Shitty Food Porn & Humor-Mediated Authenticity Within Digital Communities of Ugly Eating

First coined in 1979, "food porn" is a term that has come to define a dominant genre of digital food media with explicit focus on presenting rich visual details and luxurious aesthetics in accordance with desirable eating. In its wake a digital foil, colloquially known as "shitty food porn," has emerged with the intent of highlighting food in its ugly, incorrect, and otherwise "shitty" permutations with the posters knowing and intending for it to be perceived as such. Through long term ethnographic observation of the largest dedicated shitty food porn group, the r/shittyfoodporn reddit community, this research asserts that digital communities of ugly eating are not indented as spaces of ridicule and mockery but rather as spaces for users to share more authentic views of their cooking and eating. The community distinguishes itself from other online communities of authenticity through its use of humor, with the comedy of failed food mediating discussion, commiseration, and even culinary counter-culture in ways unique to the current digital moment.