Theorizing the Rise of Internet Food Cults
Abstract
Across the health, well-being, and fitness industries, cult-like followings have emerged about food and lifestyle choices. To date, increased scholarly attention has been devoted to these topics. This study adopts structuration theory to explain how online social media platforms facilitate the emergence food cults through recursive relationships between individual agency and structural constraints. It takes two case studies at extreme ends of each spectrum – the carnivore and vegan following and analyzes how users interact with one another and with influencers, to promote and sustain extreme dietary behaviors. Distinct from classical cults which rely on isolated physical settings and stiff hierarchical control, digital food cults are fluid and algorithmically sustained. Influencers take on the role of charismatic authorities and through continuous interactions with followers, in-group/out-group dynamics are formed to promote absolutist views of health and lifestyle behavior. Discourse within these dietary followings is marked by self-righteous moralizing wherein adherence to specific dietary principles often gets framed (and algorithmically rewarded) through sensationalist content production.