ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a fresh take on the ethnographic, netnographic, and interview work conducted in the online space of the food and drink exhibition that is utilized in recent “networks of desire” project. It explores the impact of practices on consumer wellbeing, a term which has many competing and contradictory definitions and is recognized as “a nebulous, multifaceted notion”. The chapter presents thousands of pictures, conducted 17 personal interviews, and sets up a dedicated research webpage where dozens of people shared their “food porn” stories. It demonstrates, with some notable caveats, how a love of food porn, the ogling and sharing of often cheese-laden and funfetti edibles, can be used as a vehicle to flourish in the everyday and provide the impetus to lead a healthy lifestyle. Resembling a spectacle, throughout, the iMirror’s representation of an insatiably hungry and always-eating consumer audience is always present, even when it is absent from life itself.
