The Crust Situation

The internet has discovered a reliable business model: pretend we forgot how to do something obvious, then teach us how to do it in 2,500 words.

This is how we arrived at homemade Uncrustable recipes.

An Uncrustable is a commercial peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich with the crust removed and the edges sealed. It is a convenience product built to imitate one of the easiest homemade meals in human history. That is fine. Convenience does not need a defense. Sometimes a frozen sandwich is exactly the amount of lunch a person can manage.

The trouble begins when the internet decides we need extensive instruction for recreating that shortcut at home.

A homemade Uncrustable is a copy of a shortcut to something that was already easy. The original process was: put peanut butter and jelly on bread, put the bread together, and remove the crust if desired. Four movements. Perhaps five if the jelly lid is stubborn.

Now there are special cutters, crimping tools, freezer systems, thawing recommendations, filling ratios, storage charts, troubleshooting guides, and eleven 'creative variations' for the person who apparently reached the sandwich stage of life without encountering bread.

This is not a recipe problem. It is an Internet Crust problem.

Internet Crust is the unnecessary layer of manufactured difficulty added to a simple task so the task can support more content. It is the explanation wrapped around the explanation. It is the equipment list for an action that requires no equipment. It is the personal journey placed between the reader and the one sentence they came to find.

The crust is not the useful information. The crust is everything that had to be added because the useful information was too small to monetize.

A person searching for how long to boil an egg does not need to hear about the writer's childhood summers at a farmhouse where eggs represented patience. A person asking how to clean a microwave does not need seven products, a downloadable checklist, and a method called the Three-Zone Steam Reset. A person trying to freeze a sandwich does not require a 'complete guide' to bread architecture.

But the internet cannot leave a simple answer alone. A simple answer ends the visit.

So the answer must be expanded. First comes the problem nobody knew they had. Then the importance of solving it correctly. Then the list of common mistakes. Then the special tool. Then the affiliate link to the special tool. Then the substitutions, the frequently asked questions, the storage notes, and the related recipes. By the time the reader reaches the instruction, the sandwich has acquired a project manager.

That is the Crust Situation: the content surrounding the thing becomes larger than the thing.

The absurdity is not limited to food. It appears anywhere the internet needs a continuous supply of searchable material. We get systems for writing three-item grocery lists. Morning routines that require a flowchart. 'Ultimate guides' to sending a follow-up email. Ten-step methods for choosing a notebook. Entire philosophies of placing leftovers into a container and putting the container into the refrigerator.

Ordinary competence is being repackaged as specialist knowledge so the content often works by destabilizing the reader first. It suggests that the obvious method may be incomplete, inefficient, unhealthy, wasteful, unoptimized, or somehow embarrassing. You were not merely cutting the crust from a sandwich. You were cutting it incorrectly. You did not know because nobody had yet explained edge pressure, filling migration, freezer burn, and the emotional consequences of using the wrong bread.

Once confidence has been removed, expertise can be sold back and this is why Internet Crust feels so maddening. It does not merely provide unnecessary information. It quietly teaches people to distrust their ability to perform basic human tasks without external instruction. It turns 'I can probably figure this out' into 'I should search first.' It makes intuition feel irresponsible.

The search engine is then flooded with pages answering questions that only exist because the pages convinced us the task was complicated. The content creates the uncertainty that justifies more content. The crust grows thicker.

There is nothing wrong with a genuinely useful guide. Some simple-looking tasks contain hidden safety issues, technical constraints, or techniques worth learning. Good instruction reduces friction. It identifies the part that is actually difficult and helps the reader move through it.

Internet Crust does the opposite. It manufactures friction so it can perform the rescue.

A useful test is simple: after reading the page, does the task feel clearer, or does the writer seem to have invented a profession around it? Did the explanation return confidence to the reader, or did it establish that future sandwiches should be attempted only under expert supervision?

We have confused the amount of content with the amount of value. A long page can be useful. A short page can be useless. The problem is not length by itself. The problem is pretending that every ordinary action contains a hidden master class because the page needs enough material to rank, retain, recommend, and sell.

Sometimes the honest answer is four lines. Put peanut butter on one piece of bread. Put jelly on the other. Press them together. Cut off the crust.

That answer is terrible for the content machine because it leaves no room for a product ecosystem. It does not require a backstory. It does not need a branded method, or a user-journey. It gives the reader what they asked for and releases them back into their life.

Which may be the most radical thing a page can do now.