Here’s a piece from The Ringer’s Katie Baker about a Facebook group called “Rootitoot Instant Pot Recipes & Help,” started by a 63-year-old Canadian woman named Ruth McCusker, about the Instant Pot — a group that, in two years, grew to more than 92,000 members. As Baker explains:
For as influential as Rootitoot is, though, what always differentiated McCusker most was that she was no influencer. Besides her books, she didn’t hawk merch. She didn’t seek engagement on Twitter. There were no YouTube tutorials with her face on them, or Alison Roman–style hashtagged viral recipes and Instagram story Q&As. I have thousands of friends on Facebook and exactly zero of them follow Rootitoot, which practically seems like it would be an algorithmic impossibility. But I love it that way: It has the effect of making this group feel like my important little secret, like all the ones I once got to have on the increasingly distant internet of my youth, the one that enabled me to indulge in weird enthusiasms (DMB, hockey) with like-minded users without my friends and coworkers getting notifications about my dorky activity.
The whole thing is a fantastic tribute to a woman who started an amazing community online. Read the piece here.