5+ Reasons the Starbucks Red Cup Fiasco is a Hoax

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the Starbucks Red Cup fiasco is a hoax, a contrivance, con, hoodwink, swindle – it just isn’t an issue. Are people talking about it? Yes, but the people talking – every single one of them – are decrying the idiocy, not whining about how the Starbucks mermaid killed baby Jesus in his manger. So, in this article I will completely unscientifically prove that the whole “controversy” is nothing but a lot of bull feathers.

1. It was this guy.

  

Look at him. With his hat turned backwards and his salt and pepper beard. This guy made a video. He didn’t even know how to turn his phone sideways so the video would fill the whole window, but this is the genius the internet believes speaks for a silent majority of Christians,  every one of them fuming that a coffee company didn’t decorate its cups with snowflakes and reindeer, let alone their Lord and Savior. Apparently, Joshua Fueurstein – self-proclaimed leader of an internet movement, former pastor, and “featured speaker at national and international events” (you’re not cool enough to have heard of them, so specifics are omitted) – was elected by the secret cabal of Christian hand-wringers to wreak havoc on coffee companies everywhere.

2. Nobody supports this guy.

Not to brag, but I have like 889 friends on the Facebooks. That’s a bunch, as we all know, and it makes me more popular than you. Being the magnanimous person I am, I have more than a few “friends” who could easily fall into the “right-wing nut” or “bible-thumper” category, and in fact, my Facebook feed reflects this with innumerable posts about supporting 2^nd amendment rights, fighting the evil Muslim Barack Hussein Obama, worrying about socialism, and decrying the general moral decay of our country. Wanna know how many of them have expressed outrage at the Starbucks Red Cup?

Zero.

In fact, everyone I thought might have supported it has either said nothing, or said something along the lines of, “Meh, there are more important things to do in this world than worry about coffee cups. Lets feed the homeless instead.” Monsters, right?

Based on my statistically significant sample size and peer-reviewed logic, literally nobody on Facebook cares about the Red Cups.

That’s just science. Boom.

3. Oh wait, someone DOES care!

So, maybe I was wrong. Someone does care. The entire Internet (i.e., all of existence) thinks the outrage is ridiculous! They’re outraged at the outrage! They’re outraged at…the one guy? Yep, someone had to share the video, and it seems this Joshua Feuerstein fellow has a few people who follow him on the YouTubes – but millions of people also watch other people take toys out of boxes. So, this proves nothing except that people have watched his video.

After talking to friends and classmates, also known as “extensive field research,” I’ve concluded that the only people who watched the video are people hoping to be outraged by its contents. Get that? The only people talking about this and the only people watching this video are people who disagree with this guy.

4. People want people to support this guy?

Sitting here, having consulted absolutely no sources other than the particular sites I choose to visit on the internet, I’ve concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that all of the people expressing their frustration with extremist right-wingers actually want people to be that way. Because when there is an “other,” when someone else is acting foolishly, we can quietly remind ourselves of our own superiority. Sure, my life’s a mess, but at least I don’t waste my time worrying about a coffee cup, they think. But here’s the irony – they instead spend their time worrying about fictitious people worrying about a coffee cup. Am I getting too “meta” for you yet?

5. If we belittle them and marginalize their beliefs, we don’t have to acknowledge their humanity!

Thankfully, we as civilized, mature, adults are far too intelligent to get offended over something so trivial. We as mildly politically left/right of center folks would never behave the way those silly conservatives/liberals do, supporting their Fascist Ben Carson/Antichrist Hillary Clinton candidates to enact their post-apocalyptic/blatantly communist socio-political agendas. We’re not crazy, everyone else is, and the sooner we can prove it on social media, the more evolved and beloved we will be, as evidenced by our innumerable likes/hearts/favorites/other-forms-of-external-validation-needed-to-keep-us-from-breaking-down-in-front-of-LITERALLY-EVERYONE.

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What does our willingness to believe this story say about us? We’ve fallen for the gamesmanship and think it’s reality. Hold on – I know there wasn’t a clever quip there, but you can think seriously for a moment, right? We fat, happy Americans have become increasingly complacent about the world around us because – lets face it – we live lives of luxury. For people to really appeal to our emotions, they have to promise us things they cant afford (a Tesla in every garage! Free college and jobs for everyone!) or promise to return us to a time when life was perfect (remember those happy days back in the 50’s? Ma and Pa Cleaver! Idyllic suburbia!). The media, to get our attention and to get advertising dollars, has to catastrophize every minor event. The luxuries of yesterday are being incorporated into today’s interpretation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and the only thing we’re truly discontented with is that there’s still nothing on TV, even though we have a million channels and everything on demand through Netflix. A country potentially able to unite for good is being spoiled by companies inventing needs we didn’t know existed and we amuse ourselves by agreeing with the extreme rhetoric of politicians who will say anything to achieve their narcissistic dream of holding power.

What does this say about our perceptions of others? We’ve self-segregated to the point that our neighborhoods, schools, churches, digital and real friends, and almost everyone else around us is on our side. So who are these other people with other thoughts and ideas? They must be those folks our parents warned us about: the strangers poisoning Halloween candy, the welfare queens, the doomsday preppers: the undesirables doing undesirable things. We wonder how anyone could possibly do those things. How could there be racism on our college campuses? Or in our communities? I have a black friend and he seems pretty happy – we went to college together and had a dandy time!

What does this say about others? Well, based on my close observations of my fellow human bein-ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

What does this say about us? We’re all gullible, bored, lonely, and willing to mock/yell at/demean people for having beliefs we disagree with, rather than talk to each other, listen, and figure things out.

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So, to summarize, one guy said some dumb stuff on the internets. Then a bunch of smug morons thought this guy represented a bunch of people and spent a week talking about how silly he and all his friends are. Then, a bunch of people got offended, the entire world got leprosy, and nobody got any toys for their birthdays.

Thanks, Obama.