Surprisingly, I was first introduced to cappuccino in Italy instead of at a Starbucks. I loved it. While, for the most part, I'm a two-cups-of-black coffee-in-the-morning kind of guy, I did learn to enjoy cappuccino after an excellent Italian meal. It was like putting an exclamation mark at the end of a great culinary experience.
Although cappuccino is an experience that stands on its own, people began to doodle stuff in the milk-foam on top. It started out with just hearts, I think. I never saw anything like that in Italy. Thank goodness. I’m not sure how I would have reacted if an Italian barista handed me a cup of coffee with a heart in it.
Before long, other images began to appear in the milk foam. Pandas seem to be a favorite image for some reason. Owls and other round-headed animals sometimes popped up as well. However, the selfie-generation has now combined their love of coffee, technology, and themselves into a single over-priced drink.
Somebody figured out how to program a cappuccino machine to produce an image of that person that means the most to people willing to pay $7.50 for a 31-cent cup of coffee—themselves. A London tea shop has come up with a way to froth cappuccino so that it recreates the image of the person drinking it. They call it, of course, a selfieccino.
The customer must message a photo of themselves to the barista to achieve this act of self-love. The barista downloads the picture into the cappuccino machine that reproduces the image in the foam on top of the drink. This clearly provides a valuable service to narcissists everywhere as they no longer need to lose time looking away from their pricey coffee drink to gaze at an image of themselves on their phones. Now they can drink and love themselves without wasting time or risk spilling coffee on their Converse sneakers.
While a seemingly harmless act, I can see how the selfiecinno trend might lead to mischief. How long will it be before someone hacks into the cappuccino machine and starts downloading alternative images? Eventually, someone will realize too late they are drinking a likeness of Nancy Pelosi or Lyle Lovett. It could get even worse. What would someone like Harvey Weinstein do with this technology? Or Anthony Weiner? The possibilities are frightening.
Of course, this technology will start crossing over into other food items. Soon someone will figure out how to burn selfie images into bread so that people can more fully enjoy their avocado on toast snack. What else will happen? Selfie images in craft beer foam? Your face burned onto the tortilla used to make street tacos? Vegan cookie face art? Can you put selfie images on kimchi? Whatever food item that can be altered to suit a narcissist, soon will be. Naturally, the food item will roughly double in price, but what're a few bucks when self-love is involved?
There was a story in the news recently about some parents who put their child’s image on a bottle of wine to give to his teacher as a Christmas present. Although this initially sounded like a form of self-love, the parents added a note saying that their child might be the reason the teacher turns to drink.
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