The Real Reason Why Recipe Websites Suck
You know what I discovered throughout this pandemic? The people writing recipe web pages suck. They want to spill their entire life story to you just to emphasize how many eggs go into whatever concoction caught your appetite. It lead me down a path to find out why they do that.
The longer the word count, the more they can advertising they can sell. As simple as that sounds, it's the truth. The people that own these websites get to determine how much you have to say. Which isn't so far off from journalism and writing basics back when this stuff was still printed on paper... Writers would be tasked with 1000 words on this, 500 on that, and it all went into the flow of ad revenue. Some do it so well, you don't even realize it. That's where creative writing comes into context. If you're not bored reading the words of a rambling author, you probably don't realize how many ads are directed at you. It's the wholesome feeling of getting lost in a good story. Something everyone universally enjoys.
All the same, it makes for some pretty crappy recipe pages. You see the picture, your brain tells you it looks good, you click over and suddenly you get the origin story of what makes Great Aunt Mae's cookies so good. We already know, it's love and probably a pretty extraordinary amount of real lard or classic shortening... Been there, seen it, know it, now you can avoid it.
Two-Fifty.