Hotel.com The Food Pic: A (Super True and Accurate) Social Media History

By Vox Creative

This is an episode of Travelgrams, a series that dives deep into the unexpected (and totally made-up) origin stories of social media photo trends.

The food pic: You’ve seen it on your feeds. You’ve hate-liked it. You’ve probably even paused a meal to take it yourself. But have you ever asked yourself, Why am I doing this? For the first person to take the food pic, the answer was obvious: prove to mom that I’m eating.

hate-like /hāt-līk/ (n.): the act of “liking” someone’s photo on social media even though it fills you with intense jealousy

The classic food photo traces back to Sammy, a musically inclined, wide-eyed teen on his first big solo trip to New York City, and his worried mom. And just like that, the travel game changed forever. Hate-likers were inspired to book their own trips and post their own food pics. A dad was left speechless at his son’s sudden fame, and the rest is history.

So the next time you see a friend’s photo of their beautiful brunch spread or ice cold craft beer, remember this before you hate-like it — there’s more to a travel pic than meets the eye. Watch the video above for the whole story.