After the Deadline: Missing Gumbo
“Sausage gumbo today! It has a little heat to it, and it is DELISH!” the post read, about eleven hours too late.
One of the frustrations today is our reliance on social media to keep us informed. It’s a place where everyone is screaming into the void, begging to be heard. Businesses are almost forced into participating in the madness because “it’s where the customers are.” Probably one of the biggest lies we’ve been told.
That gumbo looked good, but I missed out because I do not have time to endlessly scroll my choice of platforms. The business lost a sale. Not because they did anything wrong, but because a platform they trusted did not deliver the message. Or maybe they posted it the same day, not giving the algorithm gods time to work their magic, like a forsaken cooldown period in World of Warcraft. I digress.
What gets lost in all of this is not just a bowl of gumbo. It is the quiet, everyday transactions that keep a small town moving. A daily special. A last-minute discount. A reminder that the soup pot is full. When those messages depend entirely on who happens to be scrolling at the right moment, we are no longer informed. We are lucky.
There was a time when daily specials, church dinners and fundraisers were not left to chance. They were printed in black and white, delivered to your driveway, and read at the kitchen table. You did not have to hope an algorithm deemed them worthy. If it was in the paper, you saw it.
The problem is not that businesses are posting. It is that we have replaced something dependable with something reactive. A post appears when it appears. You either catch it or you do not. There is no guarantee, no shared starting point.
If that gumbo had been listed in a weekly roundup of daily specials, printed once and set in ink, I would have known about it. Instead, it floated past in a sea of noise, and by the time I heard about it, the pot was empty.
There was a time when information arrived whether you were looking for it or not. It showed up on your porch. It sat on your table. It did not compete with a thousand other voices begging for attention. It simply existed, steady and visible.
For now, I am mostly disappointed I missed that sausage gumbo. But I suspect it is not really about gumbo at all.
ABOUT: Lloyd Green Jr. is the regional editor for the Colusa County Pioneer Review, the Gridley Herald and the Territorial Dispatch. He writes “After the Deadline,” a recurring column on community life, local business and the changing media landscape. He can be reached at lloyd.green@mpg8.com