Drink Tea-ism

Or: Thank you for your contribution pal

We’ve all been there. We post an innocent question to Twitter or a group chat:

“My Coffee grinder’s broken. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good one I could get in replacement? Budget up to £200”

Within minutes, someone replies with something along the lines of:

“have you considered drinking tea instead?”

Drink Tea-ers are a social phenomeon I’ve noticed recently. Drink Tea-ers are people who suggest a completely different alternative when asked to give advice on a topic.

Here’s some examples of Drink Tea-ism:

Q: “Can anyone recommend a place we can stay in Greece?”

A: “ I hear Italy is lovely this time of year”

Q: “Can anyone recommend a shampoo to prevent balding?”

A: “Have you considered shaving your head instead?”

Q: “Can anyone recommend a good pub in Greenwich?”

A: “I think you’ll have a much better time out in soho”

Q: “How do I do this on Excel?”

A: “I don’t know, but you can do it like this on Linux”

The thing about Drink Tea-ism is that it’s not intrinsically bad. Afterall, some people really should just shave their head! It may well be the case that something you hadn’t considered at all, a curve-ball, is the answer to the question you asked.

When I posed this question earlier today, I had several people defend Drink Tea-ism in the context of giving people tech support. Maybe Drink Tea-ing it is often justified.

But at the same time… being in receipt of a comment from a Drink Tea-er can be deeply annoying.

The most egregious examples of Drink Tea-ism suggest that you have the wrong preferences and the Drink Tea-er has a better understanding of what you actually want or need. Sure, Greenwich might be a less good place to go drinking than Soho, but you’re going there because your dad’s in town and he’s a huge Cutty Sark fan. Soho just is not an option for you, so why’s this guy warbling on about it?

I think this is one of those things that is exacerbated by how we communicate online. When you’re talking to a close friend about a job application, you’re unlikely to upset them if you suggest they may be better off using their skills in a different way. That’s a really sensitive subject that may well need to be handled with care, but friendship helps smooth it out.

Yet in the wider online, loads of people who engage with you are just “some guy”. If you ask “which are the friendliest breeds of dog?” and “Buttsniffer84” tells you “cats are better”, it sets your teeth on edge. “Why did this guy reply to me like that? What a Drink Tea-er!”.

This relates quite closely to a problem my friend Mike Bird pointed out to me today. If you’re an account with a large amount of followers, or you have a tweet that goes viral, most of the replies you receive will be contextless waffle. I wouldn’t know, of course.

I don’t think there’s a solution to this. Drink Tea-ism is often an annoying phenomenon, but it can also be useful. Nevertheless, we should all try to be a bit more conscious when we’re replying to people. Afterall, given we’re all just filling space in time and discourse, it’s likely we’ve all been a Drink Tea-er at some time.

What I’ve been reading

• I didn’t pay attention to the furore over the removal of Maus from the curriculum of some schools in Tennessee. Life’s too short. Yet seeing it mentioned so much made me pull it off the shelf. A depiction of the writer and artist Art Spiegelman’s father and his experience in the holocaust, Maus really is one of the most beautifully written and harrowing comics in existence. It’s one of the few comics that, in my opinion, can truly be described as art.

• Most people would be better off doing, then thinking. This piece argues this case pretty effectively.