The invasion of the foodiots

It was bound to happen. With the opportunity to post pictures and text from nearly any location instantly, we were going to turn into foodiots.

The phrase has been making the rounds of the Interwebs this week as snarky writers attempt to encapsulate our new-found love of food minutiae. The New York Observer laments the insipid way that an ingredient-by-ingredient account of our meals has taken over the workplace:

New Yorkers’ water-cooler chitchat has changed. They used to talk about sex and politics and TV shows. Now they can’t stop yapping about what they’re shoving down their pie holes.

Foodiots are generally considered to be those of us obsessed with a given style of cuisine or just in documenting everything that goes into our face, in an online version of a food diary. New York’s Grub Street tries to determine the exact moment when foodies became foodiots and contends that it was when we elevated regular old street food to something served on white linen:

As the food blogosphere and food television expand, food becomes more and more about sensationalism and gimmickry, and it has become more and more acceptable to praise something just because it’s wacky or indulgent (or because it got kicked out of its parking space), not because it’s artful.

But, in a way, this just feels like the Internet catching up with the food world — ie., in order to find the nuggets of gold, you’ve got to sift through a lot of dirt. As with everything else, we’ve got choices in who we follow or what we read. The food diary can stay closed and hidden under someone’s bed or blog.

If the price of finding the perfect recipe for an omelette is sorting through a few foodiots, that doesn’t seem particularly steep.