So let me take a detour that I promise will get back to the soy sauce.

Recently New York Magazine came out with an article about so-called "West Village girls" [1]. For anyone unfamiliar, the West Village (and Greenwich Village more broadly) is a part of Manhattan below 14th street that had huge cultural significance int eh 20th century. Many musicians, artists and luminaries lived there for a time. It was the home of the Stonewall riots [2] and is otherwise important to LGTBQ culture.

The West Village girl is pretty much the opposite of all those things. Basic, typically white, posts on IG that "I can't live without my Starbuck's", dresses generically, is chasing her Sex and the City dream, is likely supported by her parents in her 20s after graduating college (if not outright having a trust fund) and probably has hobbies like "travel" and "eating out".

There is a long history of a certain kind of (typically white) people who are devoid of "culture" and move to a place and make it worse by not respecting that culture, like moving above a Mexican restaurant or a bar that's been there for 40 years and geting it shut down for noise. That sort of thing.

This segment is typically obsessed with finding "the best", seeing and being seen at the "best" or just the "hippest" places and so on.

I saw a thing recently about people who travel for an hour plus to find the "best" New York slice. The particular creator explained that these chasers just don't get the point. The point is that you can get good slices pretty much anywhere in NYC. It's ubiquitous. You just don't need to line up for 2 hours at some hole-in-the-wall in Queens or whatever.

And now I'll bring it back to soy sauce.

This seems to fit this obsession of finding or having "the best". For me, the difference between "good" and "the best" for pretty much anything is so marginal that it's never worth paying a huge premium, going terribly out of your way and/or waiting for a long time. That goes for restaurants, food items, wine and pretty much anything.

But every time I see people who obsess over "the best" it always strikes me as so sad, like these chasers just have to have the external validation of being "in the club". I particularly see this with people who are obsessed with Japan, like they look for the absolute best sushi, omikase or whatever but again, I think the point of Japan is you can find good of anything Japanese everywhere, because it's Japan.

I'm happy there are craftsmen who take pride in their craft and their output, be they Japanese teapot makers, calligraphy brush makers or soy sauce producers. And if you get a chance to try such things and appreciate their craft, great. But chasing it always seems so empty.

[1]: https://www.thecut.com/article/nyc-west-village-neighborhood...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

"typically white" - the artists and gay men living in the area 60-30 years ago were "typically white" too. Same with the wealthy middle aged people who moved in 30 years ago and are being replaced with this new, young, temporary crowd.

> There is a long history of a certain kind of (typically white) people who are devoid of "culture" and move to a place and make it worse by not respecting that culture, like moving above a Mexican restaurant or a bar that's been there for 40 years and geting it shut down for noise. That sort of thing.

That Mexican restaurant you're imagining probably replaced an Italian grocery or a Jewish deli, or something else. The demographics change, and that's how the city works.

The "culture" of the West Village has been wealth and high end retail for 30 years. What happened recently is it got younger, even more homogeneous, and to your point, influencer focused. And I agree that THAT is insidious. Life is not a checklist of the top restaurants and bars, as selected by 23 year old women.

I'm a huge proponent of "good enough" in all aspects of my life so I fully agree. A two-year old used flagship phone is good enough. A cheap Thinkpad is good enough. Most clothes actually actually last a long time, even the cheap ones.

Anything above "pretty good at a reasonable price" has diminishing returns, and it attracts many of the people for whom vanity is the main source of enjoyment.

I can't speak to this particular NYC subculture, but it is definitely the case that all round the world long lines form around "the best" version of a thing even when it is literally the same thing you can get at a half dozen vendors on the same block. Some of the people in line may be tourists, but there are also plenty of local people who just enjoy the hustle and bustle. There are people who really do find pleasure in being part of something popular, doesn't even matter the intrinsic quality, what matters is the hype. If they chase that experience, who cares? It doesn't affect your life. Even if they overrun your daily haunt, just go to the next one down the street, since it didn't matter anyway. It seems to me there are much worse things to worry about than people who get a thrill out of waiting in line.

> But every time I see people who obsess over "the best" it always strikes me as so sad, like these chasers just have to have the external validation of being "in the club".

In my opinion, I think that looking for "the best" is perfectly fine for things you care about or use frequently.

It's when people try to find "the best" for everything that it becomes unhealthy.

Yes, I'm at the point in my life where for 99% of food.. waiting 1 hour in a line completely ruins any potential "best-ness" of said food item.

There's so many great examples of so many foods. There is no objective best. Even if there are consensus bests.. it doesn't mean my tastes align with consensus. Consensus is just an average of the crowd. Look at ice cream.. vanilla is generally the top ranked flavor in various lists. Likely it's that most people have a handful of favorite flavors, and vanilla is in everyone's rotation. Not that it is everyones number one.

And again, in a city like NYC where theres dozens of pizza shops on various "top 10" lists, waiting in hours in a line for the latest/greatest fad slice shows a lack of productive hobbies.

I live in walking distance of a variety of shops listed on these lists, but I order from the one that delivers. It's just pizza, it's not worth 2 hours of my life even if it were free, which it is not.

Many take pleasure in excellence, in whatever form. "The best" is in reality pretty ambiguous and subject to short term trends that will get you long lines and that trend chasing can be hollow, but I'm sorry I really strongly disagree about the difference between "good" and "excellent" in many things I've found.

I will never understand how people have the guts to racially profile white people and at the same time call someone a racist for doing that with non white people. its just intellectually dishonest…but maybe I am not american..

you would need to eat soy sauce a lot of times to be able to say when its good vs bad. it has a lot of complexity like wine. and its craft has a lot of similarities too. I highly doubt this woman would rank in the best soysauce of this world. the way she does it seems pretty much like korean homemade from a few decades ago which is amazing still but the craft of soy sauce goes much deeper with lot of wine-like technology too. https://youtu.be/MKbRu3_Ynpk?si=PPRJMohg9AUWnTyv this one would be an accurate depiction of what I mean

Honestly the difference between best and good is purely subjective and mostly a function of hype. With a lot of things best and good can’t be told apart in a blind taste test.

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