We often underestimate how much influence we have over one another.
For much of my life I assumed my actions were insignificant — small, private gestures that hardly affected anyone else. That assumption is false. Even simple interactions, like saying hello to the postman, change someone’s experience. Every social exchange contributes to the reality we share.
When we post a photo on Instagram, are we simply sharing something, or are we influencing others? The answer is both. Whether deliberate or not, our choices are shaped by social dynamics, and those choices in turn shape other people’s perceptions and behavior.
Spending time in the British Library reading room, I’ve been diving into books on Instagram and sociology to understand what the platform is telling us about food. It’s revealing to examine this world of visual excess, where the casual use of words like “healthy” distorts how food is represented online, creating an image-based reality that diverges from everyday life.
Influence starts small. The moment you have a follower, you have influence, and it grows from there. People with a few hundred followers can shape my taste, while the provocative reach of those with millions often makes me skeptical. That tension highlights how social media constructs a parallel realm of values and aesthetics.
When scrutinized closely, the Instagram version of life often collapses. The props, the staged portions, and the language shaped more by search optimization than genuine description expose the artifice. Captions and hashtags chase visibility rather than meaningful communication, prioritizing reach and follower counts above authenticity.
Reality becomes distorted when it’s assembled as a marketing exercise to promote a person or product rather than to communicate honestly. Social platforms put a visible number on popularity. Imagine if school required everyone to wear a badge showing how many friends they had — that’s the effect social media produces. The need to chase large numbers can make people equate value with popularity, sometimes with damaging consequences.
Another striking trend is the rise of food that looks unreal. Through meticulous preparation and digital post-production, some dishes become almost cartoonish: unnaturally vivid colors, perfectly uniform textures, and carefully arranged components that erase the irregularities of natural ingredients. Fine dining has long polished plates into delicate forms, and Instagram amplifies that aesthetic into repetitive, unattainable perfection.
These hyper-stylized images command attention. What once might have been confined to galleries now appears beside everyday family photos, blurring the boundary between high art and casual sharing. For viewers, the constant exposure to such idealized imagery shapes expectations and tastes, often in ways that are disconnected from ordinary cooking and eating experiences.
Accounts that post these images attract likes and followers, reinforcing their influence. When social validation is measured in visible metrics, the incentive to create a hyper-real, glossy version of life grows. That dynamic can distort public conversation and perception, creating a curated parallel reality that reflects back uneasily on our imperfect, everyday lives.