a few years ago when putting my toddler to bed, i was looking for calm videos to show him and for some reason i stumbled upon this channel: mini tasty. the premise is fairly simple: this person makes extremely tiny, immaculately decorated, cakes and similar food items.
i actually really like this channel–i think the craftmanship on display is actually stunning (her buttercream piping is unbelievably precise!), and the little skits are cute and fun. of course, no comment on whether the cakes are tasty, or how kosher the whole production is, but as a thing to watch i find it quite entertaining while also being very relaxing and pretty harmless.
anyway, i bring this up because i was watching a few in a row using related searches, and i noticed that one i clicked on was just a tiny bit different than the previous one–notably the piping was way sloppier (though still extremely impressive for being so small) and the music was different. at first i thought maybe it was an older video and she had gotten better… but actually, it turns out that there are dozens of different channels doing the EXACT same bit. look at this!
why are there so many of these? and why are they so unbelievably indistinguishable? aside from obviously making extremely similar cakes and similar thumbnails (which you can chalk down to copycat behavior of a successful formula), it’s striking how much is the exact same across all these videos: they all do these kinda quirky little skits, they all use stock sound effects (often the exact same ones!), similar music on a similar volume, extremely similar camera angle and quality, and a ton of the tools are even the same ones (maybe this can be explained because there might just not be that many tiny little kitchen tools out there that look the part). i have such an urge to get to the bottom of how this happened… is there a tutorial that tells you how to do this in excruciating detail? is this like a franchising program? is there a giant “mini cake house” where all these people record? what’s going on???
the funny thing is–once i noticed this i started to have real opinions about who is doing a better job. mini tasty is still my favorite, i think her piping is unmatched and her skits are generally a bit funnier. also she has one stock song that i really like (the fly guy five – bubble bee), i don’t think the other channels use that one. no idea if she is actually the first person to come up with this, it’s impossible to know i guess.
and of course i have to bring this up: this is one of those things that’s appealing BECAUSE of the obvious human effort and craftsmanship that goes into making the videos, from having the pristine set dressing, using the fingers for acting and even stop motion for the little skits (another time-consuming process!), to the designs and execution. in other words the very opposite of AI slop.
anyway it’s just a funny and interesting little corner of the internet that i wanted to share with y’all. i hope she’s doing well!
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