Wanting Black Coffee in a World of Expanding Options

Even though cartoons and skits over the last decade have made fun of exotic coffee drinks by suggesting it’s hard to just get a regular coffee these days, this has never happened. No one is being turned away from Starbucks for asking to buy a black coffee. So why is this scenario repeated as if regular coffee drinkers are being excluded? Jason Pargin explains:

This exaggeration is of a world that doesn’t exist. No one took his black coffee from him. All that happened is that the range of options for other people were expanded. He perceived that as persecution as if his choice was taken away. Most people are not satisfied to simply have the option to live the life the way they want. They also want to feel normal. They want to walk around and see that most other people have made the same choice that they have made. If they see that, over time, their preference has become less popular, and even worse, is seen as being base or unsophisticated, they will perceive the mere existence of those other options as a criticism of them, even if they’ve never heard anyone voice that criticism. There is basic psychological comfort in knowing that you are conforming to what the world wants and in the reassurance that that world is not going to change.

It’s not about the coffee. It’s the fear that if everybody else stops drinking coffee the way I drink it then I will become an outcast. That is scary to someone who is suddenly remembering how they have always treated outcasts.