Bitter Aftertaste

Maybe the biggest advantage of living here compared to any city in the US, but also many in Europe as well, is a comparative, not absolute, isolation from the synthetic...the proudly contrived.

Social media provides a daily window onto this divergence. So when I see affluent people in the developed world celebrating their consumption, there is nearly always something inauthentic one can observe (or sniff) about about this, the food and drink they eat, plus the environment in which they down it.

This extends beyond the phenomenon of blatantly synthetic comestibles, so called ultra-processed food, because even top quality grub in London or New York can come soaked in a semiotic sauce which for me at least, is bitter to the taste.

The same sort of people venture over there and tend to make much of the culture that they immerse themselves in, and down to the last plate of frijoles it can appear fundamentally more grounded in human realities than in branding and marketing communications.

I think the essential difference is that such aspects of culture around here do not expressly exist as some sort of compensation for all the rest of the crap. A sort of smokescreen.