Emily Articulated: Coffee (shop) filters

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

I had a thought the other day, and it was something along the lines of, “Do I even like the clothes I pick out for myself? I feel like I like them, but I also used to feel more certain that I liked them.”

I had the same sort of thought as I went with my partner to pick out countertops for our kitchen remodel. “Why can’t I picture what my kitchen would look like with countertops in this color? Do I really like this color?”

These kinds of questions have been cropping up more frequently, not because I’m suffering some sort of amnesia or identity crisis (at least I think I’m not), but because I was introduced to another question by Kyle Chayka, staff writer for the New Yorker, and author of several books on internet and culture.

Chaykra asked, “Why do so many coffee shops look the same?”

He was drawn to this question because he, like me, spends a lot of time in coffee shops. And he started noticing creeping similarities in aesthetics, both online and in person, in coffee shops around the world. He described these similar cafes with “plentiful daylight through large storefront windows; industrial-size wood tables for accessible seating; [and] a bright interior with walls painted white or covered in subway tiles.” They were places he, an “internet-brained millennial acutely conscious of his own taste — would want to go to.”

Adding to his mental image, my own imagination included Edison light bulbs, exposed brick, viney-plants and an Instagram feature wall.

Chaykra’s observation-turned-obsession was that these cafes — built in disparate cities by unique individuals, often separated by whole oceans — were suffering from sameness. It led him to write

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

. 

Published in January, Chaykra posited in the book that, “the growth of Instagram gave international cafe owners and baristas a way to follow one another in real time and gradually, via algorithmic recommendations, begin consuming the same kinds of content. One cafe owner’s personal taste would drift toward what the rest of them liked, too, eventually coalescing.” 

He added: “On the customer side, Yelp, Foursquare and Google Maps drove people like me — who could also follow the popular coffee aesthetics on Instagram — toward cafes that conformed with what they wanted to see by putting them at the top of searches or highlighting them on a map.”

This combination of narrowing exposure to differing styles, while on a consumer-driven level also incentivizing a specific aesthetic, meant that coffee shops began unconsciously conforming to a standard — a standard that we, the consumers, hold them to. Coffee shop owners can’t just have good coffee and strong Wi-Fi, they have to signal they have those things with white subway tile backsplashes and reclaimed wood furniture, all beautifully captured in images shared online.

The same consumer- and algorithmic-driven pressures have seeped into almost all facets of culture to which we are exposed. The clothing brands I’m served on my feeds, the interior design products I’m sold, the movies I’m recommended on Netflix and the songs I’m nudged to listen to on Spotify are all carefully curated to capture my attention, keep me comfortable and (hopefully) engage me long enough to sell me something.

“The algorithm” and how it affects our engagement is far from an unexplored idea. But it’s also worth continuing to check in on, at a personal level. When we’re consuming so much, it’s important to ask, “Do I really like this, or have I just been inundated with it?”

The truth is, there’s discomfort in an un-algorithmic world. I might stumble upon a coffee shop — instead of searching for it ahead of time — just to learn that the beans are burnt. I might not like every song I hear when playing a whole album (instead of just listening to the one song I was served). I might watch a movie that makes me uncomfortable (because it’s not a feel-good quirky comedy with a 98% match to my existing taste). And the bed and breakfast I randomly pull into might end up smelling like cat pee.

But, also, it might not. I might find the perfect cafe with the unphotogenic nooks and crannies that feel so good to sit and read in. I might grow to love a song that felt odd during the first listen, growing my taste in music a little more with it. And I might end up sitting across the table from my bed and breakfast hosts late into the night, drinking wine and talking about life, travel and the wonder of meaningful, yet fleeting connections.

I think this reflection might mean I’m one step closer to that off-grid, homestead life, where I knit all my clothes, start my own sourdough and spend my days caring for my herd of Highland cows… Wait, shit. I think that’s an Instagram account, too. 

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.