You want to make banana bread. You have three brown bananas and a deadline of tonight.
You search. You click the first result. You begin scrolling.
You will scroll for a long time.
The Childhood Section
“Growing up in the rolling hills of Vermont, my grandmother’s kitchen was always filled with the warm scent of cinnamon…”
Okay. Lovely. Genuinely, that sounds nice.
You scroll.
“…she taught me that baking is about patience. About presence. Every autumn, she and I would…”
There are three photos of a field. None of them contain banana bread.
The Photo Gauntlet
Twelve photos of the same loaf from twelve angles.
Loaf whole. Loaf sliced. Loaf on marble. Loaf with a linen napkin artfully bunched beside it for reasons of texture. Loaf next to coffee. Loaf with a bite taken out, styled by someone who did not take that bite.
Each photo has 200 words underneath it that say the same thing as the previous 200 words.
The Ingredient Interrogation
Then a section titled “Ingredients You’ll Need” that is not the ingredient list. It’s a paragraph about each ingredient.
“Flour — I like to use all-purpose, but you can use whatever you have!”
That’s it. That’s the whole entry. That information was already going to be in the recipe. It’s now taken up half a screen and a photo of a bag of flour.
The Ad Layer
An ad expands mid-scroll and moves the entire page. You lose your place.
A video player detaches and follows you down the page, muted, playing a clip of someone folding batter. You cannot close it. There’s an X but the X is 4 pixels and moves.
A newsletter popup arrives. “Wait! Don’t leave without my free guide!”
You have been on this page for four minutes and have received zero measurements.
The Jump to Recipe Button
There’s a button at the top. You missed it. You always miss it.
You scroll back up 4,000 pixels to find it. You click it. It bounces you to the recipe card.
You are here. After all of it, you have arrived.
The Recipe
It’s nine lines long.
Three bananas. Flour. Sugar. Egg. Butter. Baking soda. Salt. 350 degrees. 55 minutes.
That’s the whole thing. That was always the whole thing. That could have fit in a text message.
The Comment Section
You scroll down out of habit.
“Made this with applesauce instead of butter, coconut flour instead of flour, no sugar, and baked it in an air fryer. 2 stars, didn’t turn out.“
Someone else: “Can I make this without bananas?”
Someone else, from 2019: “Looks delicious, can’t wait to try!” — no follow-up, no verdict. They never came back. We’ll never know.
The Understanding
You know why the story is there. SEO. Word count. Copyright on the recipe text itself, which can’t be protected the way prose can.
You understand the incentives completely.
You resent it completely anyway.
The Bread
It comes out great. It’s excellent, actually.
Grandma from Vermont was right about the cinnamon.