Coffee Discourse is Becoming Increasingly Sensationalised

I spend a lot of time immersed in coffee media, both as an observer and a participant. I read a lot of coffee news and feature articles. I am active on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Instagram (although my feed on the latter is, thankfully, increasingly becoming dominated by cat videos). I listen to several podcasts (although not as many as I probably could—there are a lot of coffee podcasts these days).

Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed a rise in sensationalised language in discussions around, and criticism of, the coffee industry. Posts are declarative, hyperbolic, sometimes even misleading. Interactions are strained and often aggressive.

This is not to say that the coffee industry doesn’t deserve criticism—it’s literally what this newsletter exists to do—but there’s something different about the recent increase in this sensationalised rhetoric.

In many ways it mirrors the way that social media has changed, turbocharged by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the beginning of Trump’s second term. It was never good, of course, but lately online posts and discussions about coffee have become far less nuanced or willing to wrestle with the grey areas. To a lot of the accounts pushing this new sensationalism, everything is black and white, and there’s no room for pesky things like context or empathy.

The industry deserves criticism, absolutely, but doing so using wild speculation and sometimes misinformation only serves to muddy things further.