While politics becomes more polarised the bush comes to town

When ‘Q and A’ got shuffled off to 8.30 on a Thursday night I felt vindicated. Years before I’d stopped watching this unpleasant show, with its combative political operatives and quasi-debate, its copying of the flame wars found all too often on Twitter and its loud voices intent on just niggling the opposition into further cornfluffle. 

I needed to coin a word for the almost meaningless vociferations that get read by thousands at all times of the day on social media. The carriers of sarcasm, the producers of temporary victory – moments that lead to nothing but a hunger for something to offset the savage pull of the ravenous vacuum – and the bringers of shame to the angels who might, if they moderated their speech, be able to take part in a process they watch enviously from the sidelines.

Meanwhile, farmers are using social media in creative ways to engage with their customers in the cities, both through TikTok videos produced on mobile phones and through the unnumbered cooking shows that grace our screens. Wherever you turn you see a cooking show where there’s a camera capturing a key ingredient – salt, say, or extra virgin olive oil – being added to a frying pan or bowl as show hosts, busy at 4pm helping viewers get through to dinnertime by making a cake or a stir-fry, talk about the produce they rely on. There’s one show where most of the cooking is done on barbeques, in the field, with scenic backdrops adding colour to what is mostly, in fact, simple fare. 

I watch many of them. We seem to harbour an insatiable appetite for content that features food being made, and so farmers should know that consumers take food personally. We’re getting pork belly hamburgers just as we’re getting Master Chef in the umpteenth season to satisfy our hunger for new flavours. Multiculturalism ties in with this dynamic because one of the first ways anyone will experience a foreign culture is through its signature meals. 

PETA demonstration, Pitt St Mall, 1 September

We can express our political affiliation by avoiding dairy and we can even express things about our politics by saying that we like pad see ew or butter chicken. The other day I discovered by talking with an Indian friend that “masala” just means “spice”, and this conversation raised an understanding of a place that I will probably never visit but that is becoming more and more important as the forces of globalisation continue to operate on our fractured world. 

Food gives us access to the Other, to alternative ways of living, and hence it can enrich our lives even if all we do is buy a takeaway that a member of the precariat brings to our front door on his motor scooter. Food is a highway and a forest, both, and farmers who venture to make content aimed at metropolitan audiences might be surprised by what they can achieve. 

It’s not just the immediate financial spin-offs that matter, it’s the way that such engagement can lift the brand and lead to industry-wide profitability. Reputation matters, and it’s not enough to rely on elected representatives to do the PR heavy lifting. People have to do it for themselves.

Marketplace needs more flexibility in pricing tools

You see it all the time, people putting “$0” (which the application turns into “FREE”) for an item for which, the description shows by words, a price must be paid. I find this all the time, so it’s commonplace. The other day I put up a selection of literary fiction priced at $0 but that I wanted to sell for $5 each. I did the same thing for a group of history books as well.

I’d been getting rid of a lot of books. Initially I’d put up pictures of individual books, but found that the response for this method is very limited. Hardly anyone was asking a question. When I put up a number of history books (I think there were 13 in the set) for $50 I got a sudden influx of queries, so evidently I’d hit a nerve. A man came over to my place on two occasions and bought 50 books. Another man got me to mail seven books to his house out near Liverpool. A third man I met at Parramatta to which suburb I’d travelled on the ferry. 

The group photo was magical, so I tried to reproduce the effect by putting up a photo showing novels by Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, and Tom Wolfe, among others. The price was $0 and the description had more details, including the fact that they were on sale (and not being given away) but the response this time was surprising in another way. “Is it free,” messaged Enes. “No $5 per book, as per description.” “Why don’t u put as $5 then.” Another person wrote to me, “Hi, is this free?” I mistakenly tapped the prompted button to say “Yes, it’s available” and Monica asked again: “But is it free..?” 

I changed the price attached to the photo to “$5” but I’d felt the pain these people experienced to learn that something they coveted, due to an inspiration rooted deep inside their being, had been denied them. Doubly painful because there might be a reason for their not being able to afford the minuscule $5 necessary to purchase one of my cheap books. 

When Josh came over to buy some of the novels the other day, dressed in hi-vis and wearing boots, he didn’t look like a reader of literary fiction. But I felt his passion when we were browsing. Or, at least, when he was browsing and I was standing by ready to let him know if a book was available or not. He hopefully picked a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez off a shelf and I hesitated before allowing him to take it. I suggested he should read Haruki Murakami and he took two of the Japanese author’s novels. He asked me what I was reading and I told him it was a Nancy Mitford novel and that this author’d been my father’s favourite.

This personal link to books means that the process for buying them should be better crafted by Facebook. It shouldn’t be enough to let people put “$0” as the price when this is not, in fact, the case. It’s not the seller’s fault that people are disappointed. It’s the intermediary’s fault that the online tools are not flexible enough to account for all situations. If the only way for me to get people interested in my books is to put up photos of groups of books, then the pricing tools should allow me to say “3 for $10 or $5 each” or something similar. Buyers would benefit from being able to do their shopping without the shock of disappointment, and sellers would be able to be honest at the same time as they achieve their sales goals.