Previously Bored Panda spoke with Ross McGinnes, the founder of the ‘We Want Plates’ community. Ross started the campaign in 2015 after a friend posted a picture of an average-sized steak on Facebook, which had been served to him on a large chopping board.

“It was captioned, unironically, 'That is a big meal!' It wasn't a big meal—he'd fallen for all this style-over-content hipster gastropub nonsense,” he recounted. Then, Ross searched Twitter for an account which would allow him to vent his spleen with like-minded people, but he found nothing. That’s how We Want Plates was created. Today, the project has 900,000 followers across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit.

McGinnes also noted that some restaurants put food on strange things because they want to try to impress their customers. Sometimes, that turns against them. “My local pub used to do a great Sunday roast: twelve quid, piled high, tasted great and yes, it came on a plate. One weekend they added a quirky offering to the menu: little sandwiches, pies, dainty cakes and mini milkshakes served on a miniature picnic bench. The benches, painted bright pink and yellow, sat on top of tables seating actual grown adults. And what was the first thing these infantilized diners did? It wasn't to try the food—it was to whip out their phones and take a picture.”

“Over the following months the picnic benches became increasingly popular, coinciding with the specials board becoming progressively smaller, before it eventually disappeared altogether,” Ross told us. He remembered sitting there one Sunday, watching bench after garish bench emerge from the kitchen like a technicolor carnival of idiocy, before his usual roast arrived.

“The meat was cold and the potatoes were burnt. It was once their main Sunday trade, but the traditional roast had died an unpalatable death. But that’s OK because they were doing a roaring trade with the benches, right? Sure, until the pub down the road started doing them too. Then the one around the corner.”

Ross recounted that before you know it, everyone’s doing the same ‘quirky’ thing. “Except it’s not ‘quirky’ anymore because you can’t move for mini picnic benches and now all their roast dinners are rubbish to boot,” he told us.