On February 3rd, Tumblr user Relientk used the site’s then-recently released poll feature to list several common baking ingredients. “Okay let’s bake a cake,” the poll urged. There were no further instructions, no rules. Users’ votes just implicitly set the percentage of things like butter, flour, sugar… and vanilla extract.
If you’re already a Tumblr user, you know how this went. The resulting cake recipe was 44 percent vanilla — briefly turning the phrase “vanilla…
