Revised Reaction to Buzzfeed Videos

The three videos linked above, “Mexican People Try Taco Bell for the First Time,” “Chinese People Try Panda Express for the First Time,” and “People in China Try Fortune Cookies for the First Time,” are from Buzzfeed—a website primarily for entertainment purposes and to help students like me procrastinate on homework. While these videos were entertaining, they also asked the important question of how authentic our fast food really is. Because the premise behind these videos was people trying Americanized food from their culture, I expected those in the videos to not be too fond of the food they tried. Initially, I was surprised to see people varying in age, since they usually just have their employees featured in the videos, and people who did not speak any English in the videos; however, I believe this made the videos more credible. While watching the videos, it surprised me that that some of the people enjoyed some of the Americanized versions, especially in the “Chinese People Try Panda Express” video. However, like I predicted, 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 of this 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 versions. This idea also occurs 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 stress the difference between authentic cuisine and our Americanized ideas of what it is, which brings up the important concept that what we may consider “Mexican” or “Chinese” food is not truly that.

Original Post: http://bcalkins2020.blogspot.com/2016/09/reaction-to-buzzfeed-videos.html