Foodiot

Not long ago while I was having lunch with my friends, a young female appeared beside me from nowhere to stop me from digging in to my food. She said that my food looks interesting and would like to snap a picture of it. The conversation (translated from Chinese) as below:
Lady: WAIT! Don’t eat first, I would like to snap a pic of your food.

Arthur: would you like me to hold the dish up?

Lady: No, I only want to take a picture of your food but not you.

Arthur: so you are going to take a picture of my food without me being in it huh.

Lady: Yes, I wanted to post on my Facebook. With you in it, viewers might misunderstand that you are my friend (snapping away without my approval).

Arthur: so you decided to befriend my food instead. By the way, my name is Arthur and nice to meet you and are you one of those food reviewers?

Lady: I am here to take picture only.

Arthur:  Hmm, a tourist from another state huh?

Lady: No, from where you get that idea? Just because I have a DSLR in my hand doesn’t mean that I am not from local.

Arthur: oh okay, my bad, so can I assume that you like to collect food photos?

Lady: why you ask so much?

Arthur: just curious of why would a local snapping tons of picture of a local dish.

Lady: is that against the law?

Arthur: of course not, is just rather rude of you to do it even without my permission and if you may, kindly please allow me to eat now as I am very hungry.

Lady: you are not the chef, I don’t have to ask for your permission.

Arthur: but I am paying for the food, that makes me the owner of the food and you are breaching my privacy now, and when you are done, please walk away before this gets any uglier (unbelievably that my face still have a smile on it).

Friend A: we are kind of in a discussion, so when you are done, please allow us to carry on.

Lady: ok (walk away)

 

After that weird conversation, I literally scratched my head, a lady just befriended my food and refuse to talk nicely to a human. Questions of the day:

1.       Why would a local take picture of a local dish?

2.       Can’t she afford a RM5.00 dish?

3.       Isn’t it easier to snap with a phone camera (she had a smart phone)?

4.       Why would a local carry a heavy DSLR everywhere?

5.       Does my food have a fan page in Facebook?

Am I the only curious one? Why would people snap and share their every meal on social media? It will be all different if that meal were:

1.       Taken by tourist

2.       You made it (something special)

3.       Specially decorated for an event

4.       Mean something to you

5.       Being review

6.       Comes with a hefty price tag

If this is a new culture, I think I will suggest to restaurants that they should have photo taking service or to have food photos to social media uploading service. Okay, before you slap me in the face, I do take picture of my food as well but I am sure that it fit the above reasons.

What do you think? Are you one of them?