> Alas, I fear that this Starbucks fiasco is emblematic of a deeper malaise. There’s a shortage of seriousness everywhere in society now. […] So much is image-d

> Alas, I fear that this Starbucks fiasco is emblematic of a deeper malaise. There’s a shortage of seriousness everywhere in society now. […] So much is image-driven in our influencer culture nowadays, and so little is substance. Sometimes it feels like the whole country is slurping Frappucinos® in Barbieland. There’s nothing that bothers me more than this sort of cultural critique about X vague value that doesn’t have much meaning in and of itself. They give me an immediate knee-jerk reaction, since they’re usually pretty meaningless. Things need to be more “serious?” What? And since the birth of pop-culture, it’s always been a bit shallow, image-driven, and insusbtantial – that’s not new to this generation, or even the one before that.