There’s a lump of herb butter resting on a flat grey stone. A mixed grill is served on a spade. A pile of pasta arrives in a galvanised pail. The members of We Want Plates have a simple response to these affronts: a demand that restaurants serve food on plates, as God intended, not “on bits of wood and roof tiles”.
We Want Plates is a community on Reddit, a collection of online forums (or “subreddits”) that describes itself as “the front page of the internet”. There are more than 100,000 active communities, and We Want Plates is comparatively popular, ranking in the top 10,000 subreddits in terms of monthly comments. Other communities address more serious topics, from finding housing in Brighton, to the side effects of antidepressants, to an apparently limitless array of sexual desires and practices.