to calm myself down, I saw a tweet that said, “ What a normal and perfect way to spaghetti! A video was attached to it. In this video, which is a copy of an older TikTok video, a white woman in a “Plant Lady” shirt pours cold two Costco-sized Prego cans onto a granite (or maybe marble) slab while various white women coo on in the background. She then adds the undefined temperature meatballs, too much Parmesan powder, and a lot of steaming lumpy spaghetti before mixing it all together. Everyone who sees it hates it, and that’s the point (I think).
It’s bloody fake. The food is real – the white lady with the plants is really wasting all that pasta – but the video is not genuine. As Eater just reported (handy enough as I was writing this!), These videos of mildly attractive, skinny, white women all date back to a wizard who dares to call himself ” Rick Lacks .” Lux described the video-making as “friendship and business” and told Eater that he would “object” to anyone calling these recipes “disgusting.”
But they are disgusting. And worse, they aren’t even funny. The women in the spaghetti video can’t even fully devote themselves to the business using their real countertop. (If you look closely, you can see that this coward is actually picking up her pile of trash on the stove set on her real counter.) There is a vague attempt at humor at the end where both women advise you to “fold it” with Moira’s very light affectation Rose is the standard loved by white women around the world – but the video is not entertaining. I’m not kidding. There is no payout. There is no place to rest. (Videos with blackhead removal are more satisfying and less grotesque!)
After I fell for exactly two of these types of videos ( one of which was shot by Rick Lax productions), I stopped doing it, and I invite you to go through this with me. There are so many real things to get angry about; there is no reason to allow the woman in the “Plant Lady” shirt to occupy valuable space in the angry part of your brain. The helpless anger that you experience after watching someone smear food across the countertop (or the stove set on the countertop) in an otherwise untouched, fairly spacious, and probably expensive kitchen is what gives Rick Lux his strength. and he and his army of white women will not leave until we stop looking at them.
how do we do it? There are two steps here: identify and ignore. Once you realize that you are dealing with this type of troll, just pretend you cannot see him. Do not comment. Do not share. Don’t send to anyone. (Then refresh your brain by rinsing your throat by watching videos of good food – like Sohla on Food52 ,on Lucas Cena’s orGeorge Lee’s Instagram, or on Kevin Ashton’s TikTok .)
Identifying can be challenging, but once you know what to look for, spotting such a troll is easy. Here are a few questions to ask yourself if you think you’ve stumbled upon such a video in the wild, whether it was created by a magician or not.
Does the food look good?
Look at the food on the screen with your eyes and ask yourself if you would like to eat it. If the presentation is sloppy, caricaturedly unattractive, or if a real guest would be offended by it, the food is probably not intended for actual human consumption.
Does anyone eat on camera?
If they don’t want to eat, you shouldn’t either.
Does reasoning make sense?
“Hacking” is hacking only if it solves a problem or makes a recipe easier, faster, or better. Take one of my absurd blogs as an example. Smartfood popcorn grits can be easily interpreted as a straightforward troll, but if you read the article, you will see that popcorn grits have been around for thousands of years, and all I did was use pre-cooked cheese-flavored popcorn. instead of pushing it out yourself. It’s a small, kind of silly “trick,” but it takes less time to the recipe and tastes pretty darn good (if you like the taste of white popcorn with cheddar).
Is there any semantic self-awareness?
Popcorn salad is another example of recent food consumption that has made people very angry. But if you watch the original video , you see the hilarious but self-aware Molly Yeh, who explains that she knows the concept seems flawed but promises you that “you try this and it’s really good.” (Molly, it turns out, was right about that .) The Luxes are completely devoid of arrogance or any real human emotion. With a glaring exception to the recipe, these clips are cold and sterile; it would be scoffing if they were a little smarter. Notice the tone, that’s what I’m talking about.
Was it produced by Rick Lux?
As Eater points out in his fascinating and well-lit article, you can “find the phrase ‘Rick Lax Productions ” and “get the source code for pure Facebook virality.” Then you can search for Rick’s video on the subject of the video you ask – which is how I found out that the Flaming Hot Cheeto sludge recipe was, somewhat unsurprisingly, one of his disgusting children.
We shouldn’t let this magician continue to dominate the conversation with boring, ugly food videos to elicit angry looks. It may seem impossible – Lux has largely dominated the Facebook Watch algorithm – but magicians are somewhat like Tinkerbell. Stop clapping and they will disappear.