Recipe for Idiocy

As many of you have noticed I’ve been on a taxation kick recently. A few days ago, to bring my temporary obsession with taxation to an end I decided to write one more taxation blog—one that would solve the fiscal budgetary crisis, rising health care costs and the American obesity problem all at once. The title of this blog was “Fat Tax—Solving the Health Care Problem One Pound at a Time”. Upon completion, I forwarded the draft to Gwen to look over and post. She rightfully informed me that despite my minimal effort to keep it tasteful, the blog was outrageously offensive. She told me I could post it when I got home if I still wanted to. When I got home I still wanted to post the blog but realized that my sarcastic piece of satire could possibly be misinterpreted. Plus it was kind of mean. I then decided to shift my blogging attention away from taxation (and economics in general) to a less polarizing topic—recipe websites.

If you or your spouse is anything like my wife, no meal can be prepared without extensively researching several cookbook websites and blogs. Online recipes are a prime example of how technology has allowed us to collaborate and connect with a large number of people for the betterment of life (more specifically in this case, our meals). This, like the democratization of technology in general, has some unavoidable and interesting side effects. One such side effect, which I would like to comment on today, is the ridiculously irrelevant comments posted on some of these sites.

Most of these sites and blogs allow the general viewers to post comments on the recipes posted. This can be very beneficial. A small adjustment stumbled upon by an end user, when shared with the greater community, can increase the utility of everyone. This is an example of how collaborative innovation can be a magnificent method of creation. The down side of this technological democratization is that for every one thoughtful commenter and beneficial comment there are x number of dense commenters and ridiculous comments (where x>1).

Here are a few “has nothing to do with the recipe” comments I found online (or rather I made up, but they probably exist):

Woman, age 42 from Dallas writes:

“Thanks for the tuna casserole recipe. My husband doesn’t like tuna or casserole but I decided to make this anyways. He works really long days selling stuff he stole on ebay and generally prefers to eat frozen corndogs dipped in a strange sauce of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and butter. One day we ran out of ketchup so he sent me to buy some. I ran into an old friend of mine who also reads your blog. I don’t think she’s tried your tuna casserole recipe yet.”

Justin a bachelor age 33 from Georgia writes:

Title: beter by gold
“I made these here smoothies last nite. Last nite their was a meaten about the health care barak hoo-in-sane obama is gonna shuv down our throts. He is such a moran. It’s communism! He is gonna take away our wrights. I herd he is also gonna raise gas prices and send our jobs to Africa, like in china.”

There are also the “change the recipe until it is no longer even remotely the same” comments. Here are a few examples:

Tara, age 28 from Philadelphia comments on a chicken noodle soup recipe:

“This was absolutely disgusting! It didn’t taste at all like the chicken noodle soup I remember my grandmother making. I did exactly what the instructions said to except I didn’t have any salt so I just added a little extra pepper to compensate. I also was out of carrots and onions so I put in a little garlic for flavor. I accidentally doubled the amount of water so I let it boil for 10 extra minutes so that it would evaporate out. My fiancé and I only ate a few bites and then we had to throw the rest away. Do not make!”

John, age 23 from Oregon comments on a vegetarian taco recipe:

“These were the best tacos I have ever had! Thanks for the recipe. I did make a few adjustments that I think improved it just a bit. For example, instead of using black beans I used re fried beans. Instead of 1 cup yellow onions I used ½ cup red onions. Instead of using taco seasoning I used spaghetti sauce. I quadrupled the amount of cheese and added a package of bacon. Instead of frying the ingredients and putting them on tacos, I decided to bake them on a pizza crust. They turned out awesome."

The list of examples could go on for the length of several encyclopedia sets. Feel free to post a comment of your favorite ridiculous recipe comments.


-Andrew