FRAT MUSTARDGrowing Malaysia’s Food & Beverage Industry

011001110111001001100101011001010111010001101001011011100110011101110011 Paranoid Android,

Thank you for bringing up such an interesting discussion (for all of us). Your post is well written and I can see many individuals are passionate about the topic and therefore have commented on your blog. I’d like to approach the topic from another perspective. I’ll go one full circle and come back to your question.

Food guides. Walk into any MPH or Times Bookstores and you’ll find a whole assortment of food guides. Most are the offspring of reputable media owners (e.g. lifestyle magazines). These guides are well distributed and have successfully managed to convince the readers that “we are an authority on this topic and you should trust us.” Many trust the guides so explicitly that it has never occurred to the readers that the huge restaurant advertisements found throughout the guides have at some capacity, influenced the reviews. I’m not saying the product ain’t good. .. hell, I buy them too… but the truth is are the reviews then… errrm… well… unbiased and accurate?

As for blogs as a form of media… everyone has their 2 cents worth… but the truth is:

a. More food blogs are appearing each day.

b. I do NOT think there is any government body that will be policing these blogs anytime soon. They are too busy monitoring malaysiakini and malaysia-today. Unless of course sometime soon, some genius in Putrajaya decides that we can’t discuss Char Siew and Bak Kut Teh on our blogs anymore… but oooh wait… maybe that’ll be only applicable for bloggers living in Shah Alam… and

c. Blogs are just a subset of the User Generated Content – Web 2.0 world we live in today. Now we’ve got micro-blogging (e.g. twitter) and other cool tools like twitpic. Twitpic is going to be a real bane for restaurants because they are normally photos taken from mobile phones (mediocre cameras) and instantly uploaded… these images are likely to make the tastiest tenderloin look like dog poo.

I truly sympathize with restaurants (or more specifically restaurant managers). Most want to embrace the new media but it is difficult to explain to the shareholders why such nasty reviews keep popping up on the Internet. Actually, I am pretty sure the restaurants aren’t worried about mature writers like Lyrical Lemongrass, masak-masak and babe_kl. Based on what I’ve read, even if criticisms are made… they are always written in a constructive, mature and professional manner. Restaurants worry about the OTHER set of bloggers who are capable of writing stuff like… “YUCK! F*#cking lousy service”, “place smell like a$$ and food tastes like sh*t!” or “Puuuuiii! Never go back there again.” The bloggers don’t even explain WHY and HOW they have come to that conclusion. Honestly, I think these fellaz continue to lower the credibility of the new media and just give bloggers a very bad rep.

“Food Bloggers. Are They Qualified To Pass Comments About Food?”

Okay, so here is where I come back one full circle. So what’s my take? Well my take is that everyone is qualified to pass comments as long as they have taste buds. It is only their opinion… an opinion with as much credibility as food guides with paid restaurant advertisements. However, as they are not bound by any specific acts and they never had to apply for a permit to publish… the public should be made aware (educated) that blogging is a source which CAN lie and CAN misrepresent without legal repercussions.

I believe the Internet will continue to mature and over time, readers will select their information sources more carefully, they will be more aware and educated about the reliability of these sources and I praaaaaay that social ranking tools like Digg and StumbleUpon are able to mature and bury poorly written nasty blogs into the abyss of Internet data.

Again… thanks Paranoid Android for your post. It has inspired me to write a blog post about food bloggers and their style of writing.