Storytelling
Based on the thumb’s up / like symbol where readers can see how many other users found the comment helpful, Cook's Illustrated's discussion board is intended to review the recipe and provide tips. However, this artifact provides an example of one kind of alternative way members utilize the commenting space.
In the top-most comment (see left), one user has uploaded a picture of how her crescent rolls turned out alongside a testimonial reading, “These were very easy, light, and buttery.” In another comment, another Cook’s Illustrated user writes a much longer post, telling a story about how these crescent rolls remind him of his mothers’ recipe:
“I'm so thankful to find this recipe. I remember that my mother made these crescent shaped rolls more than 65 years ago. My dad and I waited at our kitchen table for them to finish baking in the oven. We looked forward to eating them with butter and honey. They were so good. Now I'm looking forward to making memories with my neighbors. I expect to upload a photo in the next couple of weeks.”
Of course, not every Cook’s Illustrated.com member writes comments in the discussion board. There are users (including myself, the curator of this exhibit) who prefer to interact with the content in their own way, either by simply “bookmarking” or sharing the recipe to their social media sites. These users featured in the artifact belong to a subpopulation who value the comments section for its ability to let them share personal stories, from their adventures cooking the recipe or posting “real” pictures of how the food actually looks compared to the professionally-shot image taken by Cook’s Illustrated photographers. This practice is so common, in fact, that some users (such as in the third comment) expect images to augment the personal anecdote.
In this illustration, the discussion board comments on Cook’s Illustrated.com do more than offer advice. The users participating in this exchange are, instead, sharing photos and stories to make the recipe more personal to them in a space where fellow food fans come to gather—as opposed to simply sharing the photo on their social media platforms, where only a few followers might identify as home cooks.