I'm back- thoughts on "the best"

Bi-weekly rant about whatever I want.

I’m back! At least for one time. 

Fellow newsletter writer Emily Sundberg said she “missed my writing”, which meant a lot. Her newsletter, Feed Me, connects three very different New York perspectives: desperate mid-level marketing employees, hot girls, and finance bros whose girlfriends made them go to Boisson twice in January.

Truth be told, I stopped writing the newsletter because recommendation culture had gone out of control. I always posted stuff I liked that fit my body and lifestyle. I was able to work in my normal bits, push myself to write something every week, and reduce my phone screen time.

I then found myself lacking original opinions. Giving recommendations every week is easy until you have fleshed out almost every little thing you do and consume. Then you start to reach and recommend more existential things like “walking,” which, while being funny to 23-year-old art students, is not really my style. So I stopped! It felt good. I went back to sitting on my couch to workshop bits for various group chats, put funny images on my IG story, and felt free from the schedule of needing to have a cutting-edge opinion. I am 30 years old. Last week at pickup soccer, I got into a scrap with a 19-year-old NYU kid who said I was “40 years old and hadn’t accomplished as much as him.” I realized these are our new cultural overlords, and while they can’t handle some physical contact, they do control what is cool now.

So where does that lead us? I don’t know, really. I think I’ll have a longer-form piece biweekly that touches on something in culture that I like or grinds my gears. If you have something you want me to talk about, email me, and I’ll try my darndest.

But today I want to talk about“The Best.” In my DMs, my career, and in media, people are obsessed with this idea of “The Best.” The best place to eat/thing to eat, place to drink/thing to drink, thing to do. It’s a bit overwhelming. This idea of “The Best” and the accessibility toward what people think is “The Best” has been democratized by social media. Now with Instagram and TikTok, you can find “The Best” thing everywhere you go. From a hairdresser in Tallahassee to a bar in Richmond, there is someone naming something “The Best.”

But what does that even mean anymore? In order to enjoy something, you need to have some sort of frame of reference for it. How do you know that taco you saw on Righteous Eats is “the best” if you haven’t even tried the taco place down the street from you? Is standing in line for something making it “the best”? Can you really appreciate what you’re consuming if all you consume is “the best”?

As I got older and the culture of “The Best” started to infiltrate my life, I thought I needed to have what other people considered “The Best.” I was often disappointed. I can still remember coming to New York and having a slice from what was lauded as “The Best Pizza in NYC” and being so underwhelmed. I blamed myself; maybe I just couldn’t appreciate it like the writers and cultural critics who loved it so much did. It was a weird feeling of defeat mixed with a realization that there is no “best” thing. In reality, it’s preferences that shaped by experiences.

Creator Culture  is fascinated with “the best.” There are always lists and TikToks, about something being the best. That place always blows up overnight with people who heard it was “the best.” Sometimes their expectation falls flat, and they complain; sometimes it is the best to them, and they get even more praise.

Is it a bad thing? Yes. I don’t want to paint with too broad of a brush, but normally, people who are searching for “the best” aren’t there for the experience. They get the one or two things they saw on the internet, check it off their list, and move on. How on earth does someone enjoy that process?

Dining this way seems insane. Is it building a foundation to understand food and culture? No, it’s being able to say “I’ve been there.” This strips people of the actual experience of a restaurant. They aren’t experiencing hospitality. They could get this food at a window and move on.

It feels akin to beer culture of the past. People would go to a brewery and shrug off every beer besides the one they saw get written up about. They’d drink it and move on. If you asked them about it, maybe they’d recall something. Though I sincerely doubt they could recall anything. Whenever I serve beer and people want “the rarest, best thing you have,” it always makes me lose faith in those people. Do you not have tastes yourself?

This is what I find a bit troubling. If people are just getting things because they are told to get them, are these people even enjoying their food? Maybe it’s not about the food but the flex. But there are plenty of better ways to spend a weekend than standing in line.

My fix? Enjoy whatever you want and share it. The proliferation of only certain places going on your IG story ties into this weird recommendation monoculture. I want to know where or what you eat for lunch when you really aren’t trying. I would rather see the more mundane things someone enjoys in life rather than the one time you get a reservation somewhere. As for me? Maybe I need to start posting what I get on doordash.