#82 - I Like My Coffee Like I Like My [Personality]

I’ve been going to my corner bakery a lot this week. It’s a combination of craving their croissants and being too lazy to make coffee some mornings.

It’s a sweet little place with two huge displays of cookies, cannolis, and tiny cheesecakes. They have freshly baked baguettes that I used to devour on the daily when I was going through my Sexy French Depression phase last winter.

It’s the cheapest coffee around, the line moves quickly, and the ladies who work there are hilariously New York in attitude. I love it. My block always smells like warm bread in the morning. Heaven!

But recently, there’s been an uptick in latte orders.

Now, does the bakery offer specialty coffee drinks? Sure! In the same way every place is now required to because of the starbucksification of coffee consumption. Coffee is no longer a drink, it’s a personality trait. People have to have their order and have seemingly no regard for where they’re actually placing it.

Look, this bakery is not the spot for a lavender oat milk latte! I’m so sorry!! I know we’re barely over the border of Bushwick but I promise there are several dozen other places that will happily cater to that order. It’s like, their whole brand.

(Pulling a shot takes a minute! There’s a line out the door! And when these customers read the vibe that is emanating off of the staff and line they get so weirdly defensive. Like people can order what they want, but they can also be self-aware enough to understand why their order might cause some tension. (And they better fucking tip.))

Does it really matter that they’re getting a latte? No! Of course not.

But there’s something so quintessential in our culture about coffee discourse. I think it’s weird that people use their beverage preferences to define themselves. There’s a rigidity and a peculiar sense of creating a ~signature.

You know, the whole true love is someone else knowing your coffee order.

Like, coffee is great! And I’m thrilled to romanticize the mundanity of daily life!! I’m really not knocking coffee or liking it or even ordering lattes (I just think being aware of the appropriateness of said order should be considered) (also a dude got a latte and when asked what milk haughtily replied half-and-half and I’ll be honest I had never even considered that would have been an option)! It’s good to have small things that bring us joy that can be procured pretty easily!

What’s weird is fixating on what the order says about us as people. And retaining rigidity around something that can absolutely change depending on the situation.

Is ordering a black coffee somehow better than ordering it with almond milk? Have we ascribed a points system to modifications?? Is there an unspoken coffee order rank of cool to uncool?

The first summer I moved to New York, I started taking my coffee black solely because everyone I was hanging out with did. There was something that seemed so Grown Up about it to little 19-year-old me. (I also was self-conscious about being the only one whose coffee had milk in it, because when you grow up fat every single food choice has a weird overhanging stigma that eventually becomes self-ascribed. Better eat only salad in public lest someone look over and thinks “Aha! That’s why!!” And while that feels silly and kind of wild to admit to, it’s also not a made up assumption I have. People have gall when it comes to commenting about my choices. I’ve had people not only comment on the food I ordered but offer “suggestions” for how to make it less caloric. It’s such a bonkers overstep! When I lived with a fellow large-bodied roommate in college, she would make me hold the Taco Bell we had gotten as we walked back to our apartment through the downtown area. Like, as if passersby would just idk…assume I had ordered two large sodas and was going to consume the contents of the bag alone. All these tacos, just for me! Anyway, fatphobia is just a weird type of brain rot and no one escapes its judgemental clutches until we consciously decide to!!!) Maturing past that age into a full human adult has meant divorcing my wants from the desired outcomes I projected onto other people and understanding to want what I wanted regardless of others.

(And now, I like black coffee just fine! I get it whenever I’m at a place that makes really good coffee. It’s probably my most ordered form of the drink. When I was going on job hunts, a lot of interviews took place at a ‘coffee shop next door’. It always got a mention from the interviewer if I didn’t add anything to it. Especially when a man was interviewing me. I got called “hardcore” several times when in like half of those situations my choice was really dictated by how annoying I thought it would be to make it to the milk station.)

When I was younger I was obsessed with having signatures. My personality felt like it was a mosaic of traits cobbled together in ways that I felt were unique and noticeable. I needed a lot of attention and I also wanted my life to feel like a movie. Several of those decisions linger because they are integrated so thoroughly. I have nice handwriting because I wanted to have noticeably nice handwriting in high school. I say it’s because it’s the fastest way to get my thoughts down but that’s just a fun side-effect. I craved admiration so deeply I was constantly embarrassed of my own actions that were solely embarked on in order to ascertain it. The books I was reading at the time all emphasized the main character having a red lipstick she was known for, a quippy catchphrase, and an accessory they were never seen without. So I thought it was the way to fit in.

It’s easier than ever to be a “type” of person. We can so easily put ourselves into boxes, and define our personalities by what we consume (and what consumes us).

When I worked for a dog food startup the office was in a WeWork. Every single woman I passed in the hallway wore an outfit bought directly from ShopBop’s home page edit. Not even different pants to go with the top, just copy & paste from the model. One of my bosses told me she “needs to use Kiehls to feel like a person in the morning” as her way of describing what motivates her to go to the gym. (The gym, of course, is Equinox where they exclusively stock Kiehls because having a fancy soap—I do really actually love their bar soap but that’s not what’s stocked in the communal showers—makes people feel fancy and superior.) I would eventually stumble upon an essay she had written for the blog titled “If my apartment burned down there’s nothing I would save.” Like ???? and also !!!!! I think that’s the biggest alarm bell one’s brain could possibly be sounding.

A home is a space we fill with things that bring us joy. A joyless home filled with objects devoid of sentiment is one of the saddest spaces I can imagine.

But looking back, she was an amalgamation of what she thought she should be. She got a puppy even though she was fundamentally not a dog person because she felt pressure to be one anyway—she was, after all, the co-founder of a dog food brand. Not only was she denying her own nature, but she was also making herself miserable to try and fit in. And the dog was miserable too! (She eventually silently rehomed it and never mentioned him again, even to me, the person she had hired to take care of him on my off days.) And I don’t think she knew how to define herself beyond the notion of what was cool. These girls would spend the first half of any meeting coming up with ~witty titles for the daily playlists we were forced to listen to at the office. “One day, these might be the names of conference rooms in our office building.” Okaaaay feels like the priorities are a little…skewed. Or like, non-existent. (They wanted to be Tech Startup Girlies, they claimed their DTC dog food company’s product was not the literal food but rather the “community” they were making. They were a “tech” company. Who sold dog food. They were also late to every single meeting they ever put on gcal. Ah, the venture-funded bullshit economy!)

Anyway! As someone who constantly thought about what others were thinking about me, it was a jarring space to be in because it became abundantly clear that they were all following the same imaginary set of rules and had decided to define their personalities through whatever protein bowl du jour they consumed that week. And I just thought they were lame. New York isn’t a place to pose, it’s a place to be weird and get a little dirty and be messy and outrageous for the sake of being alive and in this place. Why live here if you don’t want to take the Subway and be around people? Is it because they were told it was a cool place to be by someone else?!

Coffee as a personality trait is not new. I would even place a good chunk of the blame for the cultural dedication surrounding coffee on sitcoms from the 90s (and especially Gilmore Girls where they not only consumed coffee but other characters constantly commented on the amount they drank). “____ is not a personality trait” discourse is boring and mostly tired, but I think it speaks to the lack of personalities people actually have that they define themselves in these small ways.

What happens when they want to order something different? Do they allow themselves even those small changes or are they fixated beyond curiosity? What happens when communities become so niche and friends are made exclusively through one shared interest?

I get so scared when I see people post about how they don’t know what to think/feel in response to media until they see an analysis done by someone else. How videos without comment sections make them afraid they’re reacting “wrong” because they have no one to check it against.

It’s not that our choices don’t define us, I just think every choice having to add to some overarching narrative about Who We Are is not a healthy way to look at the world. Brands want our consumption patterns to mean something because that’s good for their bottom line. When they have a dedicated fanbase, they pay less for marketing their product. Even anti-marketing is a form of marketing! Advertisers would really love to connect more dots and create links of what “kind of person” spends their money with them because it just makes their jobs easier.

Apparently on TikTok this week a creator clearly put on false lashes while advertising a mascara. It’s not new for brands to be dishonest and use falsies while doing ads for makeup, but people are now debating whether or not the brand created a false outrage for engagement. Because a mascara recommendation isn’t going to get a lot of attention on its own, but now everyone is out here making “honest review” videos and discussing how they “never liked [that content creator] in the first place” and questioning if she’ll weather the storm she’s put herself in. The hashtag is taking off! And honestly, the creator will be fine as long as she keeps posting. The internet has a short fucking attention span. (Also somehow Jeffree Starr has decided to pop back into the fold during this mess (because he is an out-and-out misogynist who will always parlay other people’s drama for his own gain) and somehow people are…excited about this?? As if he wasn’t held “accountable” for his blatant and continued racism like a year ago? No memory of any of this apparently exists!) We have become savvy enough to understand there may be more at play in any given advertisement, but not savvy enough to not fall for the outrage bait.

And that’s all it is! Bait!

It’s bait!!!

It’s baaaaaait.

(Also just a side note: I’ve never regretted getting rid of my tiktok and think it’s probably one of the best things I did for myself last year and it was surprisingly easy once I deleted the app. I am also aware that in illustrating the bait, I have engaged with it. Alas!)

Creating consumers with rigid and repetitive buying habits creates a sense of comfort for a particular brand. Capitalistic ventures should not be considered friendly. The ~warm and fuzzy vibes might come from an authentic place, but people have emotions and brands have manipulation techniques to evoke them. We’ve all seen the Carousel pitch in Mad Men. Like, I’m not revealing something new. I think the way it shows up in the tiny moments is what’s interesting.

Preferences don’t have to define our personalities. I am not an amalgamation of content consumed. I am a person, who is highly self-critical (but working on it), who cares deeply about the world, and who watches shows and movies and listens to music because consuming art is as fun as it is primarily important for the soul.

(Last week I had to not roll my eyes at my date tip-toeing around his judgemental ask of if I liked Taylor Swift or not. He, by the way, couldn’t tell me what he didn’t like about her music per se, he’s just been told he should reject the very premise of her as an important artist by culture. And that like pop music is bullshit or whatever.
He lit up when I talked about George Harrison yet did not like my observation that pop music is one of the most important genres. The Beatles grew artistically, sure, but they were always a pop band. Wanting to slap a different label on them to distance their later career (the band was together for seven years but whatever distinction helps them feel better I guess) is clearly driven by the misogynistic need to distance being A Fan Of The Beatles from the original fandom of young women who catapulted them to their fame. A great pop song is one that sounds like it’s always existed. Hold Me Tight and Lover operate on the same level for me, but hey, that’s just me!)

The importance comes from the emphasis we place on the subjects we want to draw attention to. What do we bond over? What do we share? What do we keep for ourselves? How do we maintain privacy in a world increasingly determined to mine our data points for profit?

So.

What does your coffee order say about you?

It says you wanted some coffee. And it really doesn’t have to say much more.