Thread by @Delafina777

One of my side gigs is writing product descriptions for major retailer websites. It's not glamorous, but it's easy and it pays well. ($25-30 for a 100-word description, and that's an *easy* 100 words.) But it does sometimes raise strange ethical issues.

It is, surprisingly, one of the areas of my life where I actually feel my privilege, and also the danger of the power of words, regularly.

Because a lot of times, this stuff is food, and the target audience is busy parents (let's be real: predominantly busy MOMS) who are on a tight budget AND aspire to--again, to be blunt--reach or be perceived as a higher socioeconomic class than they are.

And here's the thing: I'm the ideal person to sell them the dream. I grew up going to high-end restaurants. I hang out with and read stuff by foodies. I've had chef and wine expert friends tutor me on tasting notes and mouthfeel and pairings and all that stuff.

But I also have a long career of making language accessible to laypeople. And I LOVE food.

So I can write you a product description of what is, in reality, low-end food that doesn't even use the right ingredients for what it's claiming to be that not only makes it sound amazing, but educates you so you can talk about it to your friends and sound super-smart.

I can even tell you how to dress it up with things that will make it taste like it wasn't frozen or didn't come from a mix.

And most of the time, I'm like, whatever. I gotta eat. If some mom somewhere feels like she's gotten a deal on this boxed lasagna and passes it off to her friends as fresh because I told her to broil it for a few minutes to finish it and put shaved parm & fresh parsley on top...

...I dunno that the world has been made significantly worse.

But every so often, there's a situation where I'm like, I know this fish has consumer warnings about being unhealthy. It's not sustainably farmed. Its industry is pushing it HARD as a cheaper substitute for fish that's actually good for you.

And I COULD write a product description that would sell the ever-living FUCK out of this. I can make it sound SO GOOD and tell you how to prepare it and you'll look at the price and start drooling.

But you won't be getting the health benefits you assume you're getting from fish. You'll possibly be ingesting dangerous contaminants. And you'll be supporting something that's doing harm to the planet and harming sustainable fishing industries.

There's a reason it's so cheap, and you'd be better off spending that money on a different type of protein.

But on the other hand, I don't have the option to reject an item in an assignment. And even if I did, it'd just get assigned to another copywriter--one who might not be QUITE as good at selling food as I am, but who's certainly going to write compelling copy.

And it's hard to know what to do in these situations.

In this particular example, instead of doing my usual siren song about how good it tastes, I just described the flavor as clinically as possible and emphasized the low price.

But man, it's those moments of know that you're being paid to persuade, to get people to make the purchase, and wondering how you can subtext that the customer should do some research before buying that are some of the most challenging writing I do.

Because at the end of the day, people might choose to make an informed decision to buy this thing because it's cheap, even if there are risks, and I don't feel bad about that. I just DON'T want to seduce them, here.

Frozen lasagna, btw? Take it out of the foil dish and put it in a glass one. Add a dash of lemon pepper to the tomato sauce btwn layers to perk up the tomato. Bake at a slightly higher temperature than called for, and finish by broiling at a high temp to brown the cheese. (1/2)

Add some high-quality shaved parmesan to the top right before you broil, and sprinkle fresh parsley on top before serving (it'll help neutralize the "this was frozen" taste). (2/2)

BUT--and I can't emphasize this enough--frozen lasagna is usually made with inferior ingredients and BURIED in salt. And if you've had homemade, you're always going to taste the difference.

And given that you can get high-quality, fresh tomato sauce, lasagna pasta, high-quality parm, fresh ground beef, and fresh ricotta at most grocery stores for relatively inexpensively, it's not actually that much more work or time to just make your own lasagna.

Dressing up store-bought lasagna is basically a bunch of tinkering. Making your own (assuming you're not actually making the pasta yourself) is just assembly. There's not, in my experience, a significant time difference after the grocery store. And it's SO MUCH BETTER.