They're Putting Blue Food Coloring in Everything
They're Putting Blue Food Coloring in Everything
"Why is my burger blue?" I asked, innocently. "Oh! We're making all of our food blue, all the best restaurants are doing it now." the waiter explained. But I didn't want my burger to be blue.
(For the techbrodude shills: this is called "allegory". Maybe you can ask ChatGPT to explain it to you.)
For the techbrodude shills: this is called “allegory”. Maybe you can ask ChatGPT to explain it to you.)
This made me deeply sad that so many people are not literate enough to follow metaphor and allegory.
Illiterate, or maybe autistic and prone to reading things literally until someone mentions that it’s an allegory at which point it all snaps into place and makes sense.
A really good piece.
The author is on Fedi, so for anyone who'd like to directly share it that way here is the link.
My link is blue.
I don't think this is really a very good allegory. The author has written 835 words and only managed to express that:
- blue food tastes kind of weird
- they're putting it in everything
- they're putting up the prices of blue food
- you can't get normal food even if you want it
It's not surprising to me that some people didn't get that it was about AI.
The allegory would work better if:
- production of blue food colouring took so much energy that they were bringing coal power plants back online and exacerbating climate change
- in order to design the blue food colouring, they had to steal every person's recipe books without permission and regardless of how private that information might be to the owner
- the blue food colouring could spontaneously make a food taste almost like someone's personal family recipe without their permission
- foods containing the blue food colouring completely lack any expected nutritional content, and when a blue food does contain nutrition it's just a random accident of the process
- scientific studies of people eating exclusively blue foods show that not only are they malnourished, but their body can no longer process normal foods as efficiently as before.
To make these points, I think the metaphor needs to be something a little bit more complex than "blue food colouring." Perhaps food made by a food replicator would make for a better example.
An argument doesn't have to be all-encompassing to be effective. This is arguing against the enshittification caused by and unavoidability of AI for the average end user. It doesn't have to list everything wrong with AI for that to be valid.
In this case, it's just preaching to the choir. The purpose of an allegory is usually to present a convincing argument to people who are as yet unconvinced, by presenting the argument from a different point of view that they haven't considered.
food made by a food replicator
Did you mean: something that is outside of the possibilities of modern technology and is thus far enough from reality to be easily dismissed as irrelevant and not relatable?
Edit: not to mention, food colouring has no purpose (other than ooh shiny), whereas food replicators would solve SO MANY PROBLEMS.
I don't think this is really a very good allegory.
Thank you for sharing your opinion.
The allegory would work better if:
- the author made points they were emphatically not trying to make, since this was a piece about consent, not about the specifics about the technology.
No really. Thank you for sharing your opinion.
nobody cares bro
extremely nitpicky gripe, but making leaves and flowers blue using food colouring was something I actually did, in kindergarten, so the line about "not being able to make the leaves blue" threw me off. it's a hell of a lot easier than making meat blue. plus, plants were traditionally a source of blue dye.
also, House of Leaves, anyone?