In this 21st century where Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) was adopted by the world’s leaders at the UN General
Assembly as a new set of global goals for development, access to telecommunication
technology is made easy for almost every human beings especially access to all
kinds of social media through smartphones which its starting price comes as
cheap as a few thousand Baht. The mobile phone service providers also promote
the use of high-speed internet via their affordable monthly package enabling people
to easily surf on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter with just a tip of
their fingers. 21st Century lifestyles, especially in Thailand and
Asia, have changed heavily as a result of this handy technology. It started
from posting on the social media some photos of friends and family with whom we
did some activities together (eating or traveling) and tag them in those
pictures so that we keep those as our online diary for that particular
memorable moment, it then mutated to be posting photos to share and bluff those
who weren’t there in those activities with you, so that they could get funnily jealous
and now it becomes posting picture in the online platform to get as much ‘Likes’
or ‘followers’ as possible even though they are from completely strangers.
Popularity among human friends is sometimes more difficult to get than popularity
among online friends. This occasionally leads to a pretentious lifestyle to
show off things that you don’t really have nor really do. Getting online attention
and seeing number of likes as well as followers could make some people happier
than spending quality time with a person in front of them. Truth and honesty is
something very rare in the online world.
Food in the online world is in the same situation. I’ve been
reviewing food and restaurant by myself for over a year and have some 10K followers
in Instagram account @FoodSpace and trust me, though there’s not much trust in
the online world, I have been to many places and have eaten and drunk all kind
of culinary ranging from street food, homemade delivery clean food to the
high-end five-star hotel food in and outside of Thailand. From what I have
seen, people in late generation X and all of generation Y in Asia love to take
pictures of two things, the first one is a selfie (both on their own and as a
group selfie) and the second one is a picture of food & drinks. As long as
they spend their own money and make no trouble to others, that’s absolutely
fine because I usually do the same thing. Ha Ha.
However, there is one big point that I just don’t get it
which is the Food Bloggers ethics. Does it exist? If the food that you’re
reviewing is not at all tasty, why wouldn’t you say so? Why did you write a
misleading positive review? Some of the beautiful restaurants with gorgeously
garnished dishes usually overprices their menu especially those in Siam or
Thonglor area in Bangkok. These restaurants’ food photo will look fantastically
mouth- watering and a number of food bloggers went there to make over-rated reviews
with exaggerated comments. In reality, most of those dishes are not tasty, some
are nearly not eatable and when you compare food taste and quality to the
price, some dishes could be rated as awful. Many of those restaurants are so
not good that you will not go back there and pay for your meal out of your own
pocket. Free meals and review fee should not be generators of high points in
the review for Food Blogger with integrity.
I feel sorry for the consumers who were misguided by this
fake reviews and follow to try out those dishes and for many times, they found nothing
but disappointment. To be fair, at least the consumers got a chance to check in
and post their selfie picture online but that’s basically a waste of time and
money. A splendid meal with decent ingredient could cost ten thousand baht and
that, for me, is reasonable but a tasteless dish costs less than one hundred
baht is, for me, not at all acceptable. I understand very well that some yummy
dishes doesn’t look great and if you post its photo in Instagram, you might not
get so much likes. Nonetheless, we should not care about the number of likes so
much that we ignore the fact how that dish really taste like. Lying online is
as sinful as lying face-to-face.
If it is a beautiful, yummy and good-service restaurant, I will
definitely cheer them up and write an excellent review with perfect score for
them. Do you know some of these type of ideal restaurant to recommend me to check
it out?
More info, please visit;
Instagram: @FoodSpace
Facebook: FoodSpace Thailand & Beyond
YouTube: FoodSpace Thailand & Beyond
