HT: gwern

Tryfon Tolides: an almost pure empty poetry

Mrs. Moldbug once explained a terribly useful concept to me: the idea of Seventeen magazine. The point of Seventeen is that it's not for 17-year-olds. It's for 14-year-olds. As they say in the marketing department, it's aspirational.

Starbucks, similarly, is aspirational. If you're anyone who's anyone and you live in San Francisco or Berkeley, you will not set foot inside a Starbucks. (I once had this horrible fat hippie woman tell me this at a party. She was boasting that never once, in her entire life, had she patronized Starbucks. I couldn't help but be impressed.) No, if you are a proper Bay Area Brahmin, you go to Peet's, which costs about 10% more and really does have better coffee. Or, better yet, you go to an actual independent local cafe, which certainly sells "fair-trade" coffee and probably has some kind of Communist revolutionary theme. (My first date with Mrs. Moldbug was at the now-deceased Cafe Macondo, which was basically a shrine to Patrice Lumumba.)

The point of Starbucks is that it allows an enormous slice of America, a slice certainly far bigger than the 20% or so who can actually claim to be Brahmins, to feel like they are part of the ruling class for 15 minutes or so. Perhaps it is different in Omaha, but what you see when you go into a Starbucks in SF is Vaisyas, Vaisyas, Vaisyas. Good ordinary people, who get to pay $3 for a pretty good coffee, and feel like they went to Harvard and work for a nonprofit.

This kind of cultural and social commentary is what I most enjoy reading from Moldbug, I have to resist the urge to quote the entire thing. For the meaning of "Vasiyas" and "Brahmin" see here.