Matcha Made Me Question My Individuality

I discovered matcha in 2024, right as it was taking off again as a trending drink of choice. As a committed consumer, I decided to try it for the first time on a trip to New York in August 2025. I ordered a strawberry matcha with oat milk from Pret a Manger, thinking that at least by trying it, I could go forward saying that I had participated in the circulating trend one time. I was excited. I liked the green and pink color. I felt like one of those Los Angeles nepo baby influencers who always carried a matcha in their left hand and held their phone connected to wired headphones in their right. Maybe this was my future! It was all coming together. Alas, it did not go to plan. The strawberry matcha with oat milk was one of the most disgusting drinks I had ever tried. My boyfriend, to his credit, had warned me previously, saying that the oat milk would probably not allow me to actually taste the matcha for itself and would interfere with the intended flavor. I hate when a man is right.

I gave up on matcha for quite a while after that, wounded from the initial experience. I thought that maybe it was for the best. I didn't want to become "just like everyone else," but simultaneously, I had a heightened sense of FOMO. Maybe everyone was lying about liking it? I wasn't sure. It had just tasted like grass and oats to me. Maybe people liked that.

I don't remember the exact date when I tried matcha again, but I know it was sometime in early 2026. I decided to give it another try. I ordered an iced vanilla matcha with whole milk. I fell in love. I knew it was going to become my new hyperfixation. I also did some additional research on matcha and learned about its caffeine and L-theanine content, and found that it seemed to sustain my alertness without the jitters coffee usually gave me. I learned about the traditional process of preparing matcha at home instead of ordering it at a coffee shop. Matcha quickly replaced coffee as my go-to order. I was gifted a matcha set and started making the drinks myself. It was my meditation! But something had occurred to me: by the time that I had come to genuinely love matcha, everyone else seemed to love it too. I felt an inexplicable need to defend myself. I wanted people to understand that I wasn't drinking matcha just because it was trending, even though, admittedly, the trend was the entire reason I had tried the drink in the first place. I wanted people to know that I had done my research, I made it myself, and that I truly enjoyed the taste of it. Somehow, simply liking matcha didn't feel sufficient. I needed my enjoyment of it to be authentic.

I notice that this has been a common theme within other aspects of my life and hobbies, too. I love reading, but I want people to know that I loved reading before BookTok was a thing. I have a digital camera that I use often, but I want people to understand that I didn't get it just because "vintage" pictures were trending on Instagram; I genuinely want to print the images out and create physical photo albums for my future children to look back on someday, like my parents did. I desperately want to delete social media and live some unobserved life, but I also really love taking photographs and sharing them with other people. It is a ridiculous contradiction. I want to participate in trends while also proving that I am not the type of person who participates in trends. And I don't think I am alone in feeling this way.

In the last decade, liking things has become very complicated. Our interests are no longer just interests; they are aesthetics, "cores," identities, and evidence of who we are. A drink becomes a personality. Reading can become a performative action. A camera becomes proof that you have an analog life. Even going offline has developed an online identity of its own. So, I think the question isn't why does everyone suddenly like matcha? People have always influenced each other. Trends have always existed. The more interesting question, in my opinion, is why, in an age where literally everything becomes a trend, are we all so desperate to prove that our tastes haven't been influenced by one?

We have always copied each other. People have always looked to one another for inspiration and help with deciding what is "in." I would go as far as to say that imitation might be one of the most consistent characteristics of taste. What has changed, however, is the speed at which we can identify trends and then participate in them. A trend no longer has to make its way from a runway to a magazine to a department store before reaching the average consumer. Now, aesthetics are formulated overnight. Someone posts a video, others recreate it, and the algorithm picks it up. Publications give it a catchy name. Brands find products that can be sold alongside the trend. All of a sudden, a compilation of unrelated objects has become a cultural moment. But almost as quickly as it appeared, being associated with that trend becomes embarrassing. Vogue has described this remarkably consistent lifecycle for internet aesthetics, outlining the pattern of how a trend comes to be, and eventually how even mentioning it becomes cringe (Francombe). Cottagecore, mob wife, clean girl: the names change so rapidly that trying to keep track of them feels like learning a language that is set to expire within the following months.

The acceleration at which these trends cycle is not imagined. The algorithms of Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms create feedback loops. I show an interest in something, so the algorithm shows me more of it. I see more of it, continue to engage, and the algorithm becomes confident that it is exactly what I want to see. Eventually, I might wonder if I found my taste, or if my taste found me.

My insistence that I liked something before it became popular may be less original than I would like to believe, too. In 1979, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu published Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, an examination of the relationship between taste, culture, and social class. Bourdieu challenged the idea that taste exists entirely within us—that we encounter a painting, song, or book and intrinsically decide whether it is good. Instead, our tastes are influenced by the social worlds that produce us: our upbringing, education, economic position, and the people around us. Bourdieu called some of the competencies and knowledge that we accumulate "cultural capital." Unlike economic capital, it cannot be counted in a bank account. It exists in knowing which books to read, what art to discuss, how to behave within social environments, and how to dress. Taste can therefore do more than tell someone what we enjoy. It can tell them something about who we are—or, maybe more importantly, who we would like them to believe we are. This makes me uncomfortable when I apply it to myself, because why do I need people to know that I read books before BookTok was a trend? If I genuinely love reading, the date that I began should be irrelevant. Yet some part of me still resists being associated with the trend. I want my reading to signify intelligence, curiosity, and a genuine love of literature instead of participation in a performative aesthetic. The embarrassing implication is that perhaps we don't simply want to have good taste; we want the credit for having it.

Furthermore, Vogue has described internet aesthetics as effectively "pre-packaged styles that you can buy into" (Schulz). You don't just like lace, bows, and ballet flats: you are coquette. You don't just prefer minimal makeup, neutral clothing, and slicked-back or straightened hair: you align with the clean girl aesthetic. You don't just appreciate cashmere, loafers, and traditional tailoring: you are old money. What used to be a preference is now a searchable aesthetic. I think this is the part of microtrend culture that bothers me more than people simply discovering the same things. We are encouraged constantly to "find our own personal style," while also being offered tutorials explaining exactly how to replicate a style and what to purchase to achieve it. Apparently, individuality can now be added to a cart.

This all feels daunting and heavy, but have no fear! Even though it feels like humanity is stuck in this never-ending loop of microtrends and suffocating consumerism, fashion media has been documenting microtrend fatigue since 2025. Vogue Business has observed that audiences are becoming tired of "algorithmic sameness" and reported that there is a move away from microtrends toward broader, uninfluenced individual style. Perhaps, in an inevitable twist of fate, our exhaustion with online trends has created another trend: going offline. Physical books, journals, flip phones, wired headphones, CDs, and digital cameras have found renewed cultural relevance. We seem increasingly drawn to objects that promise to separate us from our phones. I understand the appeal because I feel it constantly. I want physical photographs because my camera roll containing 9,437 images feels much less permanent than a photo album containing two hundred of the most important ones. I want to write my thoughts down instead of putting them in the notes app. I want to reach for a book sitting on a shelf instead of an online version of it that I have to scroll through. I fantasize every day about deactivating every social media account I have and becoming unreachable and mysterious.

Past these idealistic thoughts, however, there lies an unfortunate truth: we have become so desperate to escape the internet that we have developed an internet aesthetic for escaping it. And truthfully, in 2026, it is not feasible for the majority of people to go completely offline due to career or lifestyle choices. We must continue to roll with the times. But I don't think that the desperation to go offline is insincere. A phone offers practically limitless photographs; a roll of film does not. Spotify offers more music than one person could listen to in one lifetime; a CD ends. Social media scrolls indefinitely; a book eventually runs out of pages. The older objects we romanticize contain something the internet has engineered away: an ending. This makes me wonder: maybe what we are nostalgic for isn't the technology at all. Maybe it is the sense of healthy limitation.

It is easy to mock all of these ideologies. Nothing screams "I have escaped the internet" quite like announcing your escape to your 2,000+ Instagram followers. But I am not sure that sharing an experience makes the experience performative. I feel that there is a difference between sharing a life and constructing a shareable life, although social media has made the boundary between the two very difficult to locate. I genuinely want physical photographs for my future children. I also enjoy it when someone compliments those photographs on Instagram. I genuinely want less screen time, but I don't want to disappear from the lives of people I care about and can connect with through social media. Maybe true authenticity does not require us to pretend that these contradictions don't exist.

The more I reflect on it, the less convinced I am that uninfluenced taste exists. I tried matcha because other people made it look appealing. I have read books because friends, family, and teachers recommended them to me. I have discovered some of my favorite songs because someone else played them first. Original taste is rare and fleeting, and I think that is okay! Humans have always borrowed from one another, and culture might be impossible to create without doing so. Social media did not invent our susceptibility to influence; it has only made the process of influence extremely visible. I can watch a piece of clothing appear on my feed once, twice, three times, and find myself wondering if I might want one. If I buy it, I know that I have watched myself be influenced. I believe that is why we have become so defensive about authenticity: to admit that we were influenced can feel like admitting that our taste isn't really ours. But discovering something through other people does not make the enjoyment that follows any less genuine. Someone could buy a digital camera because an influencer carried one and discover that they actually love photography. Someone could try matcha because everyone else was drinking it and discover, annoyingly, that everyone else might have a point.

The fact is, if I had tried the first matcha, not enjoyed it, and rejected drinking it for the rest of my life, that would not have made me superior to anyone. Rejection does not lead to automatic individuality. Personal taste has less to do with discovering something first than with retaining the ability to decide what you think about it after everyone else has already told you what to think. I still want to delete Instagram sometimes. I will probably keep posting on there anyway. I will keep using my digital camera. I will keep drinking matcha. I discovered it because it was a trend and tried it because I wanted to participate. I hated it, gave it another chance, and eventually discovered something that now brings me unimaginable joy in my morning routine. Maybe individuality isn't the absence of influence; maybe it is what we do with the influence once it reaches us. At the end of the day, I don't need everyone to know I liked something first; I just need to know I like it.

Works Cited

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice, Harvard UP, 1984.

Francombe, Amy. “Tomato Girl Summer? How Brands Can Keep Up With TikTok’s Micro-Trends.” Vogue Business, 15 Aug. 2023, www.vogue.com/article/tomato-girl-summer-how-brands-can-keep-up-with-tiktoks-micro-trends.

Schulz, Madeleine. “Set, Follow or Skip? How Brands Should Navigate Micro-Trends.” Vogue Business, 24 Jan. 2024, www.vogue.com/article/set-follow-or-skip-how-brands-can-keep-up-with-tiktoks-micro-trends.

Schulz, Madeleine. “Did Micro-Trends Kill the Trend Cycle?” Vogue Business, 12 June 2024, www.vogue.com/article/did-micro-trends-kill-the-trend-cycle.

“The Aesthetics, -Cores, and Microtrends That Defined 2023.” Vogue, 28 Dec. 2023, www.vogue.com/article/core-aesthetic-microtrends-2023.