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NYT article: How TikTok Is Reshaping the American Cookbook


blue_dolphin

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I'm an avid cookbook user but not a social media maven so not quite sure what to make of this NYT article: How TikTok Is Reshaping the American Cookbook (gift link)

The only book mentioned in the article that I own is James Beard award winner, Korean Vegan, which I purchased after listening to several interviews with the author and I like it. Had no idea she was a TikTok presence 🙃

Obviously, TikTok cookbooks aren't an area I'm familiar with but it seems pretty similar to any other sort of "celebrity" cookbooks, which is nothing new and hardly "reshaping" anything,  They both seem to be great money-makers for the publishers but not so appealing to me.

I've purchased cookbooks by old-school bloggers like David Lebovitz, Deb Perelman, Heidi Swanson, etc. who earned my trust by publishing reliable recipes over the course of many years but many of these people sound clueless WRT writing and testing recipes. 

As to the article itself, I'm not sure why they felt the need to cite everyone's age. 

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1 hour ago, blue_dolphin said:

Sorry for the jargon. WRT = With Respect To

 

Wacky Recipe Testers

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"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

"...in the mid-’90s when the internet was coming...there was a tendency to assume that when all the world’s knowledge comes online, everyone will flock to it. It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok."  -Neil Stephenson, author, in The Atlantic

 

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

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OK.  I don't belong to Twitter or Tik Tok and I don't read e-books and our cell phones won't do anything more than vocal calls and photos...no text... and no one has our cell phone numbers because we use the phones only to communicate with each other when one of us is not with the other one, as in medical appointments.  I don't Skype and when I had to do a zoom call, I had a friend who knows how sitting beside me to help me through it.  My desk computer can't do zoom, but my lap top can.  That may be more information than you want.

 

OK.  Are these Tik Tok cook books hard copy or just online?

 

Thanks.

 

 

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Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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14 minutes ago, Darienne said:

Are these Tik Tok cook books hard copy or just online?

They are conventionally published (hard copy & ebook) cookbooks written by these TikTok stars. Since some of these TikTok stars have millions of followers, the publishers view them as a built-in audience for the books and are actively recruiting them. 

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1 minute ago, blue_dolphin said:

They are conventionally published (hard copy & ebook) cookbooks written by these TikTok stars. Since some of these TikTok stars have millions of followers, the publishers view them as a built-in audience for the books and are actively recruiting them. 

Thanks.  

Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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2 hours ago, gfweb said:

Not really all that different from some of the "chefs" manufactured by the Food Network.

 

And if TikTok was around back then, Martha would have been all over it I bet

I really don't believe that Martha is any more of a chef, master gardener, farmer, landscaper or home decorator than I could be with a staff of hundreds. I do believe that she is very good at marketing herself (well, except for the SnoopDog thing...)

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6 minutes ago, MaryIsobel said:

I really don't believe that Martha is any more of a chef, master gardener, farmer, landscaper or home decorator than I could be with a staff of hundreds. I do believe that she is very good at marketing herself (well, except for the SnoopDog thing...)

I think the Snoop Dog thing has been pretty successful for her!

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24 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

I think the Snoop Dog thing has been pretty successful for her!

I suppose in some people's view it has been so I guess should retract that. I should have said that the Snoop Dog thing seemd very contrived and desperate.

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