Today I bought a €2 sesame baguette from the upscale bakery on the shopping street near where I live. I doubt there is anything I enjoy so much as sesame seeds on a bread item: Your bagel, your sourdough, your seven-grain. Once--just once--at an Indian restaurant, I had sesame Nan and have been looking for it ever since.
Anyone who knows food, let alone baking, would rate my pricey baguette, crunchy and fresh as it was, much more highly than the gummy supermarket version of a sesame baguette I usually get for €1.35.
And yet, I vastly prefer the cheaper one. It has wonder-bread appeal and, well, a glorious surplus of sesame seeds.
When it comes to what I eat, I am hardly an elitist. Any foodie would be aghast at my stale pantry, my beans, pasta, Thai (beans, pasta, Thai, beans, pasta, Thai) dinner rotation why a monk flees the monastery.
Only about audio equipment do I think I am an elitist. That, and oh yes, politically I would be viewed as such by those who think “real Americans” eat steak and potatoes, not sushi (which I avoid altogether).
Now here’s a jumping-off point based on the above: The “like” button has made divisions in society worse than they might be because the idea you might have bad (or less than good) taste in something becomes a routine--an altogether automatic routine--of reinforcing or defending your immature ego.
If you listen to children of six or seven talk to one another what each “likes” is pretty much the currency of their conversation. Naturally, few of us grow out of that immaturity too well or altogether. And, on this score, so what if better bread is available? I am off to the supermarket because what they sell makes me happy.
Except that now such immaturity is not just celebrated by millions if it goes viral, it is a constant part of my day, so to speak, to uphold my choice of bread. To uphold that choice and resist hearing from those who might know better.
I like your Instagram post. Do I like that person’s feed? What shall I like now? Who will or will not like this Today (or some day like it ) post?
People have always been snobs and people with money and power have always asserted their snobbery in terrible ways. If you live in the castle or a plantation or some gold-covered apartment tower, you just assume you must be right about bread too. It is easy, in other words, to let money and power and the trappings that come with them to lead you to the thought: “look how right I am.”
The like button, or the constant of living in a world of likes, makes all of us rich and powerful in this same counter-productive way:
Make America right again.
My identity is too right to tolerate a micro-aggression.
It is nothing new to say that the internet feeds our narcissism. But what I am speaking to here is how the DNA of our “what do I like” lives makes us less willing to entertain our weaknesses. Yes, the internet is an endless buffet of things from which to learn. But it also demands an allegiance in how we interact with it that solidifies parts of ourselves we would be better off keeping porous.
I don’t need to like your high falutin baguette, but I do need to hear from you why it might be better than the stuff I get from the supermarket. If I can’t hear that before I click away, we are bound to have problems. We become enemies even before, as neighbors, we break any bread together