Being Antisocial At Starbucks

     The difference in atmosphere between the Starbucks I go to in Connecticut and the one I go to in Philadelphia is ridiculous. In Connecticut, I almost always see people I know or went to high school with, people go there to hang out, and it takes them all day to make a latte. In Philadelphia, there's always people sitting there but typically they're by themselves doing work. You're in and out with what you ordered in not even five minutes. The most you communicate is typically just what you want.

     I usually try to avoid Starbucks simply because it's so overpriced and I feel guilty about spending money on four-dollar lattes on a daily basis. However, I naturally gravitated to the Starbucks on Temple's campus today since I had an extra ten minutes between classes, and the Starbucks is dangerously located right next to the building where my next class was. I just couldn't resist.

     Like I said, this Starbucks is like an assembly line. As soon as I step in there, I tend to follow the same routine in my head without even realizing I'm doing it. I rush to figure out what I want, repeat it over and over in my head to make sure I don't mess up the pronunciation, tell the person taking orders, continue repeating it so I can tell the person at the register, then wait and stare at every drink that comes out up until mine is called to make sure that I can leave as soon as I can. But today, to my surprise, my pathetic little Starbucks routine was interrupted.

     The guy in front of me nonchalantly asked how I was doing and started making small talk. On the outside I acted normal, but on the inside I was thinking "Well, this is odd." My first instinct was that this guy was probably a creep because that's usually how the creepiness is initiated. I soon realized that he wasn't trying to be creepy, but was just incredibly polite. He was one of the few people I've ever witnessed in that Starbucks who had a conversation with the guy at the register instead of just barking an order at him. 

     Now, it upsets me that I reacted this way, but I feel like I'm conditioned this way. This is probably a huge overarching statement, but this is my blog, not some college paper. From what I can tell, people are typically so closed off to each other when waiting in line for coffee that it's strange if the person in line before you tries to start a conversation with you. This dude was a nice change of pace from the high-maintenance "WTF-I'm-vegan-and-you-put-whipped-cream-on-my-latte-and-my-day-is-now-ruined-because-of-you" types I see in there a lot. Maybe some people would be annoyed, but I think it's a nice gesture if somebody goes out of their way to ask how your day's been going. Nameless polite guy at Starbucks today, your kindness has not gone unnoticed.

Why I Think It's Better To Be Single On Valentine's Day

     It seems to be that time of year again when flower places are actually able to make a significant amount of money and the horrible actors in the "every kiss begins with Kay" commercials get dug up from last year. 

     I remember when I was little, I used to love Valentine's Day. Every time it came around, me and the rest of the kids in my class would all go out to the store beforehand and buy candy for everyone in the class. It didn't matter if you didn't even know everyone, you still got candy from them. Valentine's Day used to be a day you came home from school with a ton of candy for no reason, and it seems like as we get older, we either grow to love or hate it. It seems like the ones that love it are the ones that have boyfriends or girlfriends, although I had a boyfriend last Valentine's Day and I still thought the holiday was pointless.
     Regardless, the point of this post isn't for me to talk about why Valentine's Day sucks. I think it's safe to assume that anyone reading this already knows why it sucks. The real point of this post is for me to point out why I think it's better to be single on Valentine's Day:

• There's no pressure for you to buy a cheesy gift: It seems like an obligation to buy a gift for your boyfriend or girlfriend, as if to say, "Hey thanks for putting up with me, here's a completely unmemorable gift." As a girl, I think it's hard to come up with a gift for a guy on Valentine's Day. Giving a guy flowers and chocolates just seems weird and awkward.

• There's no pressure for you to act happy/surprised when receiving said cheesy gift: Try as you might, it's really hard to act surprised when your significant other hands you a bouquet of flowers on Valentine's Day. Especially after they point out that they did it because their mom told them it would be a nice thing to do. Of course, I'm not speaking from experience or anything like that.

• You don't have to spend money on anyone else: Treating someone you care about to dinner is a nice gesture and makes you feel good. Spending your own hard-earned money on yourself makes you feel awesome.

• You don't have to worry about getting dumped: Just think about how much it would suck to get dumped on Valentine's Day. Now think about how that's not going to happen to you, because you're already single.

• Instead of cuddling with another person, you can cuddle with your dog: Sure, they may have a shedding problem, they might lick you unnecessarily, and they might have a really annoying or deafening bark. But in the end, they're outrageously cute and love you unconditionally, even if you have no game. This applies to cats as well.

     If you have a significant other this Valentine's Day, good for you! If you don't, stop crying about it and telling yourself you'll be forever alone. Life goes on, and not having someone else to spend Valentine's Day with is the definition of a first world problem.

The "Me" Generation

     This semester I'm taking a ton of bullshit gen ed classes that Temple makes you take even though it doesn't necessarily contribute anything to what you're studying. Two of them are sociologically/ anthropologically based, and in both these classes, the professor has brought up either social networking or just the way we use technology in general.

     And of course, this gets me all riled up because on the inside, I'm an old person when it comes to thinking about that kind of stuff. It's scary to me how far we've come as a society from the times when people used to all gather around their one black and white clunky television set to watch the same show as the majority of America. If I can recall from my history class last semester, most of America used to watch Miss America in the 1960's. We can't say that anymore about even the highest rated shows today. When I was little, I remember being at my grandma's cottage at the beach and not understanding how to turn on the TV because it had a weird dial on it. It was weird to me then, but seeing something like that in 50 years would probably be so weird that there isn't even a word to describe the caliber of weirdness.

     My youth cultures class was the one where I was told our generation is being called "The Me Generation," even though almost every generation accuses the following generation to be selfish. I think it's the perfect name. When something funny happens, instead of just laughing, I've noticed people will laugh and simultaneously whip out their phones to text someone about it/ tweet about it/ make it their Facebook status/ etc. Why do we feel the need to do that? It just seems normal, but when you really think about it, it makes no sense. Your life will be the same whether or not you broadcasted to your network of online friends that you are going to the gym, tanning, and then doing laundry.

     What's worse, is when people feel the need to share with the world "work at 12," "laying in bed," "going to Starbucks with the girls!!!" Again, why do we feel the need to do that? It's like people think everyone they're friends with online cares what they're doing at all times. On a similar note, it's blatantly selfish when girls include in their about me sections "Don't even try to hit on me!!! I probably think you're lame!" Come on. You should probably just delete that and, instead, say "Hey guys I'm really full of myself."

     Of course I need to mention Tumblr here. I recognize that a lot of things people post on Tumblr apply to human interest - people post certain things because they figure other people will find these things interesting too. But then there's those blogs where people only talk about themselves, which I personally don't have a problem with because there's no rules on what is and isn't acceptable to put on your blog. A blog is a forum where you can post whatever you want to, and posting aimless paragraphs or sometimes even just phrases about your life, pictures of yourself, etc. are all pretty normal things to do, which just adds to the whole reason why people are calling us "The Me Generation."

     If I didn't have a Facebook, I would feel out of touch and just plain bored because I'm so used to having it. It seems like when Tumblr is down it's apocalyptic to some. In no way do I hate technology, nor do I exclude myself from any of the cliches I mentioned. I just find myself thinking about how different it's made communication and how much it's changed how people interact. I'm not sure where I'm going with this at this point because there's just too many reasons to bring up. All I'm saying is that it makes complete sense to me why people are calling my generation "The Me Generation." Trying to explain why turned out to be a lot harder than I thought but I hope at least one person can make sense of my rambling!