The article discusses this extensively, and is perhaps more even-handed than its title might suggest. The balance seems to be that Instagram may be a net positi

The article discusses this extensively, and is perhaps more even-handed than its title might suggest. The balance seems to be that Instagram may be a net positive for restaurants, but not for food; those things are not the same, and the author's hypothesis is that short term optimization for the former may result, in the longer run, significant negative impact on the latter, which will of course circle back around again and hurt the former dramatically. This seems pretty compelling to me. It's easy (and not always wrong) to dismiss dismissivness around advertising in food as hoighty pretension, but I think there's a worthy conversation to be had in the form-over-function optimization it encourages. Visual spectacle is only one axis on which food needs to be appreciated, and the concern here is that it's being over-emphasized at the expense of other, very important factors.