Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[prabe]

We got our air fryer during the pandemic, when everyone was legally required to either buy one or an Instant Pot, and discovered we loved it. Lots of frozen food that's extremely mediocre in the microwave is restaurant quality in the air fryer and it's just as easy to use for all ages.

We must have missed that statute, we didn't acquire either.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We must have missed that statute, we didn't acquire either.

The Fad Police are on their way to your door now.

 

[overgeeked]

We got our air fryer during the pandemic, when everyone was legally required to either buy one or an Instant Pot, and discovered we loved it. Lots of frozen food that's extremely mediocre in the microwave is restaurant quality in the air fryer and it's just as easy to use for all ages.

We actually used ours until it died and then bought a bigger and better one. It gets more use than our microwave does now.

Same. We got ours (air fryer and InstantPot) before the pandemic but upgraded to a fancy InstantPot that's also an air fryer. It also makes yogurt, which is my wife's latest obsession. It's a wonderful gadget.

 

[CleverNickName]

All sorts of technology lurks on the fringes until it hits the right form factor.
...
We actually used ours until it died and then bought a bigger and better one. It gets more use than our microwave does now.

I should have clarified in my post earlier: I mean no disrespect to the toaster ovens with fans inside air fryers. I love my toaster and I use it almost daily. In college I learned to cook actual meals out of it (not just frozen pizzas and pastries.) I even have a spare toaster oven that I take with me on field assignments, so that I can cook in my hotel room or project trailer (along with a slow cooker and an electric griddle). My $25 per diem goes a lot further at grocery stores than fast-food restaurants.

The part that makes my shake my head is when I see ads about these things like they're new (and therefore, better.) It feels like they're trying to trick me. "Oh no, this isn't a convection oven, no sir! It's new! It's better! It's (buzzword)!" ~jazz hands~

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The part that makes my shake my head is when I see ads about these things like they're new (and therefore, better.) It feels like they're trying to trick me. "Oh no, this isn't a convection oven, no sir! It's new! It's better! It's (buzzword)!" ~jazz hands~

I get emails on a daily basis about how "a Millennial influencer has invented X or Y" and nine times out of 10, it's just something they found in their parents' attic, said "huh, this is actually a pretty good idea" and slapped a new coat of paint on it.

I suspect this has been going on for millennia. It definitely provokes a lot of eyerolls, though.

 

[Ryujin]

All sorts of technology lurks on the fringes until it hits the right form factor.

I remember people -- including here, as I recall -- saying the iPad would be a huge flop both because of its funny name and because tablet computers already existed and the market had largely rejected them.

We got our air fryer during the pandemic, when everyone was legally required to either buy one or an Instant Pot, and discovered we loved it. Lots of frozen food that's extremely mediocre in the microwave is restaurant quality in the air fryer and it's just as easy to use for all ages.

We actually used ours until it died and then bought a bigger and better one. It gets more use than our microwave does now.

Microsoft and Android phones already had features that were later rebranded by Apple years later, packed in a prettier package with a locked down ecosystem, and given fancy names to make people thing that Apple created those features.

 

[Ryujin]

The Fad Police are on their way to your door now.

The Fad Police, they live inside of my head...

 

[CleverNickName]

We must have missed that statute, we didn't acquire either.

I'm not really immune to trends either. During the Covind-19 pandemic, I didn't update my kitchen with the newest fads--instead, I went backwards by a couple hundred years and started making sourdough. I also got into food preservation, which I posted about a few thousand posts ago in this thread.

Same for my cookbooks: I got Max Miller's Tasting History for Christmas, and B. Dylon Hollis's Baking Yesteryear for my birthday...and they're about as trendy and hipster-y as it gets. I guess I'm more interested in food history than "new" kitchen tech.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have a fair understanding of probabilities and statistics (after almost failing the course in high school and later having one of the top 3 marks in college), but the human brain doesn't work like that. We're risk averse, by nature, and our lizard brains only tell us "BAD THING! RUN!!"

Well, what it comes down to is that the majority of the human race has always had only a limited ability to rationally assess a lot of things (and this isn't a smack at human rationality; its the recognition that any given human just doesn't know a lot about a number of things) so we're stuck with playing pattern recognition for danger.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have not purchased an air fryer because I have A) a toaster oven with convection features and B) a wall oven with convection features.

Its not uncommon for slightly upscale toaster/convection ovens to also be used as air fryers. Only reason I never much used that function of our last one was the grill that was used to get the proper result was a bugger to clean.