Coffee, Cooking, and the Elitism of Not Caring

You don't care about X Y or Z.

I get it. That's fine, you don't have to care about having the freshest coffee, the most gourmet ingredients, or all the most high-tech gadgets to enjoy something. I certainly don't, at least for two out of three of those things. You don't have to care about your bench press or mile time, or any other thing that people (or, let's be honest, that I) do and enjoy. You don't have to think it's healthy to push for a new deadlift PR, fun to spend fifteen minutes every morning brewing a good pour-over, or entertaining to watch a YouTube Let's Play.

But here's the truth: I don't care that you don't care.

So many people insist on going out of their way to find the spaces where people who enjoy a niche hobby congregate to opine about just how little they care about said hobby. It's... annoying. I'm a person who cares quite a bit. I don't do half-measures very well, so whenever something interests me I'm liable to seek out the spaces where people also care about those things. It's just weird to me that someone would go out of their way to a lifting subreddit and comment on a PR post about how they "don't see the point" in lifting like that.

Another example: coffee.

I don't have the most expensive home coffee set-up. It's also not the cheapest coffee kit as far as these things go. The coffee nerds will look at my set-up, with a conical burr hand-grinder, an Aeropress, and a Chemex and they'll understand it's a very cost-effective way set-up for good home coffee. It's also, as many YouTube commenters are keen to point out, a complete waste of money when drip brewers and pre-ground coffee exist.

That's the thing that annoys me about a lot of discourse on the internet: people leave no room for nuance or for differences of opinion. It turns the statement, "I don't want to spend that much money on coffee" into, "You're dumb for spending that much money on coffee." And it's a shame, because there's nothing wrong with putting more time or effort into something you enjoy.

Cooking is another place this kind of thing happens. Many will sneer at someone who cooks their own food every night, and while I fully admit that it's often just as expensive to eat out, it misses the point entirely. Some people actually like the process of preparing their own food (not to mention it's often healthier than the take-out alternatives). I'm not always one of those people, but my fiancee is.

I'm trying to keep myself from being long-winded in these posts, but I have a tendency to ramble (or rant depending on who you ask), so here's the TL;DR:

There's nothing wrong with caring about something someone else couldn't care less about.