Around this time last year, I hit my limit with social media. You know the feeling: a doomscrolling blur of vacation flexes, political spirals and the neverending discourse about “White Lotus.” (Great show. Not worth the psychic cost.) I’d also reached a kind of platform fatigue — Instagram reels of TikToks about Bluesky posts featuring screenshots of X missives. Everything was everything. Nothing was anything.
And yet, unplugging felt like more than just a digital detox. It felt like losing a kind of community — or at least, the version of it that had once made sense to me. For years, social media had been how I shared and discovered food: new restaurants, dumb tweet-length food takes, light press release roasts during the height of the “New Southern” cuisine wave. (I lived in Kentucky then and one firm was particularly pushy in relaying their message that “artisan grits” were having a moment.) It was how I found chefs, cookbook writers, bartenders — and how I connected with people who, like me, actually did want to see what someone had for lunch.
