What you see here is a pizza that I ate with friends oh, about three weeks ago now. Why do I have a picture of this pizza, and not the friends I am eating it with, you might ask? Well, that my friend, is a very valid question. At the time, it seemed very important to photograph the meal. Granted, this was the first pizza of the year at the first open weekend of a famous pizzeria in my home town. I was having a great Easter weekend at home, and the pizza looked absolutely delicious. And still, in the past I’ve never felt the compulsion to take pictures of things I’ve eaten, or was about to eat—unless it involved a birthday cake with my name on it.

There is a strange epidemic of people posting pictures of the food  they’re about to consume that all began with food bloggers, and seems to have spread to the general populace. First there were the recipe bloggers. They would create delicious creations, and artistically depict the process from cooking through finished product along with instructions, lists of ingredients, and so on. It was the 21^st generation’s take on the cookbook- the food blogger depicting the steps to make a particular dish. With the proliferation of recipe blogs in every niche from healthy to baking to savory dishes, the number of food pictures on the internet has increased.

Then somewhere along the line food photography made a jump. Fashion bloggers who don’t post recipes, but post daily outfit pictures started including an instagram section of pictures from their weekends, including fancy desserts shared among friends. Then people who don’t even blog began to upload pictures of their dinner to their facebook feeds. Now, oddly enough, when I see a delicious meal set before me, one of the things that occurs to me is, maybe I should take a photo?

I’m still not really sure when this came about. Maybe it’s the simple fact that everyone has a smart phone, which makes a camera and posting ability accessible at all times, so the number of photos posted in general has increased. But really, have we reached the point of oversharing, that everyone needs to know everything we put in our mouths? Are people even interested? And, are we interrupting our quality time spent savoring desserts to whip out our phones and capture the moment to share with anyone we know? There’s something about the presence of smart phones at every dinner that makes this seem more and more appealing.

http://www.getkempt.com/the-code/the-phone-stack.php