videos
Breadtube if it didn't suck.
Post videos you genuinely enjoy and want to share, duh. Celebrate the diversity of interests shared by chapochatters by posting a deep dive into Venetian kelp farming, I dunno. Also media criticism, bite-sized versions of left-wing theory, all the stuff you expected. But I am curious about that kelp farming thing now that you mentioned it.
Low effort / spam videos might be removed, especially weeb content.
There is a cytube that you can paste videos into and watch with whoever happens to be around. It's open submission unless there's something important to commandeer it with at the time.
A weekly watch party happens every Saturday (Sunday down under), with video nominations Saturday-Monday, voting Monday-Thursday. See the pin for whatever stage it's currently in.
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they literally use focus groups, thousands on thousands on thousands of sensory trials tweaking the color, texture, flavor and mouth feel of various combinations and processes to tweak the experience and find the maximum dopamine hit to trigger compulsive consumption, drawing on psychology, identity, memory and targeted demographics. I've seen how these trials are designed and participated in some directly. I met someone who spent 2 years studying the optimal color yellow for butter pats that would induce feelings of quality and comfort in white Midwestern suburban consumers. 2. years. this is not a force that can be passively resisted.
after grasping that was when I started trying to reclaim and rewire my sensory experience away from pursuing simple flavors loaded with memory and notions of comfort. instead, I wanted to get into complex flavors ones associated with older food ways: dals, curries, acidic sours. dishes loaded with vegetables and plant fibers that come together in unfamiliar ways, novel but proven to be satisfying for a huge amount of humans over time.
my latest addiction is a thai-viet hot and sour brothy deal sometimes called Tom Yum soup, but I also turn into a heat seeking missile around massaman curry because wtf. it is food sorcery.
anyway, my idea was to run away from what I knew, food wise, and start over somewhere completely different. after a few months, these curries and once unfamiliar dishes became comforting and my old favorites became more like novelties that were yummy in the moment, but unpleasant to the digestion and no longer comforting in the way a sour soup full of mushrooms and cooking greens had become.
the brain is a weird organ, especially the way we can metacognitively interact with it and influence our habits. I think of it like an empty field that we walk around on. over time, the grasses grow up outside the paths we walk repeatedly and grow to obscure all the paths we might take. but we can forge new paths with committed, active effort and let old ones be abandoned or at least less frequently wandered along. the awkward and strange can become familiar.
and that's my commercial for your local Thai takeout place. if they ask how spicy you want something, say, "like you were making it for family" lol 🥵🥵🥵
Everything you’re saying is something I dream of trying. Glad it worked out for you.
admittedly, it started simple and modest. less salt, more acid and heat. less sugar in general, more umami. that's what I would look for in dishes, what they were relying on to be savory. it was pretty easy to find Americanized Asian dishes that still use salt and sugar, but they would be supplemented by lots of garlic and ginger for an interesting sharpness. there's also a book called 660 Curries which gives a lot of context to just how diverse S. Asian cuisine is and functions as an insane recipe reference.
from there it was stumbling across a really cheap, no frills SE Asian takeout place that puts all the effort into the food. no seating, wait in the cold/rain outdoors with no cover, get food through a slot. only 3 choices, menu shifts weekly. that let me try a lot of things, learn some terms and discover a lot in a short amount of time.
also, if you smoke tobacco, definitely drop that ASAP. for health reasons for sure, but also it mutes/muddles your sense of smell and taste. it's hard to overstate how much, but I think it's one of the reasons so many restaurants prepare food that is overseasoned... because the exec chef's palette and their little brigades are all scorched and blasted from their cig breaks.
As a hyposensitive autist, thank you head chefs?