Your cooking looks disgusting. Please, never stop posting it on Instagram

To the untrained eye, the plate was a mess of slop. On closer inspection, it must’ve been food of some description. Potatoes, maybe? Peas too. There was definitely a meat element, but it had been cooked for so long that it didn’t matter what it was, or at least what it had once been. A thin sauce, presumably gravy, pooled in the middle of the plate. Remarkably, everything on the dish appeared a different shade of grey. A photo was taken, slightly out of focus, and posted online, accompanied by a simple caption: Cheeky Sunday roast.

The person responsible for this situation was someone I barely knew, a friend of a friend of a friend, added to my Instagram account after a chance meeting years ago. We maintain almost no online relationship, but his cooking exploits are the highlight of my week.

Ordinary cooking helps make ordinary people feel better about themselves.Credit: Dionne Gain

Every Sunday, without fail, he tackles something refreshingly regular – spaghetti bolognese, homemade tacos, a particularly raw-looking baked salmon – and he painstakingly documents the process. The results are unspectacular and occasionally alarming, but that’s beside the point. In a world ruined by social media pressure, where everyone must always put their best foot forward, here is an average man unafraid to celebrate an average coq au vin.

The glorification of everyday meals has long been stitched into the Australian national identity. We are the country of laid-back larrikins, a melting pot of cultures who refuse to take themselves (or their food) too seriously.

That’s why we laughed along in shared acknowledgment when Dale Kerrigan’s mind was blown by his wife’s rissoles in The Castle (“Yeah, but it’s what you do with them!”) and it’s why we decided that the only fitting symbol for our democracy was a Coles sausage, covered in tomato sauce, served on white bread.

Sure, we have a thriving food scene, complete with talented chefs serving world-class cuisine, but that represents the best of us, not the rest of us.

At first, the rise of social media supercharged our ability to embrace our ordinariness. Twitter feeds like Rate My Plate, created in 2013, and the much-loved Instagram page Cook Suck (created by the late, great Darrell Beveridge in 2011) encouraged users to submit their horrific-looking home cooking for our collective enjoyment. The aim wasn’t to shame (most of the time) but rather to celebrate how mediocre we can all be and how bad something might look, even if it tastes good.

Then the inevitable happened: social media became less about slices of real life and more about curation and competition. Amateur home cooks became obsessed with viral recipes, abandoning their sloppy homemade pizzas (featuring packet cheese!) in favour of endless recreations of Alison Roman’s caramelised shallot pasta or insane TikTok trends.

Occasionally, there were exceptions, of course. Who among us can forget Scott Morrison’s infamous curry night?

At the beginning of May 2022, the then-prime minister posted a picture of himself on Facebook alongside an unappetising chicken korma. The caption? “Strong Curry. Strong Economy. Stronger Future.”

Instantly, the post was flooded with concerns that Morrison’s chicken was, at best, undercooked and, at worst, raw. CurryGate became so big that Morrison had to go on the radio to defend the dish. “People went back for seconds,” he told Fox FM.

Yum!Credit: Facebook

A few weeks later, Morrison’s government was soundly defeated by Labor. Bad karma for bad korma? I like to think so.

In reality, Morrison’s mistake wasn’t sharing his ugly food online. Instead, as a politician, we were inherently cynical of his intentions, which meant any goodwill was replaced by a desire to poke fun.

It’s the same reason people rejoice at ribbing Brooklyn Beckham for his recent lane change to professional chef.

Having abandoned his previous career as a photographer (do yourself a favour and check out his coffee table book What I See), David and Victoria’s eldest son is now focused on sharing his food journey with his followers. Unfortunately, most of his creations are either painfully simple but framed as impressive (he went on live TV and made a bacon and egg sandwich) or just a bit odd (an omelette topped with $700 caviar).

Wet, bland and fantastic. This is the kind of food that belongs on social media.Credit: Screenshot

Unlike my Instagram friend of the Cheeky Sunday Roast fame, Beckham is not an average person (he is rich, famous, et cetera), so his average food lacks appeal in more ways than one.

Thankfully, there appears to be a pushback against social media’s pursuit of perfection. Users recognise it is unattainable and often unrelatable, which is welcome news for those of us whose appetite for Sunday night slop content remains insatiable.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell. Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.