[CRConrad]

> Google has created the environment in which the maligned 'epic story and photo album finished by actual recipe' formula wins through, yet the recipe creators get the ridicule.

They still deserve it, IMO. Willingly making a clown, a pawn of an ad-spamming corporation, out of oneself by doing one's darnedest to "win through" at some perverse game rigged by the aforementioned scourge of the Internet, is neither a natural human right nor a divine command. Not playing that game is still a valid move, and AFAICS the only honourable -- i.e. the only non-ridicule-worthy -- one.

[prawn]

So if you're super-keen on food and trying to establish a career as a recipe creator or food photographer, it's dishonourable to: put in a lot of effort custom-writing supporting material and taking quality photos of the dish you're pitching to people? Sounds like these things traumatise you! :)

I'd agree that misleading made-for-AdSense sites that purport to, but then don't, answer a question, farm out writing to $5/page content squads and intersperse stock photos - that's shoddy. But all the recipe sites I find in my searches and have to scroll down for the content, they always seem like genuine, personal efforts. If I'm getting the content for free, scrolling a little bit as a price isn't too laborious and a stretch to think of it as dishonourable work IMO.

[CRConrad]

> So if you're super-keen on food and trying to establish a career

IOW, you're trying to earn money. Sure, go ahead -- but then you get to pay the price. If the method you're trying to earn money by is going to involve playing along in the game of clickbait, then the price you get to pay is going to be, to be seen as a purveyor of clickbait. Which I, and I suspect quite a few others with me, see as distinctly less than honourable.

It's a free choice: Nobody is forcing anybody to "establish a career as a recipe creator or food photographer" on the ad-financed Internet. If they choose to play the clickbait clown/scum game, they're making themselves into -- so, in the end, are -- clickbait clown/scum. I sure didn't tell them to do that, so I'm perfectly free to see them as such for doing it.

They, OTOH, are perfectly free to try it some other way: publishing printed cookbooks in stead of Internet clickbait; or something adjacent, like run cooking classes, start a restaurant or catering business... Or to do something else altogether.

They could always go into the deeply honourable (/s) business of software engineering, which nowadays seems to consist to about 45% of running ad-spam networks, to about 45% of writing SEO crap to get your ads onto those networks, and about 10% other development... :-( What, me cynic? Bah, geroffmylawn!

[prawn]

I have dozens of cookbooks. Almost every single one is absolutely packed with personal details about the chef and background information on the recipe (who taught them the recipe, their beloved Nanna's method, the history of nut x in remote tribal desert y, etc).

I've been to cooking schools in multiple countries. All have gone into detail about the background of the chef and each recipe.

Same with restaurants. Many restaurants and certainly almost every fine-dining restaurant pushes the profile of the head chef.

[CRConrad]

I can't help that you paid God knows how much extra for this unnecessary fluff. If I were to get any of those, I'd look around for the least extraneous-fluff-y offer I could find. :-)

More seriously: At least the classes and restaurants already push that stuff in their marketing, don't they? So I get all that already doing my comparison shopping, and therefore would probably actually (at least to some extent) resent the time wasted on repeating it. And the few cookboks I (or we, my wife and I) have are also of the matter-of-fact, recipes and nothing more, kind... I am probably just much less of a "foodie" than you. I think my preference pattern is the overwhelming majority.

Note that Clovegarden has "the history of nut x in remote tribal desert y, etc" too -- but on pages separate from the recipes. (As I recall Mr Grygus started the site in preparation for starting a business of selling foodie stuff online after winding up his computing and automation consultancy business -- but that still seems to linger on, and he is nearing [or, probably, well past?] normal retiring age, so I don't know if that new business will ever materialise. But as long as he is up to updating Clovegarden every now and then it remains my favourite site for food-related stuff.)

[Edit: Ttypo.]