On May 18, 2019, three of my classmates and I created an Instagram account named Oc Unraveled for our English project. Originally, we had so many marvelous and complicated ideas that we didn’t really know where to pin our minds. At that point, we decided it was best to brainstorm out ideas out on a piece of paper … and so we did. After doing so, we came up with making a “foodie” Instagram account. We all shared the common bond of trying new, delicious foods! We decided to name the account Oc Unraveled because our posts would be dedicated to the different food, drink, and specialty places locally in Orange County. After creating the account, we were onto our next step: growing a large platform and posting our new food adventures!

“Wow, yeah … I really like that idea. OC Unraveled is a good username, I like that too.” – Mr. Theriault

I happened to be the first person to post on the account and I started the account off with one of my favorite places to eat at … Banzai Bowls in Huntington Beach! I took a photo of my delicious “Maui Sunrise” and added some filters to make it more appealing to the public eye. From there, I wrote up a caption describing everything about Banzai Bowls, the food they offer, their service, prices, and much more! Off the bat, I gained likes through the use of hashtags and tagging Banzai Bowls. Best of all, they liked our photo which I believe aided in more insights to our new account! Things were looking up, and it was only one post.

As time passed on, my partners (Alexis Ly, Michelina Nguyen, Chloe Nguyen) began to post about their food experiences as well. We turned out to have a lot more fun than we initially thought we would because the input from our followers and the public were very kind and uplifting. We got some comments reading “Insightful caption”, “Yum!”, and “Wow!”. We proceeded to do the same thing back to other food accounts to not only grow the following on our account but also to see the style of other people.

“Aww that is so cute, I’m going to follow it right now! The food looks so good omg” – Ivy Le (my best friend)

Mr. Theriault eventually had us make a slide about the 5 why’s on our project and to give a little information on it. It is summed up in the picture below:

As a group, we had a lot of success with this account. Thinking that it would just be a fun and small little experience, it genuinely grew into something much larger to us. We’ve found a lot of respect for the food community and are motivated to post more when we get positive reactions from our followers. As of now our most-liked post is of Cauldron Ice Cream with 65 likes!

With this project, we have not encountered many problems, if anything, none at all! That is probably the most rewarding part of this account because the success of it just depends on us. It depends on if we continue to consistently post and try to institute a more public outreach through hashtags and interactions. And so far, we have been doing just fine with that! There is nothing I would change about how we have taken on this project because everything seems to have been working out in our favors. The only struggle I can think of is the hassle of having to go through many steps for one single post. In doing so, I must first crop the picture and add filters to make it look for aesthetic. I then have to do research on the place and write up a substantial caption in hopes of informing our followers! It is a lot of work but at the end of the day it is worth every second we are spending. The most fantastic part of this project is that we have not only done it for a grade but we want to continue this for as long as we can, outside of class/school. We have discovered a sort of joy and passion for merely sharing food places we have tried within the county. Thank you to Mr. Theriault for enabling us to think of this great account and go Oc Unraveled (don’t forget to follow us on Instagram)!