Reaction to Buzzfeed Videos

            In the two videos linked above, “Chinese People Try Panda Express for the First Time” and “Mexican People Try Taco Bell for the First Time.” These videos, as they are from Buzzfeed—a website primarily for entertainment, are made to entertain people, or to help students like me procrastinate on homework. These two videos share a common theme of people trying Americanized food from their culture, so for me, I expected the people in these videos to not be too fond of the food they tried from Panda Express or Taco Bell. Starting the videos, I was surprised to see a people varying in age and people who did not speak any English in the videos; however, I believe this made the video more credible. While watching the video, it surprised me that that some of the people enjoyed some of the Americanized versions of their cultural dishes, especially in the “Chinese People Try Panda Express” video. However, the majority of people did not enjoy the dishes at all.

The fact that in the “Mexican People Try Taco Bell for the First Time” many of the Taco Bell dishes had no relationship to Mexico shocked me, but I realize that the point is to emphasize how distant Taco Bell food is from real Mexican cuisine. While I personally cannot relate to any of their reactions, I believe these videos brought up the important point of how different real Chinese food or real Mexican food is from our Americanized, fast food version of it. This theme also shows in cuisines like Italian, Thai, or French. To emphasize this point, Buzzfeed also made a video where they took fortune cookies, typically associated with Chinese food, to China, and nobody knew what it was. All three of these videos emphasize the difference between authentic cuisine and our Americanized versions.