Text by Eileen Cartter / Graphic Illustration by Ethan Skaates

For 21of21, GOOGLE SHOPPING and PAPER came together to break down some of the most memorable shopping moments of 2021 based on Google's trending search data. Google search interest for “coffee” has been steadily increasing since 2004, and now it’s official: “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee” has become our collective mantra.

“Good morning, everybody! Did you know if you replace your morning cup of coffee with a nice hot cup of green tea that you can lose up to 87% of the f*cking little joy you have left in this life?”

Get ready for a very 2021 sentence: This a TikTok audio originally posted by @studiofitnessdiva that keeps popping up on my Instagram Explore page (where I often encounter TikToks cross-posted to Reels), on which my algorithm has determined that I like to view highly aestheticized, ASMR-style videos of people pouring fancy coffee drinks. And from what I have gleaned about the World Wide Web, if the mysterious hand of the algorithm is putting java on my timeline, it’s likely I’m not alone.

The internet is obsessed with coffee, and not in the way that everyone else is obsessed with coffee. To be clear, this trend, spiritually, has very little to do with the mugs of black coffee, cafecitos, or two-creams-and-a-sugar cups you or your parents grew up drinking, nor the storied coffee cultures that have existed around the globe for millenia. Instead, this latest “coffee craze” defines a monstrously saccharine, post-coffee hyper-culture that has been heavily shaped by the internet, spurned by viral personalities, so-called secret menus and omnipotent consumerism — and consumption. This is about the moment when “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee!” morphed from a quippy HomeGoods tchotchke slogan (in the realm of a “Live, laugh, love” or a “Less whine, more wine”) into a rallying cry, a villainous kiss-off and a triple-dog-dare all at once, an evolution that took place during a year throughout which, for many, a cup of coffee kinda felt like the only reason to get up in the morning. To use some very TikTok parlance: when did drinking coffee come to mean choosing violence?

In the earliest days of lockdown, the bored took to TikTok, an oddity in itself, and DIY’d dalgona coffee — an easily replicated beverage containing instant coffee powder, sugar and hot water, whipped into a foam — which first gained popularity as a viral challenge on South Korean social channels before finding its way to the app. What became known as “the TikTok coffee” would foreshadow the flavor and aesthetic profile of viral coffee drinks on TikTok in general: incredibly sweet, probably artificial, mildly outrageous and fundamentally over-caffeinated.

Now the app hosts a bevy of java-enthusiast creators, like the mesmerizingly chaotic @canonryder, who often records videos while making his daily brew. Deftly lifting his entire body up onto a kitchen counter in a cross-legged position, Ryder concocts a mix of bottled concentrate, wacky-flavored creamer like Fruity Pebbles or Funfetti, a mysterious, Mason-jarred hybrid of syrups including brown sugar, cinnamon, and caramel that commenters have deemed “sus liquid,” complete with a saucy drizzle. At every step, he flicks the lids off each product, causing them to fly and clatter offscreen.

Of course, TikTok isn’t the first platform to champion overstimulated post-coffee culture. There’s a longstanding YouTube genre of people going to popular chains and ordering intricate “secret menu” beverages, with CVS-receipt-long lists of ingredients. Indeed, maybe this all started with second wave coffee houses, whose myriad flavor choices have made it the ultimate purveyor in post-coffee customization. But the chain has also long carried an essence of early meme-ability, dating back to the ’90s and early aughts when Starbucks became a Hollywood punchline with staying power. Ordering a Trenta soy mocha with an extra shot, extra ice, and extra whipped cream with caramel syrup has remained potent, if schlocky, comedic shorthand to convey a high-maintenance, fast-paced, yuppie sensibility.

But perhaps the ultimate symbol of the post-coffee trend dates back to the same era: the espresso martini, a classique scene-y beverage that has come back into orbit among the Instagram set. With a few espresso beans suspended in its foamy surface, it’s an aesthetic signifier of the ’90s power lunch, retrofitted for the work-from-home-forever demographic. In a sense, the upper-meets-downer mix of strong coffee and alcohol epitomizes the very ethos of the current coffee trend, and obliterates the mere concept of choice: when, exactly, is an appropriate time of day to drink it? Then again, what exactly does “appropriate” mean anymore?

VP of Production: Katie Karole, Creative Director: Jordan Bradfield, Digital Director: Justin Moran, Art Director: Malcolm Mammone, Managing Editor (21of21): Laia Garcia-Furtado, Managing Editor (PAPER): Eliza Weinreb