On the Twitchy Influencer Era
Short-form used to mean four minutes, not four seconds
The first time I logged onto TikTok—back in 2019, I got motion sickness. There’s no way this will catch on, I thought, recoiling at the prospect of hypershort videos becoming the new standard. At the time, I was working as a video producer, churning out short-form content for YouTube and Facebook—back when “short” still meant three to four minutes, not three to four seconds. We traveled, did interviews, storyboarded scenes, wrote scripts, color-corrected footage, and agonized over thumbnails and click-through rates.
I never made a TikTok account, yet somehow the aesthetic has now colonized everything. My entire social feed now feels overrun by twitchy, fast-cut, dopamine-chasing chaos.
I get the appeal. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion: a sharp hook, a series of jolts to the brainstem, and then—before you even register what you saw—you’re on to the next.
At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I worry about what this is doing to our attention spans. Then again, maybe it’s just another reincarnation of the same panic my journalism professors had back in 2012, when they begged us to read print newspapers instead of blogs. Funny how quickly we become the people we once rolled our eyes at.
As a cookbook author and food writer, I feel the pressure every time I open social media: be raw, film day-in-the-life reels, walk through my recipe process, cook on camera. Always on, always performing. But I don’t, because I spent years churning out the early millennial versions of these reels—I know how fickle virality is, how exhausting the production grind becomes, and how parasocial relationships form, especially when your face and voice are always out in the wild.
I know I’m not alone. Many of my readers want something slower, more substantial—that’s why they bought my book. But under the rule of the Almighty Algorithm, it feels like we’re the fringe minority, not the silent majority.
I remember vividly, the rabid hunger that brands had for the millennial aesthetic when I was in my early twenties. What’s happening now isn’t all that different. The platforms have changed, the time codes are shorter, the slang refreshed—but the underlying forces are the same. Every generation thinks it’s changing the world, when really, it’s just the latest cog in the machine—spotlit not for its wisdom, but for its malleability. The spotlight moves fast. The hype cycles spin faster.
Which is to say: this too shall pass.
That’s what I remind myself as I return to my cookbook manuscript—a long-form, physical work of art I believe will outlast the hyperactive fragments of video content flooding our feeds.
Am I making a bad business decision by refusing to play by social media’s current rules—by not chasing trends or trying to game the algorithm? Yes. But it’s a decision I’ve made to protect my sanity, and preserve my love of storytelling—without reducing myself to a brand.
In an ideal world, I’ll always have a book in progress. And I suppose I’m writing this as a reminder to other storytellers: it’s okay not to join the influencer grind. It’s okay to want to feel like you’re swimming in a calm river, rather than constantly being pulled under by the churn of content.
Because at the end of the day, the work that matters isn’t measured in views or likes—it’s measured in how long it lasts. In what someone returns to, cooks from, or remembers years from now. That’s the kind of work I want to make. The kind that lives beyond the algorithm.
Just a quick reminder—applications for "What is a Recipe For?", our intimate food writing retreat in Japan, are due next week!
🗓 September 15–19, 2025
📍 Yamanaka Onsen, Ishikawa, Japan
👩🍳 Hosted by me and Hannah Kirshner, with guest lecturer Bryan Washington
🛖 Set in a 100-year-old farmhouse turned community kitchen
🌾 Surrounded by mountains, rice fields, and hot springs
Whether you're working on a family cookbook, a zine, or dreaming of your first book deal, we built this experience to nourish your creativity in every sense. We’ll be a small group (just 6–8 people!) with time for deep writing, personal feedback, and long afternoon soaks in the onsen.
💻 Apply here — it’s quick, we promise.
🪷 Deadline: April 15
✍️ Invitations go out in May.