Last night when I was trying to relax I saw a tweet that said, “What a normal and ultimate spaghetti hack!A video has been attached. In this video – this is a rip off from an older TikTok video– A white woman in a “Plant Lady” shirt pours two cold Costco-sized prego glasses on a slab of granite (or maybe a marble slab) while another white woman coos in the background. Then she adds in unspecified temperature meatballs, way too much parmesan powder, and loads of steaming, lumpy spaghetti before mixing it all together. Everyone who sees it hates it, and that’s the point (I think).
It’s damn wrong too. The food is real – the white Plant Lady is really wasting all that noodles – but the video is not real. How Eater only reported today (As I wrote this, practical enough!) All of these videos of bland attractive, skinny, white women can be traced back to a wizard who has the boldness to be named.Rick Lax. Describing the production of the videos as “both friendship and business,” Lax told Eater that he would “object” to anyone who called the recipes “gross.”
But they’re gross. And – worse – they’re not even funny. The women in the spaghetti video can’t even commit themselves completely to the piece by using their actual countertop. (If you look closely you will see that this coward is actually assembling her pile of trash on a platter on her actual counter.) There is a vague attempt at humor in the end where both women instruct you to “fold” it a very big one slight Moira Rose impairment – a reference loved by white women everywhere– but the video is not entertaining. There is no joke. There is no payout. There is no resting place. (Blackhead extraction videos are more satisfying – and less grotesque!)
After falling in love exactly two these types of videos (one of them came from Rick Lax Productions) I’m over it and I invite you to be over it with me. There are so many real things to be angry about; There’s no reason to let a woman in a Plant Lady shirt take up valuable space in the angry part of your brain. The passed out rage you feel when you watch someone smear food on a countertop (or a plate on a countertop) in an otherwise pristine and reasonably spacious and probably expensive kitchen gives Rick Lax power, and he and his army are whiter Women will don’t go away until we stop looking at them.
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How do we do that? There are two steps here: identify and ignore. If you know you are dealing with this particular type of troll, just pretend you don’t see them. Don’t comment. Do not share. Don’t send it to anyone. (Then refresh your brain by gargling your mind with a good food video – like Sohla is on Food52, Lucas Sin’s or George Lees Instagram content or Kevin Ashton’s TikTokto name a few.)
Identifying can be the (sort of) tricky part, but once you know what to look for, this type of troll is easy to spot. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you think you’ve come across such a video in the wild, whether or not it was produced by a wizard.
The passed out anger you feel gives Rick Lax power, and he and his army of white women won’t go away until we stop looking at them.
Does the food look good?
Look at the food on the screen with your eyes and wonder if you want to eat it. If the presentation is sluggish, caricaturally unattractive, or if it would offend a real human guest, the food is likely not intended for actual human consumption.
Is someone eating it in front of the camera?
If you don’t eat it, neither should you.
Does the reasoning make sense?
A “hack” is only a hack if it solves a problem or makes a recipe easier, faster or better. Let’s take one of my absurd blogs as an example. Smartfood popcorn grits could easily be interpreted as a straightforward troll, but if you read the article you’ll find that popcorn kernels have been around for thousands of years and all I’ve done was cheese-flavored popcorn, pre-popped popcorn instead of popping it myself. It’s a silly little “hack”, but it takes less time to cook the recipe and it tastes damn good (if you like the taste of white cheddar popcorn).
Is there a sense of self-awareness?
Popcorn salad is another example of recent food content that made people very angry. But when you see that Original videoYou see a happy but confident Molly Yeh who explains that she knows the concept seems flawed but promises you that “you will try it and it will be really good”. (Molly turned out to be right about it.) Lax’s are completely devoid of hubris or real human emotions. With the exception of the “prescription”, these clips are cold and sterile. would be derisive if they were just a little smarter. Be aware of the tone, I say.
Was it produced by Rick Lax?
As Eater points out in her utterly compelling and very well reported piece, you can: “[s]Find the sentence ‘Rick Lax Productions, ” And, ‘be welcomed with the source code for pure Facebook virality.’ You can then browse Rick’s videos on the subject of the video you interviewed. That’s how I found out that, unsurprisingly, the Flaming Hot Cheeto mud recipe was one of his gross babies.
We must not let this wizard continue to dominate the conversation with boring, ugly food videos to collect glimpses of anger. It may seem impossible – Lax has pretty much dominated the Facebook watch algorithm – but wizards are like Tinkerbell. Stop clapping and they’ll go away.
