How I Know if You are a Yuppie, Hipster or Just Basic

Living in DC has helped me discover a lot of things about myself, namely how to navigate social labels.

A few years of being in the District has taught me this great truth: I'm a buppie (black yuppie) because I like obscure things in the right measures.

Hipsters with careers become yuppies; hipsters without careers become congressional staffers and 'VPs of Development' at 4 person non-profits.

Liking obscure things, however, is mission critical. If you like non-obscure things, you're Basic. Your friends refer to you as "Becky" or "Felicia", irrespective of what's on your birth certificate or which gender pronouns you use.  

A quick example from the wide-world of pumpkin in the fall will help clear this up.

• Pumpkin-spice lattes in the fall: Boring.
• Locally sourced Pumpkin Hummus at a theme brunch: Buppie.
• Not being able to afford brunch: Hipster.

So how do you know if what you like is obscure enough? 

Rule of thumb: It has to be obscure enough that bing.com and Yahoo couldn't find it in a simple search. 

You see, Yahoo is the X-files of search engines: The truth is out there but they can't find it. This is probably why Yahoo is still failing. 

Bing's search engine is basically a middle school whisper campaign about whether the homework is due tomorrow. That's a fancy way of saying that Bing is only slightly more informed than anything on cable news and about as informative as the comment section of Youtube or any part of Yelp beyond the address and hours of a restaurant. (Yelp should win awards for burying the lede, I swear. If Yelp were just a reddit thread, it would be better organized.)

Google can find almost anything though. Consider this: If Sauron had Google, the hobbits would have never made it to Mount Doom.

I say almost because maybe Google couldn't find a plethora of non-white nominees for the Oscars. (And certainly not non-white employees to work in its leadership-- but let me stop before I sound like Beyonce at the 2016 Superbowl).

Google works (as a search engine, but not as a fair workplace committed to hiring and promoting the best of the brightest of all backgrounds) because of its algorithm.

Trusting algorithms is a totally yuppie thing to do. I don't want to talk to people to make important decisions in my life like buying airplane tickets (thanks Google flights) or investing surplus capital (thanks Betterment).

But give me an automated process and you've got my enduring loyalty. Not talking to people leaves me plenty of time to do some online banking right before snapchatting my participation at a rally to bring back good paying low-skilled jobs.