If I attend a coffee rave, shoot me.

It'll be for the best.

If you ever see me at a sober coffee rave, I need you to shoot me. This might sound like a big request, especially if we haven’t met. But I’m asking it nonetheless.

If I am sober, in public, dancing on a Saturday morning while clutching onto an oat cappuccino – or heaven forbid some kind of $14 matcha concoction – something has gone grossly awry. I’ve probably contracted some kind of brain parasite, or have been accidentally lobotomised.

Either way, I won’t be me, and I’ll have transformed into something that I presently find deeply objectionable. Better for all, I think, that I am quickly dispatched.

Until very recently, I didn’t even know coffee raves existed. Sure, I’d read about them in the news a little, but I thought they were another beat-up. A bogeyman made up to scare people who like their coffee shops to be coffee shops, and their parties to actually be fun. But in this case, the media was right. Coffee raves are a real and present danger.

I discovered this unfortunate fact a couple of Saturdays ago. My usual weekend routine involves wandering to my favourite cafe, ordering a large coffee, and then writing this newsletter in an exaggerated manner on my enormous laptop. While doing so, I hope people watch me type, and assume I’m some kind of intellectual working on an important novel.

Of course, I’m actually typing away at this silly faff, trying to manufacture a way to get the words ‘bung hole’ into my articles as much as possible. I’ve just done it then. Another win for literature.

But on this fateful morning, the moderately busy coffee shop I frequent was transformed. Dozens of young people were crowded outside the store, while offensively inoffensive music blasted over enormous speakers. Everyone was in immaculately clean activewear sets, and had beautifully styled hair.

They were also dancing. Kind of. But it wasn’t the sort of dancing people actually do when they’re at a rave – sweaty, half-cut and hidden in the dark. That’s more uninhibited and unselfconscious. All limbs and unpredictable flailing, like someone falling off a cliff.

No, this was the dancing people do when they’re acutely aware they’re being observed: bouncing lightly from foot-to-foot, arms perpendicular to bodies, head slightly tilted to the side, risking only the occasional hair flick.

It was all so aesthetic, I could spew.

It’s probably not fair, or healthy, to be so annoyed by coffee raves. But I can’t help it. They give me a visceral reaction of loathing, though I’m not entirely sure why.

Maybe it’s the name? A coffee rave is no more a rave, than Dr Pepper is a GP. Although, I would sooner take medical advice from a fizzy drink than dance sober in the morning at a local coffee shop. Yes, because it’s lame. Bone-achingly, spectacularly lame. But also because the whole thing stinks of performative fun.

There’s a philosophical thought experiment which asks: ‘if a tree falls in the woods, and no one was there to hear it, did it make a sound?’. The modern equivalent to this question is: ‘if there was a coffee rave, and no one posted it on social media, did anyone have fun?’.

At least in the second instance, I’m fairly confident the answer is no. The joy of a coffee rave (if any exists at all) seems to come from the documentation. The reliving and curation of the moment, rather than the moment itself.

But God, don’t these people know we’ll all be dead one day?

That’s probably not the good vibes everyone was trying to channel that morning, but it’s true. We’ll all be dead soon. In a mere celestial blink, everyone you know will be dust. It doesn’t mean we have to live in a perpetual state of joy and gratitude — that would be exhausting.

But I can think of few worse ways to whittle away the hours between now and the grave, than shuffling to mushy music at a cafe, hoping to appease some algorithm or impress a stranger on the internet.

I assume those are the main reasons people attend coffee raves. This madness only seemed to start after some idiot made phones that connect to the internet. Before then young people were getting up to stuff they didn’t want others to see. Namely partying, drinking, and doing drugs.

Bring back the nihilism and destructiveness of youth, I say. It might not have always been healthy, but at least it was honest. Since flappers were kids and jazz was subversive, young people have been fucking themselves up in a way that appalled their elders. Why? Because in the moment it felt good and they were enjoying themselves. And not in a sanitised, boring, aesthetic, Instagram-worthy way.

But sure. If people want to attend little coffee raves, I won’t try to stop anyone. Yes, even if their performative happiness gets in the way of my performative working. In all honesty, I’m not sure there’s much I could do – the cafe dancers grossly outnumbered me on that particular Saturday morning.

But before young people resign themselves to almond milk matcha lattes and bopping around in the blinding morning light, I implore them to try getting very drunk a few times.

Like everything it should be done in moderation. But get drunk, go somewhere dark, and then thrash around where no one will point a camera at you. You might find it’s so good, you’ll be willing to sacrifice a few mornings to the altar of actual living.