Watched a bakery go from 200 followers to 40k in 3 weeks after one change, and it bugs me
There is a small bakery in my town that posted pretty cakes for 8 months and sat at maybe 200 followers, then in late January they started posting the 5am prep work instead of the finished product. Within 3 weeks they hit 40k and now people line up down the block, and I think the only thing that changed was showing the mess instead of the trophy. So which is it, does the internet just not care about pretty stuff anymore, or was the pretty stuff never the point?
I'll push back on this. That bakery had 200 followers after 8 months of pretty cakes, and tons of places post gorgeous food photos every day and stay stuck at 200 forever. The switch to 5am prep didn't work because it was messy, it worked because it was a story, and stories beat pictures almost every time. Pretty cakes alone give you nothing to come back for, but a person kneading dough at 5am gives you a reason to check in tomorrow and see how it's going. The internet never stopped caring about pretty stuff, it just cares way more about people and a thing that's happening than it does about a nice photo sitting there by itself.