u/AntiClockwiseWolfie

I work in IT/cloud sec/identity. Breaching wireless networks was something that always interested me, but work never took me that way, and frankly it's still pretty mysterious to me.

Jw if it's worth digging into in 2026. Perhaps for bypassing access controls

Okay the title is yes, the same ignorant first impression everyone has. This is actually a philosophical post about aesthetics, first impressions, rituals, shallow people and baristas - arising from my first impression (the title) and some critical thinking. Please, gimme a chance and read and share thoughts. I'm 32, this is not a hyper-arrogant first impression from an early adult boy (not relevant to the topic, but damn I miss being able to have adult-only convos)

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Heard about a national barista championship happening in the US, and I wanted to discuss. Why? I've grown really tired and hyperaware of how much people do things for the AESTHETIC of it, and ONLY the aesthetic... without realizing this is EXACTLY what it means to be "shallow" - examples of this:

- your "Wiccan" friend who actually just likes witchy aesthetic

- the "enlightened" YouTubers dressed like Hindu, Buddhist or Romani stereotypes ("gypsy"), while regurgitating tired platitudes with no substance because they SOUND spiritual (like Buddhist Koans)

- the martial arts guy who wishes he lived in feudal Japan, cuz Samurai aesthetics and cluelessness about actual feudal peasantry experiences

- basically every identity a teen tries out. They get a pass tho.

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And I feel like flashy bartending/barista'ing(??) is this irritating phenomenon distilled into a pay-per-view service - yet also, it's the most honest and least toxic. So here's my dumb takes:

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What exactly are you competing on? The aesthetics of your pour? How accurately you can track the journey of a coffee bean?

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2. there is no reason to be that flashy, elaborate barista performances can not be viewed with the same respect as something like Chinese or Japanese tea ceremony, oration, etc. They are, after all, just compelling public rituals. I would wager those ceremonies ALSO had their detractors during their early days, and ALSO waxed and waned with trends.

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3. There's a sort of double standard at play here - in relation to the above. But it's NOT the "West, East bad" double standard often exaggerated by the far right / seen in far-left, fauxgressive/performative scenes - but is actually a double standard native to history, how we see it, and how much it erases.

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1. But.... By that very "ceremonial" nature - that the barista IS a ritual milk bubbler - it doesnt eally have a place in a "championship". That would be like China having a "national Tea Ceremony championship" (someone is going to point out that this is a thing, I'm sure)

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---- more fun: other "for the aesthetics" types I can't stand ---

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- Women who say they wish they were born in the Elizabethan era, men who bring handguns to the grocery store, fantasizing about being in war

- guys who think an MMA championship makes someone's opinions valuable, instead of very likely to be the same first impressions we all had at 15.

- that loud demographic of religious people who lecture people on the Bible/ancient Israel/Jesus, but actively avoid learning about those topics because it will challenge them

- Creationists who claim to love God, but hate everything we've discovered is part of it - evolution, same sex attraction, sexuality, climate change, animal intelligence, gender identity, cultural beauty standards, or any part of creation not mentioned by ancient Israelite sheep-fucking war mongers or the fat temple priests playing them

- similarly, creationists who've never questioned why God is a "Him", if sex comes from chromosomes.

- "progressives" who's progressive values are "white CIS men bad" and generally cost us a huge amount of progress.

- "organization porn" people, who like the aesthetics of cleaning but hate cleaning, so will just watch/buy random organizational shit to throw out later

Tl;Dr IRL, you see the face behind a premature opinion - you know when someone's just young, instead of an idiot, and you account for that. Online, everyone is pretending to be grown, and you only see the likes - and instead of knowing to guide someone who's obviously a little naive, you question your own convictions based on the popularity of some kid's. And then bam, you've got a reality TV star as president, and Congress is a tiktok challenge.

If you're over 30, you likely have noticed certain patterns as people grow up. Kids hit puberty, get introduced to a bunch of new ideas, and think the older generations know nothing about them. Youth are deeply insecure about their identity, but also incredibly certain of their convictions - wavering as they are. Mostly because those convictions are social tools to them. You can show a young man a "cool" character in a movie, with a really terrible outlook on life, and they WILL embrace that outlook. Young women love that Marilyn Monroe quote - "if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best" and despite this clearly being a really selfish take, will just embrace that philosophy. Because celebrity. Every single trend is the future - because they don't yet have the disappointing experiences to temper their belief. Their ethical convictions are more or less taboos - to them, racism is "don't talk about race or language or culture", transphobia is "don't question ANYTHING", and religious extremism is defended because religious tolerance. "Weaponized tolerance", and all that - their convictions are mostly the stuff they're brought into, because it's all (mostly) they have to form their convictions around - that's why young men are targeted for radicalization by extremist organizations. What experiences they DO have are often limited to things like bullying, abusive parents, and isolation - and they can speak well on these and have well informed ideas. But those experiences can also taint their overall judgment - applying in places they shouldn't - leading to general anti-authority and anti-cooperative outlooks. The brand of counter-culture that labels itself anarchist, but doesn't have an answer for feudalism - because it's not a rational idea, it's an emotional one. Because they're impressionable, and the ethical/moral convictions they feel SO strongly about, aren't grounded in theory, experience and error correction - it's just feeling, and a search for identity.

For most of human history, this was balanced by being able to see who's talking. You could physically see that the person you're talking to is just a teenager. Or has just become a man. So you knew the context of their opinion. I imagine this is where the younger-but-still-old "respect your elders" norm, where youths were dissuaded from speaking their opinions came from. And I'm pretty sure this was a bad thing, and terrible for them. At the same time, the internet has made it both harder to recognize someone's age AND harder for a youth to NOT take a side. They're socially punished for not knowing the current taboo - often by peers of theirs: little snots who ALSO don't understand the convictions they're purity checking, but are eager for social clout. The little shits.

The result is social media being absolutely inundated by highly impressed opinions. Opinions that previously, adults would have had the context of - and could have guided on, but now, are being reinforced by droves of similarly impressionable youths. Any guidance that is offered, is attacked by those same people, looking for the social advantage of calling out someone's taboo - high school behaviour, masquerading as grown up dialogue

It brings high school dynamics into the public discourse. And it's obviously affecting us - I'm sure you've heard people call the current US admin the tiktok administration. A bunch of influencers. Those types THRIVE with a young, impressionable base - and we've sorta normalized it. We've normalized the behaviour and interactions and emotion-led-decisions of youth, to the point that half of America voted based on it.

The concept of "critical thinking" is 100% something every youth has learned is good. But critical thinking requires error-correction of your convictions - and that's something you don't learn until you're older. Until youve been embarassed by arrogance enough to temper it. They don't know what critical thinking (or racism, or bigotry) is, but they're online talking about it - heavily influencing public perception. So now, "critical thinking" is really just "what is the wittiest and shortest argument I can find against this". It's just "how many opposing sound bites can I find about that issue", and instead of doing the work to assess each one - independent of wit - just deciding "yeah there's no answer."

Adults are getting dumber because we can't recognize when the person arguing with us is fkn 15 - because we are social beings, and the comment with 10000 hearts appeals to us - even if it is the most predictably shallow youth-take there is. Youth are getting dumber, stressed and checking out, because they're not allowed to just "I don't know" the hundreds of opinions they're forced to have. I mean ask a teacher - it's bad. And not in a "kids don't learn cursive / the name of all 12 apostles / the sharp sting of a ruler on their knuckles anymore!" way, but in a "this story doesn't have themes. . . I dont practice literary analysis, I'm Catholic" way. That's an actual comment I received from a 17 year old a few months back. I don't even know what Catholicism has to do with it.

My go to example of this is Internet privacy, because it WAS my cause as a young man. I advocated the hell out of that. While Facebook was selling my finger print, and Amazon was outing me to advertisers, I was talking about my right to say edgy shit anonymously on 4chan. Porn shame was part of it too. Now I'm grown, and seeing all the cancerous shit the internet enables. I work in an industry fighting cyber wars against hostile nation states - wars on OUR tech, which THEY are winning, because they had the balls to legislate the warzone. I complain about ads a lot, because they aren't relevant to me - because I made them that way, for privacy. The people - the orgs - who pushed me to privacy advocacy, I learned were simultaneously trafficking in my info under another name. Orgs who's interest wasn't in privacy, but in preventing legislation - because profits. That's ANOTHER controversial opinion really, but its still a big ass thing these days. VPN companies push VPN "privacy" to consumers, saying it protects you from getting hacked - omitting that public VPNs prevent adoption of more secure methodologies like conditional access. Things actual security firms recommend - VPN orgs interfere with, and sell to you as "privacy and safety".

I'm 30ish and the last few games I've bought, I really didn't get in to. So I'm really reluctant to get something new. But I find Avowed's magic system looks really interesting and deep - and this is appealing to me.

Reviews seem pretty mixed tho. Is it worth it, to play around with a cool magic system?