Content Creation Inspires Excess and is Unsustainable.

Food content creation, especially videos, have gained popularity over the past few years. Millions of food videos are available all over social media and are consumed so fast that there is a continuous need to produce more. There’s also the issue of making it very different from every other video around. Going viral feels validating. I understand how good it can it can feel to get so many eyes on your work. It affirms that you are on the right path. For many people, this has become their only source of income. It can feel discouraging to do something for years and not receive any sort of acknowledgment. I know most artist like to say that they create for themselves and yes, you may be creating for yourself, but there’s the other part of you that wants people to see and appreciate your work. If you were creating solely for you , no one outside of your immediate circle will ever see your work. As artists, there are works that you have never and will never share with the public. Those are the ones just for you. Every thing else you put out is to get some sort of satisfaction or validation. It could be in the form of praise for your work, or more people getting introduced to your work. It can be exhilarating. It feels good but it’s also exhausting. Having to constantly churn out content can be debilitating to your overall mental and physical health. The hours spent in pre production making sure that everything is right is hard on you. For food content creators especially, it can be daunting thinking of new ways to make the same thing interesting. Food is food after all. You may get to the point where you think you need to keep the audience engaged at all cost.

There are only so many ways to make cookies or soup or cakes. Today’s internet landscape doesn’t really allow for simple straightforward videos. The more ludicrous the video is, the higher your chances of going viral. Some have stuck to their guns and have refused to fall in line.

However, social media now, is set up to amplify a very specific kind of content. Instagram’s algorithm for instance makes it easy to get more eyes on your reels/ short videos than you would if you had posted a regular image. For many people who this is their only source of income, they have no other option than to adapt and adjust.

Videos, images, are one tiny part of the entire creative process. In fact more of the work happens before the video is shot or the image photographed. No one talks about how many takes you need to get the egg right at the angle that makes a beautiful motion shot. No one tells you how much food goes to waste in the process of styling a food scene. We don’t talk about all the cakes you need to bake to get the perfect color that you want. We pretend to not notice how much flour and butter is wasted for those shots where creators are dumping ingredients from high above to create that perfect but chaotic scene. After all the end justifies the means. I certainly do not need all the glassware or bowls I have but I have them. My need for a variety of unique plates and glassware to capture beautiful shots is unnecessary. No one actually needs this much of anything but on the internet, it is perfectly normal to use very different accessories each day. In fact it is celebrated. Content creation encourages excess. In real life, no one actually needs or uses that many eggs or that much butter or even that much meat for one pot of soup. The amount of food and ingredients wasted behind the scenes to achieve that final shot, the final video is astounding and ridiculous. So much food and so much ingredients get wasted behind the scenes to create a short video or photograph that’ll be consumed and maybe forgotten in a very short while. We are churning out so much content with very little value. We have no regard to the pressure this puts on our ecosystem. It is unsustainable.

Often when sustainability comes up, we don’t consider content creation as a major risk to it. This is not specific to just food. Fashion, home and beauty content creation are also some of the most unsustainable forms there are. The need to constantly wear new clothes that you might not wear ever again or the copious amounts of skin care you need to get in order to review and never even use again. The pressure on yourself to continuously think of new ways to create to increase your chance of going viral. The toll on your body and mind. There are only so many jars you can get for your soaps and cereal before the entire process becomes redundant. Do you actually need jars for things that come in their own usable packaging? Is that even necessary at all? The proliferation of sweat shops can be linked to our obsession with fast fashion and what do these have in common; fashion content creation. A popular influencer wears and likes an item and then suddenly it’s sold out everywhere and now people who already work in inhumane conditions have to work even harder to satisfy the needs of the masses. Your favorite grocery store runs out on an item because someone on the internet loved it and shared it and now everyone wants it. How many times have we seen food videos, gotten the ingredients only to chuck them in the back of the fridge and never go back to them? How often do we try recipes only to learn that they don’t even work? How often do we throw out ingredients because they’re no longer picture worthy? How many photos and videos do we take over and over until we get that money shot? How much food do we throw out after shooting because it’s no longer safe to consume?  Where do we draw the line?

I think it is possible for sustainability and content creation to coexist. We may need to be more intentional about how we go about it. If the purpose of the video is to entertain rather that teach then are we able to repurpose already used ingredients or clothes or even storage jars for other videos? Or maybe we curb the need for that perfection and find beauty in the mundane once again. Simplicity will never phase out. Maybe that is a solution we need to consider.