I thing I decided late in life is that being really into things is cool.
Something I'm rather sad about is that highschool kinda beat that attitude out of me. I was a classic nerd, including all the bad attributes that label comes with, but also one really good one: I was really into a number of things. But I learned from hard experience that being super into stuff was lame - being disinterested and too cool for stuff was hip. I internalized that attitude.
Even into adulthood, I occasionally find myself making fun of people for being into specific things. I eventually made myself a rule: if someone really enjoys something that's not hurting anyone, that's an admirable trait. It's easy to obey this rule for things I like: science fiction, fancy beer, programming. It's not too hard to obey this rule for things that I'm not personally into, but are culturally adjacent to me: classical music, literature, skiing, fancy coffee. It's harder for things that are not as cool among my social group. I sometimes have to remind myself that being super into football, nascar, or the bachelorette is just as admirable as being into my things. Un-ironic enthusiasm is one of our best traits as humans, even when directed towards things I don't personally get that excited about.
And so I'll always appreciate that coffee friend. They're lucky enough to have maintained the ability to nerd out about something and I'm glad of it.
This "too cool for stuff" sounds like US culture. I never experienced that kind of thing in EU. We each had our own friend groups, and didn't really care what the other groups were into.
I once heard an artist say (can't remember which one), that they loved playing in Europe, since everyone at a festival is there to have fun. While in US, everyone is there to look cool.
I wish this was true but unfortunately, I must disagree with saying that it is different in Europe. In France, 10 years ago, high-school was a constant lookout for who's the 'popular' kids (literally called like that). And reversely, nerds kid would often be made fun of, or socially excluded from breaks / activities. However, i have talked about this before with my wife who's from Italy and said that she never experienced this in Italy, apparently it was like you described: groups of friends, into studying and trying to make it to the next year. I wish it was like that in France.
However, I very much enjoy the original's post analysis about 'being into things', I think it's just brilliantly exposed !
So controversial anecdote:
I was an exchange student in france (from denmark) for a few months - when i was around 14. And i was shocked to my core when i saw how teachers and the schoolsystem was put together.
There was a boy in my class that had difficulties at home and struggled in school (daydreaming instead of focusing etc) and i clearly remember this scene where the teacher mocked him infront of the class saying stuff like "looking out the window again are we, no wonder you're slow and stupid when you dont participate" - queue the other kids laughing.
This happened across classes, multiple times with different people.
The teachers where petty, confrontational towards other with differing opinions and did not enjoy being challenged in any ways, shape or form.
(I landed myself at the principals office multiple time by defending the vulnerable ones against draconic teachers) - and i'm not sure if it's still allowed - but i witnessed multiple times where teachers hit students.
(This was a "good" school btw.)
It was clearly an institutional culture, and they didn't know what to do with me because i came from the complete opposite and had the moral highground constantly - the kids where sad when i went back, the teachers (& principal) happy.
Oh, and the actual level of teaching was super bad, all learning by hearth - no "think for yourself", composition or divergent thinking allowed
Was it in a private or public school? Anecdotal but I've never seen that when I was in school in the 90s. Friends who went to "good" private schools though complained about public shaming and had similar experiences to the one you had.
Also in terms of teaching, I actually appreciated the fact that we had a lot of compositions that emphasised critical thinking (more so than I had when I went to Germany for 6 months as an exchange student). Wonder if that's because things have changed since the 90s or if it's due to the private/public school difference.
On the other hand, I was very heavily bullied in middle school but that was by other kids not by professors. And once I got to High school the bullying completely stopped.
It's a pointless effort to box the whole Europe into one stereotype, it's too diverse for that.
From my POV, the school social structure in USA seems very "schematic". Like there are popular kids and they look like this and have these attitudes, then there are geeks who are socially awkward and physically weak, then there are jocks etc.
My experience from growing up in Czechia was way more "random". There are kids who are more prominent than others, of course, but there aren't really many stereotypes to them. Some of them are dumb, but many of them are also pretty smart and have strong interests. All these people qualities are there, but they are not strongly categorized and appear in various permutations.
There's no good translation for "geek/nerd/jock" in Czech, like you would probably need to spend 2/3 sentences to explain each of them. You can translate "popular kid" literally, but it's not a concept being used. Kids of course still associate into various cliques, they just aren't "schematic".
>From my POV, the school social structure in USA seems very "schematic". Like there are popular kids and they look like this and have these attitudes, then there are geeks who are socially awkward and physically weak, then there are jocks etc.
What are the odds your POV is coming from television and movies?
It surely comes from television and movies, that's where I first got to know it. And for many years I thought that this is just a media illusion.
But seeing real conversations using those stereotypes ("I was your typical nerd kid at school") here, on reddit and even talking to people IRL convinced me that this "caste system" does actually exist in real life (of course not to the overblown degree shown in movies).
I saw that in movies but not in real life going to HS in the US. People had friend groups but it wasn't uber-insular. The star quarterback can't really call you out for being a nerd when you're in the same calculus class
“It's a pointless effort to box the whole Europe into one stereotype, it's too diverse for that.
“From my POV, the school social structure in USA seems very […]”
I agree that it’s harder to generalize over all of Europe.
FYI, the US and Europe are roughly the same population and size (ignoring, as ever, poor Alaska) — ~350 million vs ~500 million, and ~8 million square miles vs ~5 million square miles.
While the US is considerably more culturally homogeneous than Europe, it is also quite hard to generalize across the United States.
Yes, and if you include the Russian bits the size comparison changes considerably.
In my experience, when non-Europeans say “Europe” they mean something like “the union of the EU and the EEA and the UK”. They probably exclude Russia and a few of the Russian-adjacent states, and if they think of Iceland, they include the part on the North American plate as well as the Eurasian plate.
>I wish this was true but unfortunately, I must disagree with saying that it is different in Europe. In France, 10 years ago, high-school was a constant lookout for who's the 'popular' kids (literally called like that).
A lot of this is a recentish phenomenon with kids mimicking what they see in US made movies and tv series - and also a whole lot more toned down than in the US.
>And reversely, nerds kid would often be made fun of, or socially excluded from breaks / activities
As a nerd, this has always been going on everywhere, and it's basically by definition, as people describe as "nerds" not just people that are good at school and have scientific and brainy interests, but the subset of the above that are socially clumsy, not into sports and the popular social activities, etc part of being a nerd.
Kids with "nerd" interests that are also socially savvy and also like the stuff the majority does, are still popular.
So, nerds being excluded in this sense is almost a tautology, and in many areas, even happens by preference (e.g. not liking parties and drinking). Of course one could argue that we nerds would like them if those were more into our preferences, but, well, those are not the preferences of the wider school population. So this is not exactly active ostracizing, just the 90% not changing what they like to accomondate the 10%).
Would a nerd be targetted for bullying? Yes, but in the same sense that a non-nerdy "weird" kid, a kid with a disability, a fat kid, an "ugly" kid, etc. It's not particular about being a nerd, it's about being different - and it's not built into the wider structure of school life like some kind of appartheid between groups, the way it seems to be in the US. And the bullies are not groups, like the popular kids or the jocks vs the nerds, but individuals. The bullies are usually are not even popular (just the school's sadistic kids with troubled homes and no future).
There are also not explicit popularity contests built into the school life, like "the prom", cheerleading, or some jock sport being a "big thing" with official school teams and everything, which appears to be the case in the US. If anything, the equivalent of the "popular" kids in some European countries would be the "cool kids" and those are not into school sports or popularity contests at all (more like the opposite).
So, the forces at play here are not as strong as described (from accounts I've read) in the US in any European country that I know of.
I was also in a French highschool around 10 years ago but I was lucky enough to have different experience that yours. People part of the "geek" group (like myself) were never excluded from activities and had good relations with the so called popular kids.
It was a time where playing Magic the gathering was really popular so I guess that reduced the stigmatization of nerdy kids.
Can confirm (though only anecdotally). I was bullied a lot in middle school. But in high school I got into customizing Sony Ericsson mobiles (changing the font, making custom themes with their SDK), javascript programming (entered a few competitions with some fellow nerds), music and singing in the choir and the theater. Somehow those things got me respect, admiration, and a girlfriend. As the "to cool for fun" kinds were slowly adulting up, they realized I have lots of opportunity to learn stuff and to socialize, lots of confidence too (most don't even dare to sing in music class), and will get into whatever college I want with whatever customized resume I want. I had a straight vision for a career in mechanical engineering (though am currently in IT), while they struggled to find a path in life in college application season.
Nonsense. As ever so often, the German language even has an own word that kids use to deride peers who are too invested in learning stuff, or even just commit the offense of having better grades in school. Similar for other countries, I'd say European countries are no less hostile to nerdy kids than the US, at best.
It's not a US thing and not even necessarily related to being bullied in school. Lots of parents scold their children for being into useless or eclectic hobbies.
Even in a relatively more homogenous North America individual experiences are going to differ greatly. I think it's more illustrative to compare your public school years with post secondary, that's where I saw a huge difference.IMO the attributes that were mocked (and thus likely supressed) suddenly become unique and desireable. This might have been because if you somehow managed to maintain "the good type of weird" just when so many young adults were trying to figure out who they really were, you were ahead of the game.
I was the nerd-ish type as a teenager back in 1990s Eastern Europe and I don't remember getting bullied. I knew things were slightly different in the US, I mean the whole "cool girls" group thing and all, as we were able to watch stuff like Saved by the Bell [1] on TV, but that kind of atmosphere seemed strange to us at the time.
Same exact thing for me. Nerds definitely weren't getting bullied, if you were good at maths and physics maybe girls weren't into you but the "bullies" didn't really mess with people who were good at sciences(I guess partially because they had to copy their homework from someone, so keeping good relations with the "nerds" was actually a good survival strategy)
> I guess partially because they had to copy their homework from someone, so keeping good relations with the "nerds" was actually a good survival strategy
I was about to also mention the "copy homework" part, but I thought that would have sounded too specific, certainly glad that I wasn't the only one to whom that happened :) I've had a former highschool colleague thank me for everything I had helped her with during high-school at our 20 years reunion recently, she was a very smart person back then (still is) but the Physics classes just weren't for her.
As a pretty nerdish guy (Computers, space program, star trek, electronics, miniatures painting) in our central European equivalent of high school, I don't remember instances of bullying against me. Bullying was something that we were aware of, sure, but it seemed to come from (US-centered, go figure) media, and henfighting between the girls.
Its funny that this is still a thing - the only reason why bullying happens is because the culture of it is not broken by the school itself.
My kids go to a scholl where:
1: you can only ever arrange playdates or gatherings with a maximum of 2 other kids - or its the whole class
2: bullying is not allowed in any way shape or form
3: no one is allowed to exclude others from games, plays or events
4: this is rigorously enforced
5: no smartphones or the likes until 4th grade (11-12)
This is then instilled in parents and kids, any crossing of those lines is debated in a democratic way and creates a selfenforcing positive feedback
Loop
At my school, no rules - or kids - had to be "broken". It was not supression of a behaviour, the behaviour just did not exist. If people behaved badly, the group was self-governing, making clear to the offender that their behaviour was "not cool" - and thus, they weren't. If you have a cultural problem that shows itself in bullying, fire the teachers. Also consider stopping adversarial school activities.
If these rules extends to life outside of school, I would be concerned more than relieved by rules 1 and 3. We should not normalise state-level control of our private gatherings by teaching freedom of association is somehow evil in children. It also would give a group of kids no way to sanction against antisocial behaviour by another kid (cheating in a game comes to mind).
That this has the thin varnish of "democratic debate" (which, let's be honest, will be quickly overruled if the kids decide the rules are stupid) only adds the additional aspect of showing in real-life how democracy is a scam that enforces things the powers to be like to happen while giving the impression it was a majority decision.
it was not supression of a behaviour, the behaviour just did not exist
Or you just didn't see and experience it. There is more to bullying than everybody standing in a circle and openly making fun of the "nerd". Most successful bullies are very good at hiding their bullying from people they know wouldn't approve. Having had the unfortunate experience of seeing my daughter get bullied, bullies are sneaky, insidious and very good at keeping their behaviour just on the right side of plausible deniability. I fully believe that over half of her class had no idea she was being bullied.
Well added to that is that you have to take every single one in your class home for a playdate at least once, and that multiple playdates in a row with the same kids are discouraged.
It seems draconic and controlling - but it creates an incredible cohesive social group in each class
It seems like it actively discourages creating bonds and friendships in exchange of a "greater common good".
It also seems like they should have gotten an ethics committee approval on what is very obviously a psychological experiment on minors, similar to Muzafer Sherif's "Robber's Cave" [1]?
I think you have an extremely naive view of both children and bullying. My daughter goes to a school with very similar rules, and they're followed up by the school, and if you where to talk to the parents I'm sure at least half of them would claim that the school has no bullying or at least handles it very well. And despite all this, my daughter still got horribly bullied by her classmates.
No not really, was bullied myself, understands the dynamics and bullying is a group phenomenon - not a one on one.
If your peers a very aware of it not being allowed and discouraging it - you dont't get the social "credits" for applying it and it fizzles - then again if you dont learn the lesson you're expelled.
I disagree. Sure you can stop the most obvious and visible bullying, like physical altercations and obnoxious name calling, and make people generally 'behave' themselves while at school, but that just means the bullies becomes more careful and subtle, not that they stop.
I did not noticed nerd vs jock dichotomy the way Americans write about it on discussion forums at all. Nothing similar to movies stereotypes either.
And my experience from my school is not like that either. You could have been "geek" or "nerd" or onto something and no one cared. Being good at something was cool or neutral.
While some 'nerds' certainly did (and do) get bullied, in my experience they where just as likely to get bullied by other 'nerds' as they where to get bullied by 'jocks'. You didn't get bullied because you played D&D or Warhammer or where good at math, you got bullied because you where weird and anti-social and unable to successfully navigate the unwritten social norms expected of you. Lots of people got straight A's in math and science and played Warhammer and had no problem with bullying.
It depends on what you call 'nerd' I guess. I learned myself how to program at 14. Never got bullied for that, and my friends all thought that was cool.
Did kids get bullied? Sure. But it had more to do with social awkwardness than certain interests or school results.
And for the 'popular kids', I could not define who the popular kids in my school could be. Not all girls would try to hang out with certain guys. Each girl had their own interests and that could differ a lot. A concept like a "prom king or queen" for me is totally out of this world. I cannot imagine that concept in my youth, and could also have no clue who the hell would be nominated for such a thing. In my adult life now? Sure, probably the guy with the successful business driving the sports car. In my youth, no idea, nobody stood out like that.
I went to Infest (an industrial music festival) in Bradford quite a lot (sadly it looks like Bradford Uni are not doing events any more, so there might not be another one unless they find a venue :-/ ). It was more like an industrial music *conference* than a festival - you'd be hard-pressed to throw a tennis ball anywhere in the venue without hitting some highly-regarded musician. Like, you watch a big-name band on stage, and then ten minutes later you're standing at the bar with them comparing curry houses (and Bradford has a lot of those). There's a Green Room, sure, but the interesting people are out front watching bands.
I feel like the US's focus on high school sports means that the jock stereotype stays at the top of the highschool social hierarchy. The macho/ball-breaking culture of jocks means that the typical nerd gets bullied. Also, college admissions' aren't "holistic" here, so the typical nerd is not penalized for mix-maxing into his stats. (if you'd excuse my RPG lingo for a moment)
I also grew up in the EU, but without knowing anything, my first guess is that this might be generational, and I assume you are a decade or so younger than GP (unproven hypothesis).
GP's experience feels extremely familiar to mine, even including the later realizations, and this from growing up across the pond.
I think it's more generational than anything. Gen X and elder Millennials both shared this attitude when we were younger, but I don't think it applies to our younger counterparts.
I was recently struck by this tidbit about Cormac McCarthy:
> As a child, McCarthy saw no value in school, preferring to pursue his own interests. He described a moment when his teacher asked the class about their hobbies. McCarthy answered eagerly, as he later said, "I was the only one with any hobbies and I had every hobby there was ... name anything, no matter how esoteric. I could have given everyone a hobby and still had 40 or 50 to take home."[15]
You're thinking of having 50 attempted hobbies that you pretend you'll get back to one day. (I know; I have ADHD too.)
But McCarthy meant that he had 50+ concurrent consistently-actively-pursued hobbies/passions.
Which is something that's possible... if you have a lot of time on your hands, and you never allow anything into your life that drains you mentally so much that doing it kills your motivation to do anything else for the rest of the day. (Which IMHO is really only an option for people who are either retired, "independently wealthy", or being homeschooled.)
Everything a pathology, innit mate? ADHD is only ADHD if it impairs your functioning. If you're interested in a lot and can complete things then it's clearly not a disorder. And the man has written many books so clearly does not have an attention disorder.
I swear, I did not read this before writing my response about pathologizing to the same post. I guess it's a type of thinking that presents a pretty narrow target. Easy to recognize as a crutch once you're aware of it.
If you are clinically unable to persue and enjoy them maybe it is ADHD.
I myself paint watercolor and oil, am learning violin, joined a sailboat race team, am writing a book, started my own successful business that earns my living, lift weights, read 35 books, hiked 1000 miles of the AT, and became a volunteer firefighter, all this year. I'm currently designing a cabin I want to build. I'm having a blast. I definitely don't do as much with any of these hobbies as someone who only has one hobby, but I don't care, give me variety!
There's nothing wrong with being a dilettante. Definitely no need to pathologize it as part of ADHD. Dilettantism has led to some amazing art and music over time.
This is where I started and it's engaging and bleak and heartbreaking. Such is much of his work. Blood Meridian is generally considered his magnum opus, but it's a much more difficult read.
At the risk of sounding immature and causing offense (none intended), I think it's important to remember why your initial instinct in youth was to dislike unironic enthusiasm.
I can only speak for myself, but was trying to avoid being labeled.
I wanted to people to actually get to know me and not just use me as a means to an end. I am not merely my hobbies. I do enjoy helping people out from time to time, but I strongly dislike being someone's "_____ guy". Very easy to be taken advantage of. The world isn't always nice.
Irony/insincerity is a malaise of modern times. Being sincere about something leaves us vulnerable, open to attack. So we hide under successive layers of irony, until we ourselves aren't sure where our true beliefs lie.
I mean, if it works for you, then cool. For me, not getting into hobbies and things for that kind of reason would have been the source of massive regret about my life in hindsight. I have always loved getting really interested in all sorts of things, but it's true that it's important to not have a hobby that consumes you to the extent that it's basically the basis of your whole identity, or having only one thing you talk about so you're "that guy". But most people can be enthusiastic about various things and avoid that.
I think the governing principle is that people want to belong to a social group, and to achieve that belonging, they need to be as un-like other social groups as possible, to make their affiliation clear.
In other words, cool kids are fine with hanging out with un-cool kids, if it can be done in a way that does not involve un-coolness at all, so they don't become un-cool by association.
The other thing that's great about having friends like this, is that they've done all the hard work for you! You can just adopt their setup/approach (within reason) and can be fairly certain that you are going to get a good result without needing to put in months of research.
That's most of the benefit of putting "Reddit" at the end of a Google search for an esoteric subject. I love when someone has outrageously strong opinions on things I know very little about.
Absolutely, it's easy to think you're dealing with knowledge only to find out it was an uninformed yet strong opinion. It's also incredibly easy to game, so there's no way that'll last forever.
Traditional nerd/geek culture has always been pretty pro-enthusiasm. I mean, it's built on enthusiasm. Chris Hardwick noted that being a nerd isn't about what you like; it's about how you like it, and that delta is really the almost manic enthusiasm that ensues.
This resonates, as I've had bad experiences with being "too into" things when I was younger. Eg, being called a "fanboy" in a derogatory way, just because I'm really passionate about a specific hobby, product, or technology. In my youth this was quite hurtful, and sometimes discouraged me from talking about my hobbies.
There are entire subreddits dedicated to hating on specific things or people. As if they define themselves not by what they love, but by what they hate, and derive some sick satisfaction from mocking others.
As I've gotten older, I realized these people are probably dead inside. So now I almost pity them. I can't imagine being so spiteful that I must shame another's passions.
LPT: Always pursue your passions without shame, and encourage others to do the same.
Agree with you about un-ironic (authentic?) enthusiasm being one of the best human traits. I moved across the country and am getting settled in, trying to make new friends. The culture is a bit different, so it's been slow going. But I've found that digging into and understanding what people are super into is one of the most enjoyable things you can do, and probably the best way to understand who someone really is. Not just what they're into, but why. I've also found that most people really want to share / teach other people about these things, so that's a great way to connect. And I've also realized this has happened in a lot of the deep friendships I've had, just more organically.
I always quizzically (but non-judgementally) dive deeper into people’s offbrand traits because I’m not sure if they are serious
I recently hired a gardener on taskrabbit, and he was too cool for it so I’m trying to figure out “really? gardening bro?” and turns out he is totally hooking up with women on taskrabbit. like the modern day milkman! he’s also interested in plants and will do the work.
so there is merit to trying to figure out what the edge is, where is the dopamine coming from that gets you to associate the interest with fun?
in my experience, its worthwhile being skeptical, I’m either missing something or this person is completely unrelatable in a dozen other ways.
I can relate to having it beaten out of you. There were definitely many years after school where I'd learnt to suppress and hide my geeky interests. There's no way, for example, I would have been visibly excited when a train went past. More recently I've stopped suppressing it, though. Now as a 36 year old man I will run to be able to see a train go past if I want to. It helps that I now have friends and a girlfriend who are just like me. It turns out if you find the right people these are attractive qualities.
> I sometimes have to remind myself that being super into football, nascar, or the bachelorette is just as admirable as being into my things.
I would add music you don't like (ex: autotuned rap), "commercial" or "popular" everything (ex: Bud light), and sexual kinks (ex: pet play) to this list.
If you peek a little, you may find even find these topics to be surprisingly deep. Maybe even deeper than the things you like. Or maybe not, but don't dismiss them because they don't fit your preconceived ideas.
Unironic enthusiasm for a topic is great, but I think a lot of enthusiasm for something, especially if it's "cool" (coffee, craft beer) is mostly performative. They want to brand themself as similar to other people who are into that thing.
> Even into adulthood, I occasionally find myself making fun of people for being into specific things.
Yesterday I learned that there's an entire subreddit, dedicated to making fun of programmers. People take snippets of social media posts by programmers, and post them out of context (without links to the context), and everyone takes turns, making fun of the snippet.
I dunno. Something like “programming circle jerk,” or something. I suspect there’s hundreds of these types of things out there.
I’d also suggest that participating in these fora could have … adverse … effects on one’s future career prospects. I can assure you that many HR background checking companies scrape social media, and are getting fairly good at “deanonymizing” posters.
As somebody who has been “that coffee friend” and received far too many coffee-related gifts for years (including many pounds of stale, burnt beans), I wish people wouldn’t do this.
If I’m super into topic X and you’re not, there’s a good chance whatever you get will either not be of interest (e.g. bad beans) or just redundant (I can only use so many mugs or grinders).
Obviously the thought is always appreciated, and gift buying can be hard, I get it. But receiving a gift also creates an obligation to at least perform enjoyment of the gift and now it’s another thing I have to own (consumables at least are temporary if you’re not into them, so that helps).
There’s a sweet spot in gift giving of looking for something the receiver is into and will want (but not already have) but also something the giver is knowledgeable enough to make an informed decision on. So, again, the thought is always appreciated, but if the giver can’t operate a k-cup maybe leave your coffee snob friends to buy their own beans :).
Yeah, I'm a whisky nerd, and the uninitiated trying to buy me whisky is almost always disappointing. Usually it'll be something from the grocery store, which has a chance of being ok, but has no chance of being novel, while simultaneously for the buyer feeling like it's pretty expensive.
I've told folks that want to buy me something to go into a specialty shop and ask for recommendations there. If they want to excite the folks working there, taking a photo of my collection will let them know my taste, and they'll get excited about doing recommendations (since they'll almost certainly also be whisky nerds).
This is probably the best bet for folks really determined to get something for $thing-nerds.
This is one of those cases where I'm thankful that I'm also really into making cocktails, because unless the whisky is absolutely disgusting, it's going to work in a cocktail, and at the very least, it's a challenge for me to make it work.
Or make whisky cake. Dried fruit and peel are soaked in whisky for a week, baked into a fairly typical fruit cake, drizzled with more whisky, wrapped, and left to steep for a couple of weeks. Recommended.
My personal hack for this is to be into french brandies and wines. 30% of the French government is dedicated to ensuring that when you buy "Cognac" or "Armagnac" or "St Emilion, Bordeax" you are getting exactly that.
Also makes it easy for my wife to tell others: "Cognac, Grande/Petite/Fine Champagne". And boom, guaranteed right thing.
I've heard the advice to give a gift of something that you like, because people are bound to be disappointed if you try to cater to their interest. I'm into cycling, and I've received many cycling-related gifts, many of which I unfortunately haven't used. Meanwhile, I've had a few products that I'm really fond of that I've received good feedback about. A few examples are tools, flashlights, and one which was received exceptionally well - a nice pair of binoculars. It turns out the recipient uses their nice binoculars all the time now. I always like receiving those random type gifts as well.
When in doubt, alcohol is an easy one, provided the recipient isn't too snobby.
I've had the opposite experience a lot: I give a fancy niche thing, and get confused looks because they don't understand its value. Then again much of my family is terrible at graciously receiving gifts!
Culture-dependent then. I did get dozens of impractical, boring, useless gifts that were a net zero value to me (or slightly less). I've never responded "thanks ... I guess" or implied that, because it'd be super-rude.
Maybe not a full nuclear option, but a heavy offense, to be remembered for years.
Once I got a towel. Only one, but still, I needed to get some new ones and now I get to delay shopping that while longer because who wants to buy towels? Awesome.
People always think of gifts as fancy stuff. But if you can save me some time, or feed me, fantastic.
I found what appears to be an actual ID card you order for your cat (1 - Japanese), (2 - translated). It even has a place to specify where they like to be petted!
May resolve GP's problem as it has a spot for the birthday.
The most useful baby gift I ever received was a set of simple towels with the baby's name embroidered on them. 10 years later they're still going strong, when every other gift (romper suits, teddy bears, bouquets etc) is long gone.
Perhaps the idea of the submitted article can be amended to account for your experience.
If a person has a friend that is into coffee, that's great news because you know your friend has a clear interest, but additional research is needed to make sure the gift is high-quality and redundant. Maybe 15-20 minutes of research on a specialty forum like r/coffee (at least the wiki) or a reputable YouTube channel (like James Hoffmann's) can help the gift-giver understand how to find quality beans (often light-to-medium from a smaller reputable roaster). If there's uncertainty, one can either directly ask the friend or make observations.
In the end, perhaps the best gift isn't so much the coffee beans per se, but the thoughtfulness you take in the person's hobby as you can then develop a shared interest.
Yes, I wish people understood this better. As someone with quite a few hobbies, the thing you buy me is usually either redundant or not particularly useful.
I really wish the tradition of grown people giving each other gifts would disappear. We don’t need more stuff to clutter our lives and it’s utterly tragic how we destroy our world just to produce stuff that just might make people marginally happier in a few fleeting moments.
Yeah, completely agree on reducing gift giving as adults.
I long ago made it clear to my family they should just donate to charity in my name at holidays except in rare cases when I specifically say I want something. Took some convincing, but now everyone sees it as normal and I think it’s fulfilling for everyone involved.
I did the same for a work Secret Santa thing for several years and the givers who got me always appreciated that as well.
I love getting and giving gifts, but I agree that too often it's clutter. I do my best NOT to give someone something they won't actually like, and try to be gracious when I receive something not entirely useful.
During birthdays and days like Christmas, I ask friends and family to not buy me anything but if they can think of something fun for my kids. I have all the stuff I want already so either you have an awesome idea and really have a specific gift you want to give me or I'd rather you don't get me anything at all. This is well respected in my circles and I don't get as much junk anymore.
This is my experience as well. I appreciate my friends getting me some coffee but too many bags of expensive burnt Kona coffee have been thrown in the trash. And I don't need N+1 drippers as gifts
This is one of those topics that makes me happy that I enjoy LEGO even as an adult, because it's one of those few gift themes that's hard to screw up. Even if its a set I already have, or one I wasn't really interested in, it's hard to say no to having more LEGO.
On the subreddit for Magic The Gathering, people unfamiliar with Magic regularly ask what to buy someone who into Magic as a surprise gift. The top voted answers tend to be gift cards to their local game shop. I think this applies to all of "those X friends". The thought is always there from the giver and the receiver gets to pick out what they want from their local shop.
Agreed. A related point: it is often hard for someone who’s not into some specific interest, to know which attributes make something better. Like most people don’t have the same standards of freshness for coffee beans as coffee needs (and wouldn’t know to care)
I have that problem when buying presents for my mother. She's taken up a serious interest in painting during her retirement years. The things I'd think to buy would be below her level or are things she already owns (perhaps because they were a gift from me when she was early in her artistic journey). The big-ticket stuff would be already gifted to her by my dad as a gift to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
I look at that as a learning opportunity -- if you're not pretentious and exclusionary about it, you can try to shine some light on your hobbies and get your friends and family into it by being inclusive. Ie: if you're seeing your family for a holiday, and you're the "coffee person", then brew a pot big enough to share, and do a mini tasting session for anyone who's interested.
Yeah, I've always said this. It's better to buy things that you are super into and you think they might be tempted to get into themselves. I'm sure we've all received that cheap mousepad from Grandma because she knows you're on the computer all the time. It's a waste and make the recipient feel bad when they throw it in the bin.
What's funny also is how certain things always become associated with gifts. When some of my friends grew beards in the 2010s they started receiving beard oils and balms etc. from everyone. I grew my beard much earlier and it wasn't considered a gift-giving thing back then. Coffee seems to be a thing you can be in to but (in the UK at least) tea isn't. Most people I know drink tea regularly but nobody would ever gift a teapot or something to them.
This was my immediate thought - you're going to get someone really "into" coffee beans? Like, that's the worst idea, you're pretty much sure to get them something they don't want, most people who are "into" something are particular about it.
I guess I'm "into" tea and drink it everyday. While I'm not very particular (I like all types and even the worst tea bags make drinkable iced tea) the problem is I already have too much. I appreciate it a lot, but ATM I'm at capacity.
If you want to do something nice for a friend like this then genuinely engage with them about their passion. Suggest going for coffee at the new interesting places that are opening up. Be open minded to their suggestions. Nerds like sharing their knowledge and enjoying their little niche with others. It makes them feel understood and makes their world a little less lonely.
This. I hate getting books as gifts because I am lucky about the editions I buy nowadays. People used to gift me books until I asked them not to. I'd prefer it if someone asked me what I wanted and got me specifically that, unless, of course, they made me handmade cards or bookmarks.
> This. I hate getting books as gifts because I am lucky <-[Did you mean picky here?] about the editions I buy nowadays.
The mental image of you being annoyed because you just know that while your friends did their best, the universe would have conspired to put a really pristine first-edition there is pretty funny.
People buy you books because they think you might enjoy the words on the pages, not because they think the book will dignify your meticulous collection.
I'm sorry if that made me come across as an asshole. I never ever ever throw away things given by someone else so I don't like receiving books unless I had them (even the specific version on my wishlist) because I'm trying to control how large my collection grows. I've sold off so many books I bought in my younger days, to make space for others.
I run a wishlisting service, and I find creating my own wishlist for Christmas/birthday is the hardest thing about it, as I have to work pretty hard to actually figure out things to wish for.
Considering how hard I find this myself, how hard isn't it for someone else to know what I would like to receive if I didn't tell them? A close few manage this anyway, as they might keep notes of things I mention during the year, or know me well enough to know what I will appreciate, but for other family and friends, I honestly think it's too much to expect.
The solution for me is to wish for things I know I'll appreciate like "∞ of experiences with you", "∞ of home-made stuff", and specific items in various price-ranges that I want and can post-pone buying myself, like "Physical copy of this book", "This specific game (on GOG)", and "This somewhat expensive clothing item". The more things I can wish for, the more options friends and family have, the less it feels like I'm ordering stuff, and the less I know what exactly I can expect under the tree.
TL;DR: Giving good gifts is hard, and putting some thought into a wishlist can make it better for both parties. YMMV.
idk, the way this guy is describing his coffee friend, seems like me. I wouldn't say my hobby is coffee, but I have beans I grind, and have my favorite coffee spot. But I am not a "coffee snob." I can drink coffee straight but prefer with milk, and generally won't drink an espresso shot. I love a PSL, and always get a latte otherwise. I love when people get me coffee beans from somewhere, especially if they are whole beans!
Edit: I do think this applies to lots of other hobbies though
There's definitely a temptation or a hazard here, sure, but as someone with a myriad of very public enthusiasms, I'll share that I have only RARELY gotten lazy gifts like this.
Yeah it's funny how much I disagree with the OP. My dad always ends up buying me duplicates of what I have whether it's coffee or cooking. Then you have to do the dance to make sure the one they bought you is the one you use when they come over for dinner.
Buying a gift for an expert when you are not an expert is always going to lead to disappointment, no matter how well they hide it.
I buy gifts only from areas that I am an expert in, and I hope my friends may not be as enthusiastic about the area as I am, but at least we both know I got them the best for them.
Coffee friend here! This is the way!
When people get me coffee or coffee paraphernalia as a gift, they tend to fall into a number of traps:
- Not understanding my nuanced preferences and getting me something I know about and don't like
- Not appreciating how to choose a good product (for example, with beans, an old roast date of more than 30 days means sad & stale coffee)
- Getting me something I like but I already have
In many cases I of course smile and am polite, and of course I am truly grateful for the thought, _but_ there is a level of disappointment which I have to hide because it saddens me to be wasteful, and I don't like putting on a performance. There are very few if any coffee things that I like but don't have, and are at a gift level price point (<$100). For consumables like filters and beans I have nuanced preference and it's unlikely that you'll happen to choose something that I like, but very likely that you'll choose something I know I don't like.
From this experience as a recipient, I have learned to be very careful about the gifts I give to others. I steer clear of things in the realm of someones passions, and try to share something I know and love. For example, I don't give whiskey lovers whiskey, or whiskey glasses, because I don't know what kind of whiskey they like, and I'm likely to give them something they know and don't like! So often times I'll use my superpower of knowing a lot about coffee to give the whiskey lover a high quality coffee that they would probably have more difficulty finding or choosing themselves. A great conversation can ensue where I can share why I think that coffee is great and interesting, and why I think they'll enjoy it.
Conversely, when Whiskey person wants to get me a gift, I would much prefer they give me a whiskey they like and think is great, and explain it's merits to me. I don't know much about whiskey, so it's easy to wow me and I love learning about it from friends who do!
One of the funnier problems I ran into recently was when a friend who actually understood my coffee preferences pretty well (though I don't think he actually grasps my preferences fully) got me coffee that was actually not bad, except that I already had way too much (and more preferable) coffee in the freezer.
Fortunately, even if I don't end up brewing all of it, I don't let it go to waste. In the past, I combined all of this throwaway coffee to season some new fancy burrs.
I am "that coffee friend", and I disagree. I appreciate the coffee anyone might get me. It doesn't have to be fancy, it may be fantastic or it may not be - but it's very thoughtful, and I always appreciate it.
Generally people shouldn't get me coffee gear - as that could lead to disappointment. But the beans themself? always well received.
Yeah, something consumable is definitely the way to go. The coffee I've been gifted has never been something I'd buy more of, but I can enjoy occasionally drinking something different from usual even if it's something I like less than my usual. At worst if I drink it and decide it's not worth finishing, there's little awkwardness in appreciating the sentiment but just throwing it away. A gadget I use twice and then decide I don't like I'll instead feel obligated to store forever, which will result in the opposite feeling as the gift was intended to provoke.
I think it's easier for consumables. I'm into tea and I'd say the same. You could get me any tea and one way or another I'd find a way to enjoy, since I enjoy non-fancy teas and enjoy trying new teas I haven't seen before.
I'm also into photography, and any kind of photography gear you get me is likely to be incompatible with my setups or the types of work I do.
Same with cooking. Someone got me a frying pan once for my birthday because the coating was coming off, and I had been intending to buy a new one. It was a nice frying pan, but it isn't compatible with my induction stove, so that gift pan is sitting unused in a drawer somewhere, and I had to buy my own new one that is compatible with my stove.
Basically -- Buy consumables as gifts. Never buy equipment, unless they're a enthusiastic beginner and you're an expert.
> Generally people shouldn't get me coffee gear - as that could lead to disappointment
Family member once heard I was getting into cooking, and bought me these bad, half oven mitts. I feel lousy every time they come over now: their oven mitts were quickly replaced.
But yeah – buying me a small, consumable gift will always be a treasured thing, and never an inconvenience. At worst, I don't enjoy the coffee much. I still received a gift and got to hear a story of its purchase.
Yeah, this is my experience too - in general, it's best to never buy gear for an enthusiast in something unless you really know exactly, specifically what they want and don't have. Even if you're an expert, you might just have different preferences to them and then they'll feel guilty about keeping something around that they don't use, or about giving it away or selling it...
But if you're an enthusiast/expert and they're interested but not to that level, and you have a decent idea of what gear they have and don't have, then it can work.
In terms of coffee beans, yeah, they can be a nice gift if you have a bit of an idea (good small roaster, roast type, e.g. espresso or filter, freshness, etc.) but for me at least, I basically always have just enough coffee for what I need (I buy a new 250g bag of espresso roast about weekly, one or two days before I run out of the old stuff)... But I'm always happy to try something, just don't go overboard and buy a kilo or something! 250g is plenty!
It’s not the value of the gift, it’s the thoughtfulness. “I know you like X, and I thought about you” is a very different sentiment than “Let me gift you with my expertise.”
The economists I’ve talked to say if you’re maximizing Utility then give cash.
But then many people would first buy the gift card to get the 5% or whatever discount, then buy the item they were going to buy anyway.
Now that I think about it, I think a gift card has to be priced at exactly a 1:1 price. (You can't price it higher because people will find that to be outrageous.)
It depends. As a coffee nerd (but not a snob) a 250g bag of coffee goes fast and even if it's not the best would be appreciated. As someone who likes to cook, kitchen stuff is likely to go into the drawer and not see the light of day again until I move.
Indeed. IMO the article draws the exact opposite conclusion from what they should get their expert friend, something that is not which they likely know little about.
The sibling comment explains it better than I can (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33352385) and I feel basically the same way. I will feel grateful but it's just a waste on both sides of its not something I'll use, done for the sake of societal niceness, but I find it sad to think of all the waste it's created. There's a reason regifting is popular and even parodied in media.
Agreed. Beans from an exotic location are widely available worldwide, and they might care about how they were roasted as much as the origin. A gift voucher for a good local roaster might be good.
Or ask them what gadget they want next for their setup.
As someone who's gotten a reputation for liking chillis and hot sauce, I've definitely pretended to enjoy an awful lot of mediocre bars of chilli chocolate from people who don't understand what makes a good chilli.
I don't drink wine, and I don't buy wine for my wine-loving friends because I know I don't understand wine enough to know what I'm buying.
The American writer Calvin Trillin wrote a short story called “A Christmas Shopping Tale” about how this kind of gift-giving might not always be welcome. It appears in his book Too Soon to Tell (1995). Excerpts:
“There was once a man named Arthur Robinson who was, as they say, very hard to shop for. He was a nice man, but as the Christmas shopping season began every year, his family and close friends and business associates grew to resent him. Arthur Robinson had no hobbies. He did not grill chicken in the backyard or bake bread, so the problem of what to give him for Christmas could not be solved with a new piece of kitchen equipment or an apron with witty sayings on it. ...
Then in October one year, Arthur Robinson made his first business trip to Africa. Having found himself about to return home with some local currency that was notoriously difficult to change in the United States, he plunked it down at the airport gift shop for the first items that caught his eye—two small statues of elephants. ...
That Christmas, all of his children gave him elephant statues for Christmas. He couldn’t imagine why, until he realized that he had put the elephants from Africa on a table in his study. ...
The year after that, he received nine elephant statues. A lot of the cards said, in addition to Merry Christmas, ‘For your collection.’ Arthur Robinson didn’t think he had a collection of elephant statues. ...
Arthur Robinson continued to thank everyone for the elephant statues—twenty-three by the fourth Christmas following that business trip to Africa. His family and friends had been greatly pleased to find something to get him for Christmas. ‘At least Arthur’s no problem,’ they’d say as they went down their lists. ‘Good old Arthur and his dreadful little elephants.’
Which meant that when they ran into Arthur during Christmas shopping season, they no longer seemed put out with him. They gave him a cheerful hello. He was always polite, but he resented them deeply.”
I think this is untrue in a couple of ways. Firstly, people like being considered easy to buy for and don't resent it. Secondly, people grow into whatever they end up with a collection of. Thirdly, Americans don't use the word "dreadful".
> people like being considered easy to buy for and don't resent it.
Not the question. The resentment comes from being expected to pretend you appreciate "gifts" that are nothing but chaff in the gears of your life. Ask me how I know (actually don't, you can guess, right?).
> people grow into whatever they end up with a collection of
What? No. I don't know about you or the people you've been hanging around with, but some of us have actual tastes of our own. The phenomenon of people being deluged in variations of the same thoughtless personal-meme-gift is well-attested. I'm not aware of any cases where the recipient actually changed their personality to fit, and I would further claim that it's unhealthy to try.
Honestly, what are you trying to do here? Whatever it is, stop.
Oh seriously, if someone buys you a gift you don't want, appreciate the gesture and throw it away if it's "meaningless chaff". Or if you like it, adopt it. Like I adopted the llama cufflinks I got from my girlfriend for no discernable reason. But for God's sake stop bitching about how people buying you shit you don't need is the horrible burden of capitalism. Go live in a van with 6 pairs of underwear like I did for 10 years and you may lay a tiny claim to not wanting "stuff" because it weighs you down a little. But first see if you can discern from the heights of your high horse whether most gifts aren't given in earnest.
Only a spoiled child gets angry about getting gifts they didn't want.
>> Honestly, what are you trying to do here? Whatever it is, stop.
"Do"? "stop"? Under whose authority and why? I was making a comment. If you think I'm trying to demolish some moral position you hold, go ahead and explain why... but "honestly"+"whatever"+"stop" doesn't tell me what you're actually objecting to.
You're projecting a lot of other people's nonsense onto me. Throwing away a gift that you do, in fact, know someone gave you in earnest still feels like shit. So you wind up in a no-win situation. At least if you're a nice person.
And then you come in telling me I'm an asshole for having independent taste, and telling me I should just mold my personality to whatever nonsense other people decide to give me, and really I don't have my own taste after all and it's normal to submerge myself in the crap other people saddle me with. You come in telling me, and everyone else in this thread with the same position, that you know better than we do about our personality on the basis of exactly zero personal acquaintance. Just because you're cool with your llama cufflinks doesn't mean everyone else needs to be cool with the arbitrary bullshit that gets flung at us. Fuck off with that shit.
It's just wild to me that someone could care so much about it, or get so worked up. I'm not telling you to let other people mold your personality. I'm just saying it often happens and it's not really an earth-shattering tragedy if it does. You can also do what most people do which is put stuff you don't want to throw away in a box in the closet and forget about it.
Any papercut, iterated enough times with no good way to respond, eventually becomes a source of anger. I bet there are other things about people that will make more sense to you with that in mind.
Life is full of repeated, daily annoyances. Allowing yourself to get angry about them is a choice. Traffic is super irritating. But if you get angrier and angrier every day you have to fight traffic until you explode, that's an anger management problem. Taking a breath and letting the small shit go, accepting that other people do dumb things sometimes, you don't have to succumb to anger. Anger is where you stop being smart. Papercuts are just papercuts. You wouldn't scream at the first or the hundredth. They won't kill you. They heal and you get more. That's life.
you brought a smile to my face, I do love a nice snarky coffee mug. But could you buy me a set of them, when reaching I don't like choosing between mismatches wrt dimensions, and not large, medium or smaller? also, presenting a thin walled rim where it touches my lip
On the other hand, my mom one time mentioned that she thought pigs were cute, and now her sister gives her pig-themed gifts every year for her birthday, 30 years later. "I don't really like pigs, she just thinks I do."
I used to work with a guy who had at least a dozen pirate-themed t-shirts people had bought him, because he always wore pirate themed t-shirts. What's with the pirate shirts? "I bought one shirt because I liked it, then my girlfriend saw it and got me another one, now everybody just buys me more and more."
Mix it up, gift givers, don't outsource your thinking.
Yeah, the great thing about the "coffee/beer/chocolate/etc. friend" is that the gifts are consumable. You can get the same or similar thing and it doesn't just keep piling up everywhere.
It's not about getting the best, it's about finding that which establishes the relationship, in particular that you know them, remember what was said, have shared experiences. Example:
Someone I was fairly fond of was retiring, a few levels above me. Traditionally, items are given. I gave an autographed copy of a particular book (we discussed it in my job interview over ten years prior) which related to our profession, a special dessert one (from the area in which she served in the Peace Corps), and a bottle of dandelion wine (her favorite author was Bradbury, who just died, and who authored Dandelion Wine). These went over well, despite not being the rarest of books or the most expensive of wines, but because of the dependence on and acknowledgement of my knowledge of her.
I don't know that I have anything really obscure, although maybe one or two old wrenches that belonged to my grandfather or my dad would count. But the thing that really comes to mind is my Snap-On F50CSA driver handle.
I mean, it's Snap-On, so not really obscure, but that particular model has been discontinued and you can't buy them anymore, so it's a little bit obscure in that regard.
Anyway, it's a 3/8" drive driver handle with the socket cap in the head so it can be used as an extension. Those things are all over the place in 1/4" drive from every brand on the planet, but back in 1994 or so when I bought my F50CSA there weren't a lot of 3/8" drive ones around. Especially not the ones that could serve as an extension. There are more now, but they still aren't anywhere near as ubiquitous as the 1/4" drive ones.
Long story short, that tool is probably my favorite tool that I've ever bought. It's actually the only Snap-On item I own, as I consider their stuff too expensive to buy for the most part. Most of my hand tool collection is older (USA made era) Craftsman, with a smattering of other stuff. Lately I've started buying GearWrench, Icon, and Tekton stuff.
Funny you would mention that... I only recently (< 1 year's time) became aware of Wera. I bought myself some Wera screwdrivers earlier this year. And then I made the mistake of starting to watch Youtube "tool review" channels and discovered a whole slew of brands I wasn't familiar with previously. Now my bank balance is suffering some serious damage, but hey, at least I have some awesome tools.
Of course when you get a special present for that friend who is really into something, you may go down the wrong track.
A family member once drove down from Portland to visit us in San Jose. She knew I was really into coffee and roasted my own.
She stopped at a little roastery on the way down and asked, "Give me the darkest roast you've got." After all, the darker the roast, the better it is, right?
Naturally when she gave it to me, I said "That's a burnt roast! It's good for nothing but the trash."
No, obviously I didn't do that.
We ground some and brewed it and enjoyed it for what it was: not just the beans, but the kindness and thoughtfulness that went into picking it out for me.
I'm into new and shiny things, but for sure don't want presents. Send me a message or hug me but don't waste our precious resources on buying me something I absolutely don't need.
Any time someone gives me chocolate as a gift I say a polite thank-you and then discretely throw it in the trash. Maybe I'm an outlier, or maybe not...
Generally I'd hesitate to buy people sugar, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, video games, dvd collections, etc. It might upset the balance of their relationship with those things. A lot of people struggle with that stuff.
So if you give me a box of chocolates, a case of beer, a carton of cigarettes, a bag of weed, the latest Call of Duty, or a Game of Thrones boxed set, I'll thank you politely and then dump it. I don't enjoy doing that one bit but it beats eating/drinking/smoking/playing/watching stuff that I'd otherwise deliberately refrain from.
This could be a country-specific problem here in Sweden. I am on the other side of it today:
I travelled abroad last week and bought a last-minute gift for the family on the way home: a box of sugary sweets. But nobody in the family wants to eat them.
They all have a fixed quota of sweets each week (Swedish lordagsgodis [1]) and so choosing candy to eat is a zero-sum game. This random confectionery didn't make the cut.
So into the bin they go. Seems a shame but I'm used to it by now.
Or just issues with sugar. In a country with ~40% obesity there will be plenty of people who are happy to get a box of chocolates, eat it with great joy, and then spend a few hours in self-loathing because they really shouldn't have.
Surely it's bad enough having all the trashy sugary junk food on display at the supermarket check-out without the extra step of people actually buying it on your behalf...
See also people who give absurd quantities of candy to other peoples' kids and think that's great on the basis of the immediate reaction of joy...
Well, you just let me know, so I won't be getting you a box of chocolates. Paradoxically, a lot of people could be like that, but they appear to be outliers because they never say it out loud.
I keep notes whenever I have a good gift idea for someone specific. Example: during our trip to Chile, me and my girlfriend stayed at an Airbnb where they had a child's xylophone. My girlfriend loved to play it and even learned 3 songs before we left. I realized it would make a good gift so I wrote it down on a note titled "Good Gift Ideas" in Google Keep. A couple months later on her birthday I bought her a similar xylophone.
I have never been good at the note-taking thing. There's a grade depending on how much hands-on one is, and how much privacy-oriented one is and how much of the system one wants to own.
* Level 0 is: use a physical notebook or agenda and ditch the digital space. It's actually not that bad. Setup: seconds. Privacy and ownership: great. Not as convenient as a digital thingie. No CTRL-F.
* Level 0 is using something that you already have. Send emails to yourself, use keywords in the title and use filters to keep the "notes" organized. Time to set up: 10 minutes. Privacy and ownership: 0 (unless you are your own email provider, in that case you are done)
* Level 1 is using a note-taking app which provides the backend. Evernote and the evernote-likes. Setup is minutes, privacy and ownership is also 0.
* Level 2 is markdown file, or a hierarchy of files inside a folder, and then using something like dropbox for editing and synching. It is only slightly better than the previous one in that you can move away quickly if you want, and you can have local copies of your stuff. It is easy to set up, some ownership, no privacy.
* Level 3 is self-hosting an evernote or dropbox-like and using that. That's possibly years of "fun", with high privacy and ownership.
Buy them good beans, tho! Otherwise they will just be used to season their new grinder burrs.
If someone is into coffee, they will want great specialty beans. There are a lot of awesome specialty shops, but rare you will see them at the supermarket.
There is a variety of things you can optimize for.
For my wife, me getting her something she wants but wouldn’t get herself is the right gift. That, or something she wouldn’t have been able to find for herself.
Surprises are low on her list. Extravagant gifts are low. She would be the kind of person not to buy the coffee for, because she knows what she likes and if you bought her the wrong thing, the thought would count but now what do you do with this bad bag of coffee?
I’m the opposite. I care much more about the fact that you thought about me long enough to do something specific and special to me.
> thought about me long enough to do something specific and special to me
As someone who does not like presents, that may be the core thing about presents that speaks to me. Presents are a way, but maybe something else could work.
I'm fine with people just showing me they like me and hanging out with me though. And they don't have to do anything special for this.
I like this. coffee is something like a hobby and a shared experience and can pull together even really different people.
But if you know someone who is into a very technical hobby, it might be hard to give them a gift, or have a lengthy conversation.
I knew a friend who was really into ranch dressing. Every time we went to eat, we knew what he would order, or could help him order. silly thing that enhanced the relationship.
maybe we should all come up with hobbies or interests like this, to help break the ice with others and make ourselves more approachable.
I don't know about this hot take. I think it's actually harder to buy for people who are really into coffee, or vinyl, or cowboy movies or whatever, because you kinda have to assume that if you find something cool they already have it or have tried it.
By far the easiest people to buy for are drinkers. And I don't mean wine industry people, I mean old school alcoholics. Whatever bottle of scotch you pick, they may have tried it before but they'll still get full enjoyment of it.
Hello! I am the coffee friend. I currently have 3 bags of gift coffee I hated on contact and will probably never drink.
Lots of other examples here(wfleming here says the same thing) but in short, this happens nearly every time someone gives me gifts based on their superficial idea of a hobby I'm in. The thing ends up being worthless and I begrudgingly pretend to be satisfied with the gift.
> I love when a friend is into something like coffee. We all know someone like that— they grind their own beans, brew their own fancy coffees, and have their own favorite coffee shop to get a cold brew.
Please somebody tell me this is an incredibly low bar to be "the coffee friend" -- I'm not ready for that kind of responsibility.
Seems like a high enough bar to me. I know zero people like this, despite the article assuring me that we all know someone like this.
If I did know someone like this, I suppose I'd think of them as my "coffee friend" or rather, friend who is really into coffee. That is unless they also had a bunch of other esoteric hobbies that overshadow the coffee thing.
I have a really basic grinder, actually it is more of a thwacker, in the sense that you just plop the beans in there and it'll thwack them to bits (want fine ground for pour over? Hold the button longer. French press? Don't hold it too long). This shouldn't count. You can get really fancy grinders.
I don't like searching / having to think about gifts. And I don't like receiving them. There's some expected reciprocity in this. Presents are often useless stuff turning into waste. We cannot afford this anymore. It also takes me months to decide to buy something for myself, whether I really need it, which model exactly… I don't like this to be ruined. Events with people are cool, though, and that's the kind of present that could work. But there's still this reciprocity thing that does not make me completely at ease with any kind of present. What's important for me is seeing people, not stuff. Let's have this great relationship and not involve the presents in it?
I have discouraged friends and family to buy me gifts for years. I've also gradually stopped buying gifts for people as soon as I feel it's not too weird.
I'm at a point people around me understand I don't want presents, and some are convinced not doing gifts is a good idea, especially the wasteful part. We don't do gifts at Christmas with my parents anymore. We just skip this shitty period where you stress out spending too much money buying presents for everyone at the same time as everyone else, we just have a good time and everything is smooth. No need for presents to show we love each others. My parents are still used to buy each other presents for their respective birthdays (and involve us), but I think that's mostly because they are trapped in it.
If we want a healthy planet we really need to think about the presents and especially on Christmas, which shall be reinvented. Teaching kids to expect and demand presents can't be good at this time, by the way.
In my family we still do gifts for immediate family and kids in the family. But for everyone else in the extended family we started a donate exchange, or sort of a secret Santa of donates. Everyone gets assigned someone else and you go make a donation to something important to you in their name. Then on Christmas we just open up cards that say who they donated to and why.
I do have a couple exceptions though. I'm close with my brother and sometimes run across something that I know he actually needs, and buy that for him. My exes have all really loved receiving flowers spontaneously.
The difference is that expectation of reciprocation feeling that you mentioned. I hate scheduled gift-giving. It feels so insincere.
I rather prefer the way where the giving person thinks something that according to them is nice enough to be gifted to the receiving person - for both giving and receiving. Otherwise it honestly kills the novelty and romance of it.
On the other hand, I am into notebooks and fountain pens and till today even I don’t know what kind I am really into. So until I have seen it, touched it, held in my hand I don’t know what I want. My friends definitely don’t.
I usually gift hardcover “good” books. Not what I “know” they like, but what I “think” they’ll like. And even non-readers have finished most of my printed books.
Tangential to the post, but I think it goes from being cool to being off-putting when there's a performance element to being a ___ guy or ___ friend. Someone who puts "caffeine addict" in their Twitter bio is making a carefully honed statement that (1) they're really into coffee, they're a geek and obsess over things (2) but also they're relatable, everyone loves coffee, right? and (3) they're vulnerable, they're willing to admit that they have vices too. It has a kind of weird humblebragging vibe to it.
I'm "the book friend", and though I only occasionally get books as gifts, I like gifting books that people may have heard of and can read quickly. Books like The Martian, or The Hobbit.
The way social media (connections by people you know) destroyed most forums (connections by shared interests) is going to be felt for years.
Forums (and BBS before them) were so effective in connecting people over shared interests that they created so many shared contexts between those people that anecdotally for those who lived on forums... loneliness is far less of a societal issue than those who didn't experience forums.
I would've loved to have seen an alternative timeline where social media wasn't as it is, but was always around interests.
This will sound so unappreciative but if you are going to bother gifting someone something they are into maybe talk with them and understand what they like.
Being "into coffee" before it was really a thing I can't count how many times someone has given me a bag of coffee that is roasted to taste like an ashtray many moons ago.
It's not that I don't appreciate the gesture. It's just that I know I can't be truthful about the gift and these white lies weaken the friendship.
I think this "thing" of yours is imaginary. Before it was called "foodie" it was called "connoisseur." Terms come and go, but expertise has always been connected to one's sense of self and self-worth. And there have always been people who think they are better than other people. The trick is to be an expert without coming across as arrogant, and that challenge has faced all of us since the dawn of humanity.
Imaginary in what sense? Are there not concepts in the zeitgeist?
From my lived experience if I mentioned to someone that a particular friend was "the coffee guy" in my social circle 15 years ago they would assume that he worked in the coffee industry. They probably wouldn't assume that he was potentially a lawyer and has a cupboard full of various coffee brewing devices.
I mean sure for a long time the concept of a coffee connoisseur was a thing, the SCAA was a thing but to clarify at some point it became not only acknowledged but socially acceptable to refer to yourself as "the coffee guy".
As for your remarks about expertise, self and self worth it depends on the domain and the individual.
Gift giving is a thing that is strange to me. I never desire a gift and I am poor at selecting ones. I do pretty okay at planning experiences, however, which usually is a reasonable way to salvage things. But I wish there were gift-giving advice that wasn't just "draw the rest of the owl" because there are others who like receiving gifts and I could just do it right.
Great message, everyone should have atleast a few things they are intensely passionate about. Dig into books, immerse yourself, buy stuff, completely master whatever you are into. Hone it and perfect it. Don't care what others think of it.
Something I'm rather sad about is that highschool kinda beat that attitude out of me. I was a classic nerd, including all the bad attributes that label comes with, but also one really good one: I was really into a number of things. But I learned from hard experience that being super into stuff was lame - being disinterested and too cool for stuff was hip. I internalized that attitude.
Even into adulthood, I occasionally find myself making fun of people for being into specific things. I eventually made myself a rule: if someone really enjoys something that's not hurting anyone, that's an admirable trait. It's easy to obey this rule for things I like: science fiction, fancy beer, programming. It's not too hard to obey this rule for things that I'm not personally into, but are culturally adjacent to me: classical music, literature, skiing, fancy coffee. It's harder for things that are not as cool among my social group. I sometimes have to remind myself that being super into football, nascar, or the bachelorette is just as admirable as being into my things. Un-ironic enthusiasm is one of our best traits as humans, even when directed towards things I don't personally get that excited about.
And so I'll always appreciate that coffee friend. They're lucky enough to have maintained the ability to nerd out about something and I'm glad of it.