Chain Letters Aren't Tasty Even when food is the subject, they still annoy - CHOW
Recipe sharing is great, but not when the idea comes in a meme.
There is so little resistance and backlash against recipe memes, but it is there.
When unwanted, recipe exchange memes put recipients in a really awkward position. How do you tell or request senders to stop with the chain letters and not risk hurting their feelings?
It is impossible to avoid that risk completely, but someone has to chance it eventually, otherwise people will just keep on re-sharing these nuisances.
Probably the hook, recipes in this case, is so appealing that people just pass them on, hoping to please their friends and get more recipes.
But, if you see a re-share or are sent an email with a recipe, and the instruction to repost or send to all your friends, everyone, or x number of people, your friend has allowed themself to be manipulated by a re-sharing meme scheme.
Recipe memes come in a few variants.
The most egregious contain lies about recipes that some company supposedly charges an outrageous fortune for.
Real VS fraudulent Neiman Marcus cookie recipe
Debunking and history of the notorious chain about the mediocre oatmeal nut chocolate chip cookie recipe that is not being sold at an outrageous price by Neiman-Marcus or Woolworth's the tale mutating from lying about a hotel's red velvet cake recipe to Neiman Marcus to lying about Woolworths. Interesting how deliberately inconsistent the chain letter recipes are, one calling for Hershy bars, the other calling for Cadbury. There goes that mutation of a hoax again.
The Woolworths lie finishes by telling potential dupes that it is not a joke. So who's laughing? It's an attempted joke that simply isn't funny. a real Neiman Marcus cookie recipe - and yes, it's free! The question now is, will Woolworth's eventually post a cookie recipe of their own on their web site? If so, which establishment will be the next victim of the dreaded recipe rumor chain?
The experiment: the chain letter cookie VS. the real Neiman Marcus cookie
The 5 Minute Mug Cake. For me, it is an undeniably appealing recipe, but I'm not the only one who was annoyed at the spread of this meme like wildfire. It had shown up on so many social network, web forum, and email posts.
Instead, break the chain and print out the recipe and make it yourself.
If you really like it, you can always double it if you want to give a friend a tasty surprise gift. If they really like it and want the recipe, print/email/text them a copy.
Chain Letter Emails Even For Recipes Just Not OK
Originally found at the site of The Internet Patrol
The only thing I disagree with is the statement "Sure, there may be some cool email chain letters."
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Chain Letter Emails - Even for Recipes - Just Not Ok
Sure, there may be some cool email chain letters, but the reality is that they are still email chain letters, and that's just not ok. The most recent of the chain emails making the rounds is a Recipe Chain Email Letter. Seems innocent, seems fun, even seems useful. But it's still chain mail, and it's still not ok. In fact, it's spam. Chain mail is illegal in the postal mail system, and it's just as unwelcome in the Internet email system.
Here is the current recipe chain email:
Click to see this article with the chain letter included. Click here to see this meme mangled.
Amazingly, people continue to send us chain email, so it's pretty clear that many people have no idea just how taboo - how unwelcome, it is. The current recipe chain email has found its way to us several times.
So, here's our recipe to share:
Take one email/social network re-share. Add 20 friends if doing email. Add a social network platform with 20 contacts, making sure they will see your posts. Annoy the heck out of them. Repeat thousands of times. Waste countless computer cycles, untold bandwidth and hundreds of man hours.
Serve cold, to a lukewarm reception.
So what if you get 7 recipes via email because you and a bunch of other people decided to do a recipe chain? It's still a chain, and you can always look on the web for just about any recipe you want.
Please, don't spread recipes because an email or social network meme tells you to. Don't add your own to a recipe chain and pass it on. You never know how many times a contact may have already received the recipe and similar memes from others.
Instead, Share Recipes And Break Chain Letters All at Once!
There are non-email recipe memes too, the Friendship Bread/Cake! Believe it or not, that is a thing.
The so-called 'amish friendship bread' which was my introduction to this gooey yeasty cinnamon mess, but apparently it's been glooping around for ages and never actually goes away.
The next mutation was called Padre Prayer Bread Prayer bread, oh brother! Then it returned this time bearing the name "Herman" or friendship cake. This thing just keeps cropping up again and again, year after year.
A recipient gets a pack of gooey yeasty partially made dough from a friend, with the instruction to make the recipe and pass it on to their friends. The composition of the cake starters and the methods are pretty much the same from mutation to mutation, though some have cinnamon or other spices, others have none; so if you're not too keen on yeasty cinnamon cakes, (tinged with chocolate in the so-called "Amish friendship" version) or even if you started out liking it, you could get really sick of people unloading this goo on you.
I, for one, don't care to work with the likes of it, and that the stuff just seems to keep growing and making noise as it does, and then you get this high maintenance job of feeding it more ingredients over quite a few days, and then the "Pass along the extra dough to your friends!" thing is a real turn-off.
Some of the instructions for types of this chain letter cake are maddening or just creepy. The so-called "Padre prayer bread" instructions that say you must pray over it, the "Herman" meme cake requires you to talk to "him" as you stir "him" and "feed him" more ingredients.
Ugh, no... Creepy.
So, no one ever give me Herman Amish padre friendship prayer cake bread starter, because it will all get baked and every last cake given away to any charity that wants it or else flushed. Probably the latter.
I can appreciate that it was a useful way to manage food stuffs back in the olden days, but times have changed, so this doesn't need to be done on a massive scale any more, and I will never treat a food stuff like a living thing, or pray for luck during the process of making it.
Here is a collection of recipes that surprisingly haven't made it into a chain letter as far as I know, and they sound delicious.