You Can't Beat the Classics

Oh, believe me, I am abundantly aware of the 74 different reasons this will not work.

Social media is so much easier, people don't have the patience to contribute meaningful posts to a community, the learning curve for phpBB is too steep for today's average user, if people can't "like" your posts then what's the point, there's no way to generate critical mass while maintaining a high level of discourse, it'll all end in flame wars, I know, I know, I know. This is completely doomed to failure.

But maybe... maybe it's not.

For those who missed PHXfoodnerds on the first pass, it was a community food discussion site that I modeled on LTHforum in Chicago and launched in Phoenix back in 2012. The idea was to give folks who were obsessive about food a space to congregate, get to know each other, trade notes, and arrange meetups and events. Y'know... community.

PHXfoodnerds did pretty well for a while there. We had a good core group, unearthed a ton of gems, ate some wonderful food, and I like to think that we had at least some kind of impact, however modest, on the development of the Phoenix food and dining scene.

Unfortunately, when I took the job as dining critic for The Arizona Republic, I had to step aside and hand off PHXfoodnerds to other members of the community. After that, it just kind of slowly... petered out. Until one day the server went kablooie and the site died a sudden death and nobody really noticed outside a handful of folks who still occasionally checked in.

I could go on at length about the postmortem. There were a number of factors contributing to PHXfn's demise. But I always felt the biggest factor was that participating in a community like this in a meaningful way takes time and effort. And it was just too damn easy for people to upload a quick snap to Instagram, write a one-sentence caption, and move on. Rabble rabble rabble short attention spans, rabble rabble get off my lawn.

But I feel like something has changed, recently.

More and more, I see people who are exhausted by social media. And in the food space, it's particularly bad. What started as a fun way to share photos and connect directly with chefs and restaurateurs slowly turned into a collection of platforms that were 98% ads, whether they're traditional ads, influencers taking money and free food to post stealth ads, or self-promoters who will post any dumb shit they can think of to grab your eyeballs for two seconds.

These days, there are plenty of dumb, entertaining food-related bits on social media. PLENTY. But finding actual food information on social media is REALLY HARD right now. And even the little niches that earnestly try end up being overrun with "Where do I get the best X?" posts, where the responses are 90% garbage.

So here's the pitch.

Anybody who signed up for this newsletter cares about food. And, like me, you probably have an overdeveloped sense of attachment to the local restaurant scene. And, like me, you probably also have frustrations (maybe not quite as many) with the state of food media in Phoenix.

So what the hell, why not get the band back together?

Drop on by PHXfoodnerds. If you've never used a BBS like this before, there's a bit of a learning curve, but it isn't too bad, and as long as you can get registered, you can post as many questions as you like in the Nuts & Bolts forum.

Come to a gathering or an event. Hopefully people will post some other than me. Heck, post some yourself! I have a wonderful circle of friends here in Phoenix, and this is how I met them. No commitments. It's just lunch.

Read, learn, yes. One of the most important elements of a forum like this is that it isn't Yelp or most Facebook groups where people just shout out their favorites. The format is designed to encourage digging a little deeper, interacting with and actually learning from each other. But remember that that's a two-way street. Nothing wrong with lurking. Please do! But if you try something delicious, or there's a food-related discussion that's on your mind, get it up there. That's what the site is here for.

And most of all, I hope people will see the potential in building communities like this. We're starting over again, almost from scratch. But I just have a hunch that the timing is right. I feel like maybe this is what people need right now.