Welcome to Gaia! ::

Not really. I know... Shitty way to grab attention. Sorry.

Ok children, gather 'round. Today, we are going to talk about Starbucks. Now, can anyone tell me what Starbucks is? No one? For those of you who happen to be more stupid then a jar of mayonnaise on a bad day, Starbucks is a corporate coffee house chain that originated from Seattle.

Fear not kids, the corporate stranglehold on the world is another story for another day. Starbucks has moved into my town faster than Kudzu on crack. There are a total of seven all around town. Two of which are less then fifty yards apart. Now Billy, do want to count to seven for the class? No? Well, I am going to have to give you an "unsatisfactory" mark for today. Class dismissed.

Has it come to the point where people crave coffee this/i] bad?
The corporate overtake aside, how will they even profit if there's that many starbucks around?
Thing is we have the exact same here in Canada with Tim Hortons.
There's probably around 7, give or take.

Also, R.I.P. my red suspenders.
I met up with a few friends while walking through a park, ended up taking them off quickly and turned my back to them for a few minutes.
I got em jack'd by a girl of probably 9.
9 year old frilly-clad girls are punx. More punx then me, anyways.
xD

good, good im glad starbucks lives by the motto of a starbucks on every street corner. thats perfect... they can kill themselves off with their own stupidity.

aside from that the poll is cool.

i dont agree i think the majority of starbucks appeal is just the culture status it has in the media, not so much how good it's product actully is.

I agree with Boots. I mean, in the last 2 weeks this has continuously come up to me in conversation and I keep making the point (to the chagrin of my friends) that they're paying stupidly high prices for burnt coffee. They're buying the Starbucks name, not good coffee. And yet every single one of them keeps paying 5 dollars for a goddamn cup of x-ridiculous-French-name-no-one-can-pronounce.

And it's at the point where the trendiness of Starbucks isn't even novel anymore people actually say things like "I can't function without my Starbucks in the morning". A name-drop and you're ******** trendy and progressive.

Don't even get me started on the progressive liberal appeal the corporation itself garners all the while being one of the biggest profiteers in America.

like it or not starbucks has become a facet of american society, in the same way that when we cut ourselves we say "s**t, i need a band-aid™". as for the faggy artkids, well, blame the society that produces shitty little self-entitled snots, luxuries are considered rights by in large. that's not a global or entirely american trend, that's a trend of upper-middle/upper class families. we've all got this stupid ******** notion that we're the ones living so modestly and yet turn a blind eye to those living more modest than ourselves, refusing to do more either out of apathy or sloth. we're always drawing the line right behind our heels.

and at least starbucks does some charitable acts, either in relief work or by offering bean farmers and pickers a substantially better wage. i don't agree with advertising charitable acts a company does because it makes people think that they're contributing by taking part in consumerism, but at least it's something. when's the last time you went to volunteer at a shelter?

hating starbucks/corporations/society is just as trendy as the things they create in that we use them to identify ourselves, but being bitter doesn't do jack s**t. do something about it, faggots.

w/e jimmy,

I never said i didnt respect starbucks. but philanthropy, no matter who it is thats doing it, is nothing more than motivated by tax rebates, and good PR.

and we are all a bit guilty of hypocracy what with us all ranting on consumer culture, and media mind control on the wonder of technology that is the internet and computers.

reguardless, i would not consider criticisms of commodity fetishism is anything near trendy. unless you are off on some superficial "******** the system im a ******** radical" bull s**t.

@hallow: of course it's rhetoric, it wasn't even intended to be specific. obviously none of you have have to prove s**t to me, it was aimed at asking "what have you done for your community?". we all know the type that b***h and b***h but don't do a damn thing for anyone else.

@boots: maybe i was always hanging around the wrong crowd, because that's exactly what the majority of people i knew were doing, at least the ones willing to break off in a tangent on how superficial society was. starbucks/walmart/mcdonalds/etc are all easy targets to the "man ******** the system" argument, and it was always less about actual research than just first hand accounts on the matter. every college town i've ever gone to was rife with those people, the ones who visited locally owned coffee shops so that they could pay four dollars for a tea bag and jerk one another off on how great they are to their community. the same people ivan was referring to, the ones who bought "organic" food (usually without even researching whether it was actually organic, which it rarely is) because by doing so they were a credit to all man kind. if you want to criticize commodity fetishism try going after the green/organic movement in large, because not only is it employed almost solely as a marketing scheme it's less of a dead horse than starbucks. at least starbucks doesn't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.

@ivan: do they actually cram it down your throat? even so we're all prone to adopting the things our friends do inadvertently, but there's this terrible trend of patronizing other groups as if they consciously chose to go with whatever was trendy. it's pretty insulting, actually. not that i'm saying that's what you're doing, mind you.

or maybe i've just been gone from america too long to know what the s**t is going down anymore.