Hyper-Reality at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Encounter at Starbucks

So I thought it was rude enough when the young girl in the tight jeans took the chair at my table at Starbucks. This clan of four smelly perfumed ladies were out I'm assuming as part of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week thing that's running uptown. There are all these pinstriped suit bald men and leggy women running around in designer threads; AM-NY is also handing out these "Fashion Week" special editions as I was making my way in. Granted this Starbucks location was on Broadway but I got here early enough that securing a table and establishing my own personal space usually isn't a problem. Apparently these four didn't get the memo. These girls looked like they were from Long Island or Westchester or some other pretentious place.

Anyway, so the fact that this one girl took my chair was one thing; there were other empty seats. I almost raised my voice to let them know I needed that chair back as I was meeting a friend (I wasn't really meeting a friend). I actually had a friend in the neighborhood; I thought about calling him just so that they would be morally obligated to give me my chair back. But it never got that far; these cluckers were not here for the long stay; that was obvious enough.

But right towards the end of their little pow-wow, these girls did something that I had never seen before.

It was two older ("mom"/"older sister") types and two younger types; like freshman in high school age. So right as they were getting ready to go, they all began snapping pictures of each other (one of the older ones closest to me almost leaned into me to get the right framing of her shot) and I was glad to see their time to leave had come.

Then the girl who had taken my chair suddenly stood up, grabbed her cell phone and looked as though she was going to take a cell phone self portrait. But she started talking.

"Hi guys, this is Daniella. We're here at Starbucks on Broadway. We've just had our Pumpkin Spice Latte and now we're getting ready to head over to our next stop! Let's have a look..."

And then she shut her recording off. Then the other girl did the same thing. They were recording themselves. For what I'm assuming is a multi-part video blog thing.

And then just like that they were gone. The girls recording happened so quickly I wasn't able to get a photo before they'd left.

...20th Century where have you gone?