Taking a good looking picture of food is not actually all that easy, professionals earn(ed) a lot of money doing it.

That said i 100% prefer a casual real picture over the promotional art in a menu. I want to see what i am getting and i mean prefer it over the professional photo. Ai food looks absolutely disgusting.

I imagine many of them have vision so deteriorated that they literally can’t see the difference. And I will remind you, these people are still allowed to drive.

Eh, that's more cynical than what I mean. I'm not trying to insult older folks, not their health nor intelligence.

I was talking more about psycological 'perception,' assuming their vision is sharp, or they have reading glasses on or whatever. My observaton is their brain tends to operate more on 'autopilot,' even among remarkably smart older folks, so perhaps they're more inclined to miss 'uncanny valley' things like this until someone points it out and they really focus on the picture's details.

Most restaurants don't even have a picture of the food, especially when the menu is really simple like this.

Vision can be fine at certain sight distance and not fine at others. That may make them perfectly fine to drive but to miss fine details. This happens frequently with near and far sighted people.

I can't see granular details anymore without glasses but that doesn't affect my driving at all (granular details being font at sizes like 4 point). I used to be able to read it without problems, but as I have aged it's not something I can do anymore.

Stock fotos. Cost a bit, but look great.

If you want to be cheap, just don't show the food. That's what the penny pinchers used to do before the advent of clip art; print out a bare list of meals on the cheapest colored paper they could find.

If they were feeling really fancy, they'd laminate it and be uncomfortably insistent about getting it back.

Much of social media these days is starting from "old people bad", and working backwards from there. Including accusations that it's only old people on Facebook engaging in nonsense. Absolutely no self awareness there at all.

From what I have seen, it’s bottom-barrel diffusion/LLM generated engagement farming. Thirst posts, political ragebait, AI Jesus, trippy nonsense; basically anything to farm likes, which users apparently like in aggregate.

It’s notably more obvious than most social media. It’s even more obvious than Instagram, with its flood of bot influencers linking to autogenerated OnlyFans pages/chats.

On top of this, it’s basically the only place Meta can push Muse, as there is little interest in it elsewhere.

When I gave up Reddit cold turkey for APIpocalypse, I started browsing Facebook as mindless scrolling content.

And yes, I know, it's worse than Reddit for a lot of reasons.

There's a ton of AI slop on it. Los of repost bots. Lots of low effort culture war nonsense.

Outside of good Facebook groups, it's mostly straight garbage. But, I kinda appreciate being able to see what the normies are seeing.

It's a necessary evil in my country, and most of the local businesses I deal with are on FB. Half the time the content is really engagement garbage.

The service workers don't deserve that, the manager might tho since they probably OK'd that menu

YES. SUSTINANCE FOR YOUR MOIST MOUTH PORT. DISREGARD WHILE I WATCH YOU INSERT THINGS INSIDE.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )

Gotta spring for the ceramic-plated food port, best decision of my life.

Eating this food will give you eyes on the inside.

yeah it takes prep and time, unless you just take pics of the food you're vending and be honest.

there's an idea. just advertise what you're selling. wild huh?

anyway, both prepared pics and casual shots are better than literal fucking nightmare fuel.

I hear this said so often. But at the same time, sharing photos of your meal on social media is pretty popular and it still makes people call it out as looking delicious. Those photos are usually very amateur, but look better than anything on many food menus even before all the slop.

I agree that's the way it's "always" done, but I disagree that it's the only way it can be done, or that it's even the best way to do it for a Mom&Pop joint. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asDjcgiwIiY

yeah, I've been shooting my own images for the mealie i setup and even perfectly arranging the plate and putting all the kitchen lights on it, it just looks kinda meh. Except for sandwhiches. bread always looks fine AF.

Commercial photographer here, shot for big brands and independents, with some super-fucking-expensive stylists. Never used anything like that, with the exception of coffee brands using whipped face cream instead of edible cream because it lasts much longer on set and they don't give a fuck. Brands like McDonalds have learned from being sued, and document the whole process, weighing each ingredient so they can prove it's real. The reason it looks fake as fuck is that they spend ~30 mins assembling one burger with tweezers and pins and hand-selected pieces of salad etc, syringes to pipe the sauce exactly where they want it etc.

"But making that food costs money! Getting ChatGPT to spit out a whole image costs me nothing, rather than the $1.30 it costs to whip up a plate of pancakes and an egg."

Takeing good looking photos of food takes effort and time. Layouting takes time and effort and knowledhe of how to use (possibly paid) layouting software.

AI likely hands you a result in 5-10 minutes, compared to hours of work for a menu made traditionally.

What if i'm a bitch who doesn't like confrontation?

You need a lot of glue for that. A lot.

Sure, but even bad ones would be better than these.

And to dovetail on that: while true, it is very easy to take simple photos of food and use the exact same machine that they used to make this monstrosity to improve those photos and make them appetizing and menu quality.

It really depends on where you put the machine, doesnt it?

A coke with a comically high amount of ice cubes, that have somehow been sharpened like pencils ?

ok now you have to go back and start ordering things like that and see how long it takes for a cook to come out and yell at the server for ordering a menu item in parts.