I love bad coffee and hate algorithms

I love bad coffee.

One of the least sophisticated ways of making coffee is to just brew some in a pot and pour it into a cup. America’s famous for its bad coffee. When asking for a cup of coffee in, say, Amsterdam or Paris, you often get a nice, skillfully brewed cup of espresso – concentrated caffeinated artistry. The bouquet of flavour in such creations is something to admire, really.

And yet, every time I travel outside of the United States, I miss my average cup-of-Joe. When I first came to the United States, I would occasionally stop by at a diner that would serve terribly burnt coffee that was probably sitting in a coffee machine all day. That brew wasn’t delicate or even particularly potent: it was a straightforward, unapologetic part of the landscape. And that sense of Americana stuck with me. It brings me warmth, and slowly sipping my terrible cup of coffee is a highlight of my day. There’s an unpretentious honesty to it that I find increasingly rare.

It’s in this appreciation for the simple and unadorned that I find a contrast to a broader trend. In an increasingly interconnected world, it’s easy to focus on wanting the best, or appreciating what we’re told is the best. We learn about the “top” dining places, the “must-have” brand for a pair of pants, the “best” everything. This pressure isn’t new, but the mechanisms delivering these suggestions have become incredibly sophisticated. Now, we’re constantly nudged, particularly through our digital interfaces and by algorithmic suggestions, towards a curated, supposedly superior experience, often designed more for broad appeal or engagement metrics than personal resonance.

Choosing “bad” coffee, then, can feel like a small act of rebellion.

It’s a quiet refusal to have my preferences dictated, whether by a food critic offline or the mighty algorithm online. It’s easy to lose sight of what you genuinely like when you’re bombarded with content – perfectly filtered, endlessly optimized – telling you that something else is “better.” It might be objectively better by certain metrics, it probably is, but it isn’t necessarily better for me.

Yes, the cat video YouTube’s algorithm surfaces might be, by its engagement data, the “best” piece of cat-related content currently available. But often, it has no real relation to me, to the quirky humor of people I actually know, or the niche digital spaces I would consider mine. There’s no personal history there, no shared context, just an echo of mass appeal. It’s the digital equivalent of a focus-tested AAA movie – technically proficient, but lacking a soul.

That diner coffee isn’t aspiring to be anything other than what it is; it hasn’t been A/B tested or optimized for viral sharing. It’s a personal anchor in a sea of imposed “bests,” a tangible connection in an often-intangible world.

This isn’t a wholesale rejection of quality or a Luddite call to abandon our digital tools. It’s about recognizing that personal resonance often trumps algorithmic perfection. It’s about the freedom to find joy in the imperfect, the idiosyncratic, the things that speak to us for reasons that don’t require external validation or a high engagement score.

Sometimes, that wonderfully “bad” cup of coffee isn’t just a beverage; it’s a small declaration of independence from the tyranny of the curated feed. And that, in its own quiet, un-optimized way, is deeply satisfying.