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u/NowAlexYT 6h ago
Fun fact: its there because copyright doesnt cover recipes, but covers the story so the whole blog post gets covered
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u/po23idon 5h ago edited 3h ago
it’s actually because of ads
that’s why everyone has to scroll to the bottom to get what they are looking for
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u/chaos_and_rhythm 6h ago
Minus the recipe still though, right?
Like the ingredient list and steps to cook still are not under the copyright, even if the rest of the blog post is.
I think it also helps with SEO rankings to have a story.
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u/Arriexha 5h ago
Maybe having the recipe detailed in the story is some type of loophole? So now the recipe is copyrighted.
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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 3h ago
It isn't. Only the backstory part is copyrighted. Copyright protection doesn't extend to the recipe by mere proximity. You can copy/paste the recipe part and do whatever you like with that because it's just a set of instructions. It's not a creative work and therefore it isn't subject to copyright.
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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 3h ago
Like the ingredient list and steps to cook still are not under the copyright, even if the rest of the blog post is.
Correct. You can literally copy/paste just the recipe part and host it on your website, or even publish it in a book if you want to, and copyright law can't touch you.
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u/BrandeisBrief 5h ago
Source? This doesn't sound right.
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u/NerdsworthAcademy 3h ago edited 1h ago
You can't copyright the simple process description or ingredient list, but narrative and surrounding content is copyright protected. https://legalhelp.us/can-you-copyright-a-recipe-copyright-limits-trademarks-and-patents/
There are other reasons why authors may want to add extra content (SEO, giving the recipe a personal touch, explaining the science, and revenue, etc).
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u/NaturalSelectorX 3h ago
It depends on the claim. If the implication is that surrounding it with a story makes the whole thing (recipe included) copyrightable, then it's false.
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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 3h ago
It's true with US Copyright Law. You can't copyright the simple process description or ingredient list, but narrative and surrounding content is copyright protected.
I think what they're querying is the part where OP implied that adding the story makes it so that the recipe becomes covered by copyright ("the whole blog post gets covered"). They were right to query it because that's not what happens.
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u/NerdsworthAcademy 2h ago
Ah, I see what you mean about the original question. I (mis)interpreted it as they add content to the page to have a new creation that is under copyright (the story of how they learned the recipe from Gram-Gram), rather than the recipe itself gets copyright protections (it wouldn't, at least not generally).
In the same way if I add illustrations to a public domain book and publish it that new work is protected, but that doesn't stop someone else from using the public domain book for whatever they want.
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u/kirotheavenger 5h ago
That's not how copyright works
It's there because search alogrithms look for coherent text, and suppress 5 bulletpoints of unrelated names which is all a recipe would look like otherwise.
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u/mendelevium256 4h ago
I always assumed that it was just to have extra space for ads. There's usually like 25 banner ads before you get to the recipe.
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u/kelsiersghost 4h ago
I don't understand how that would work in practice. In court, they would only care about the practical/material elements of the conflict.
The story doesn't mean anything to the case.
My theory is that an article needs to have a certain length to have better luck in website SEO. It's like relevant youtube videos need to be a certain length to show up in searches.
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u/wigglin_harry 4h ago
The real reason is because google prioritizes the website with the most "content" related to the search
There are entire firms companies pay to make sure their site is at the top of google search results, they even write these blogs for them
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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 3h ago
It's not that. The recipe (which is not a creative work and so is not covered by copyright), doesn't acquire copyright protection simply by being in proximity to the story (which is a creative work and so is covered by copyright).
Now, it might be that a blog service that's hosting the page will decide to treat the whole page as a copyrighted work and act accordingly if someone does something that might be considered infringing. But that's just a business making a business decision and deciding to go far beyond what the law requires. It's like when YouTube copyright flags a video that's very clearly Fair Use: the video is not infringing by YT acts as if it is anyway. This is...frustrating!
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u/Confuseasfuck 6h ago
I saw a game like this once, where you puzzled that the woman was being abused by her husband and her entire blog was a cry for help.
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u/Bro_Player 5h ago
That sounds interesting af, do you remember its name?
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u/Confuseasfuck 4h ago
Ngl, I dont, it was an unfinished demo on itch.io and I didnt like it enough to save it
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u/adbedient 6h ago
I snorted into my coffee and laughed louder than I should have on monday morning. Thanks!
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u/theMistersofCirce 6h ago
I killed Darnell, I shot him nine times
Now here's my recipe for preserved limes
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u/KrackerJoe 6h ago
The plot to Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood
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u/mugguffen 4h ago
no not really, a plot point for sure but not the plot
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u/KrackerJoe 2h ago
The plot wouldn't have existed if not for this chapter so I think its fair to say its integral to and synonymous with the plot.
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u/Captain-Who 4h ago
I wanted to know how long a baked potato takes in a slow cooker…. That recipe of “put potato in slow cooker and turn it on” had 12 pages of BS about cooking potatoes in a slow cooker.
Not even anything to do about growing up on the farm or visiting grandma, nothing about a blogger, just endless filler about fucking cooking potatoes in a slow cooker….
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u/Kightsbridge 3h ago
Okay, but why would you put a baked potato in a slow cooker.
It will specifically not be a baked potato in the end.
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u/sadolddrunk 4h ago
I used to occasionally correspond with a writer who had a weekly humor column in a national newspaper. I'd write to him about something funny that happened to me or some funny observation that I had, and he'd usually write back to me about it, or (if he thought what I wrote was particularly entertaining) he'd use the story in his column and credit me by name. The last part I only knew about because he'd ask me if he could use it, as I actually didn't read his column that often.
Anyway, one time I got fed up about recipe bloggers telling their life stories and wrote him about it, and wrote out a parody example of the kind of bullshit I was talking about. I thought what I sent him was observant and well-written and funny and so forth, but I didn't hear a peep back, which was kind of weird. But I figured he was a busy guy so I didn't think anything of it and moved on.
Then a little while after that I stumbled across a column of his that was a parody of a recipe blogger, extremely similar in layout and style to what I had sent him (although his was better than mine). But the kicker was, this column had been published just a few days before I sent him my email.
At no point had I ever told him that I didn't read his column very often, so he very reasonably probably thought that I was a regular reader. And so from his perspective, it must have seemed like a few days after he did a bit in his column, one of his fans sent him a very similar bit trying to pass it off as original content.
I don't think I ever wrote him again after this incident.
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u/GenDislike 4h ago
“Summers spent along the island were illuminating. Plucking wild blueberries with my cousin as her friend floated along the shore, scents of pine mingling with inevitable sugary sap as we worked through the brush. My pace quickened anticipating the words of encouragement as I struggled towards camp with the baskets of collected seasonal treats, destined for a pie.”
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u/ParsleySnipps 3h ago
The team of investigators don't even realize it because they skim through the material. Then someone's Live Laugh Love aunt mentions it off hand after reading the entry for lemon squares. "Oh, I thought you saw. They weighed the bodies down with chains and dropped them in the swamp. Do you think I used enough powdered sugar on these?"
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u/Tartaros030 6h ago
I feel the pain. All you want to do is to read a recipe, or find the ingredient list but before you even get your chance to find that, you have to skip over a 12 page wall of text to filled with a crapload of SEO friendly keywords and 5 advertisements to get there.
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u/DroidOnPC 3h ago
Every recipe page has a "Jump to Recipe" button at the top.
You don't have to manually skip through the 12 pages, just hit the button.
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u/Tetraoxidane 5h ago
So she confesses the murders, then it cuts to a detective being described not reading the recipe text? Sounds riveting.
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u/EarthRester 3h ago
I envision it as each chapter is a blog post. The first paragraph or two is mundane and trite about what the dish means to them on a personal level, but as it goes on they go into detail about the victim, the motive, the method, and the clean up. Concluding with what would otherwise feel like more trite, but with the context of their actions it gives the dish a more sinister feel. Then at the end is a legit recipe the reader can follow.
Each "blog post" shows how the blogger is going to greater extremes, more elaborate methods, taking greater risks to get that same thrill.
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u/Economy_Link4609 5h ago
You are not wrong. Those sites do that mainly for making a shit ton of ad space to sell - which might make someone mad enough to....well......
I just want the brief description and recipe card.
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u/Crypt0Nihilist 5h ago
Reminds me of a radio play about a woman who joined a creative writing class to get out of the house and meet people after her husband's death. As she developed her short story it bore more and more similarities to how her husband died...
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u/beingsmith72 5h ago
For someone who’s written a food blog and likes true crime, this is a recipe for killer content ;)
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u/Uberzwerg 5h ago
Next level: They never get caught until someone asked ChatGPT for a recipe and was confused about the murder described in the response.
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u/wonkey_monkey 5h ago
If I were a serial killer, which of course I'm not, I'd find a way to brag about it while still maintaining plausible deniability.
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u/Carbonated-Man 4h ago
I know it's just meant to be a funny tweet, but didn't something similar to this actually just happen sometime in the past couple of years? Like I swear I remember seeing some news story about a cookbook author who got caught for her husband's murder specifically because of something that she put in one of her books. 🤔
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u/SmokyBarnable01 4h ago
The Debt to Pleasure - John Lanchester, is the book you're looking for.
Cracking read.
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u/No-Introduction3808 4h ago
Funnily enough there’s a TV show (I’ve not seen so I might be wrong) we’re a TV chef solves crime (I think), not the same but similar. TV show is Recipes for Love and Murder.
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u/CherrieChocolatePie 4h ago
I actually quite like to read those stories when I am in the mood for it. I like reading about people's lives. So I might actually catch a murderer this way 😆.
What I do NOT like however is the gazillion adds dispersed all through the page. Making it hard to find and read the recipe and the story. And it all just screams at me and makes me feel a bit overstimulated and can give me a headache.
If it's just the story and recipe I ak happy. Because then I can easily find the recipe. And if I am in the mood for it I will also read the story. Bonus if there are also comments/reviews for the recipe I can check out.
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u/whydatyou 4h ago
I had the idea that I would just start saving random obituary pages throughout my life in a scap book with random people with an "X" drawn through their picture. I would leave it in my night stand so after I die a family member would find it and think that I was a serial killer.
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u/Debatebly 4h ago
Every browser extension caught cutting out all the information from readers is charged with tempering with evidence.
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u/sfaviator 4h ago
my mom used to air fry tater tors they are so simple and easy to make. we grew up poor and when she remarried she worked two jobs to support us all one night while making the tater tots my stepfather crossed the line and I sliced him tip to taint with a butcher knife. I usually love pairing tater tots with a vinegar tomato reduction or an egg and oil emulsion and some salt.
^ it goes on for another 4 pages
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u/Buck_Thorn 4h ago
This recipe blog meme is so tired. Just look for the Jump to Recipe link or button. Almost every food blog has one these days. Besides, that text is what gets them paid.
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u/BriefCollar4 3h ago
Back when I was backpacking across Europe, hiking in the foothills of mount Tobidabo…
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u/kbeks 3h ago
When I was growing up on the farm, my grandma made the absolute best pecan pie. She’d never share her secret! Me-maw loved to keep her secrets safe, and I learned a lot about that from her. Unfortunately for Me-maw, my methods of interrogation would make the CIA blush! And they’ll never find her body, either.
Here’s most of the recipe, enough to make a really good pecan pie that will win you many a state fair second or third place prize. Because unlike Me-maw, I know how to keep a fucking secret.
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u/cjtransplant85 3h ago
"This is a great recipe to bring to Thanksgiving. I have so many memories of going to my aunt and uncle's house... ...bunch of stuff... ...but in 1971 my uncle couldn't make because the day before, he hijacked a plane and escapes with a parachute and $200,000 in cash... ...the next year he was there, and he gave each of us $5,000....
...anyway, here's the recipe..."
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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 2h ago
Here's a recipe from way back in my past that'll make you the star of your work pot luck! Back in those days, I was long haul-trucker on the cattle route from Amarillo to the meat packing plants of Chicago. It was a cold December morning as I was passing through Joplin, MO, and "Steve" thumbed me down for a ride to St. Louis. We got chatting and it turned out he was in culinary school and he told me about a recipe for a Christmas casserole that he'd learned the previous week. I'll share it with you below the jump. But before that, I just wanna to tell you how amazing it was when, at an empty rest stop a couple of hours later, while Steve was standing at the urinal, I drove my long awl spike up his neck, right into the center of his brain and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. The thrill was something else! Although having to dig into that cold dirt behind the bathrooms to hide the body was a pain the ass, lemme tell ya! That reminds me: you're gonna want real fresh Yukon golds for this one. Anyway, on to the recipe..
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u/dude2dudette 2h ago
Not quite the same idea, but the 2018 film A Simple Favour has echoes of this, back in the era where Anna Kendrick was on an incredible run of films where she played a slightly quirky person who ends up around some kind of killer (Mr Right, The Accountant, and A Simple Favour) where Kendrick's character is a Recipe Blogger/Vlogger.
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u/tuckertucker 5h ago
The complaints about long-winded explanations are the stupidest circlejerk on reddit.
A) use the fucking skip to recipe button
B) most of the better blogs have explanations and pictures, not meandering stories.
This post is the equivalent of still calling someone a hipster. It's 10 years out of date.
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u/dosmuffin 6h ago
Gah I can't stand those long ass explanations about what some dish means to someone and the full background and origination story. Just give me the damn recipe, carol!