There is a generational bartending war going on. The old guard versus the new. Each has a bone to pick with the other. I belong to the older group and it’s easy for me to say “it ain’t what it used to be”, but here’s how I see it - our old version of the bar community is dead. The new generation’s version of the bar community hasn’t been born yet.

The life of a bartender is sort of simple. You’re born. You bartend. You suffer death by taxes. The profession is not really that sexy in the long run; it's hard on your body, your mind and generally doesn’t pay well. What used to make it worthwhile was the bar community.

The bartending profession was our campfire that the community gathered around, shared stories, listened, drank and ate. Bartending was a subculture made around this flame. This was the world I was born into. Before social media.

Staying connected required real effort. You had to physically go to other bars, spend money, sit across from people, learn their names, remember their jokes. If you wanted to know what was happening in another city, check out a new opening, taste a new menu, you had to go there. That friction was not a bug in the system, it was the architecture of community itself.

To understand this, we have to throw in a little sociology. There is a concept called Dunbar’s Number. The theory, proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, suggests that the human brain can only maintain roughly 150 meaningful relationships at any one time. Not acquaintances. Not followers. Relationships. Beyond 150, the connections exist, but the meaning drains out of them.

This led me to reflect on my own bartending career. The bartenders I came up with in Aberdeen, Scotland. The people I worked alongside in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The names I genuinely know. Not recognise – know. I'd struggle to get past 150. And I've been doing this for over 20 years, across three countries, at some of the best bars in the world.

Then our generation was part of a change. The coming of Facebook. The first wave of social media didn't kill the community, it extended it. Facebook groups were digital villages. Brisbane Bartender Exchange, London Bartenders’ Association, Global Bartenders Association. If your fruit order didn’t come in on a Saturday, you posted. If you were moving into a new city, you could find your tribe. All of it meant the technology amplified existing human bonds rather than replacing them. We built towns – small, recognisable, functional towns.

Facebook made the campfire burn brighter, made it larger and easier to find, which helped bartenders connect. More sat around the flame. We felt seen. We felt like we were part of something.

Then Instagram, TikTok and the algorithm arrived. Personality became gamified, followers became monetised and we forgot all about the Facebook group. The modern bar community is a cult of personality wrapped in performative motivations, ragebait and adverts trying to sell you shit.

Dunbar’s Number, right? Look at your Instagram or TikTok following. The number of people you could theoretically reach tomorrow morning. For most people reading this, that number is in the thousands. But if I asked you to name the bartenders in your city who are quietly struggling right now, or who just had a kid, or who left the industry last month without telling anyone, how many could you actually name?

Content and silence

Instagram and TikTok are not community platforms. You follow a person. You attend their feed, consume their output and move on. The relationship is vertical. Creator above, audience below. That is not community – that is broadcast. There is no forum or back and forth. There is content, and there is silence.

The campfire forces everyone to face each other. The television turned everyone to face the same direction. Now the TV fits in the palm of your hand and incentivises screen time. The fire in the camp has long gone out – it’s now just a background on your smartphone.

My generation embraced and adapted to the algorithm, but we failed the new generation. We didn’t pass anything on. The new generation was born into the algorithm. They don’t remember the campfire – there’s no reference point. There is no bartending now without Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. What do you mean, I can’t find the world’s best bars and bartenders in three swipes?

The result is a bar industry that is simultaneously more connected and more isolated than at any point in its history. We know more people. We know fewer of them. We have a global community. We have no idea what is actually happening inside it.

This is a world where everything positive is read as performance, and the only things people believe are the negative ones – the scandal, the callout, the receipt. Trust has collapsed so completely that cynicism is now the default setting. Every good thing a brand does is marketing. Every award is politics. Every friendship is a network play. The permanence of the internet means nobody gets a clean slate, and the algorithm rewards outrage over sincerity every single time.

But this is not permanent. The new generation will save us and, therefore, the bartending community itself. Human behaviour is circular, animalistic and predictable. The campfire didn't disappear because people stopped needing it. It disappeared because this new generation never had one. At some point, when the algorithm stops delivering, and the follower counts mean nothing to the current bartenders, they will start looking for something real.

They will create their own version of the campfire. They will rediscover their need for genuine connection, with effort, with relationships that exist outside the feed. How it will look, I don’t know.

But by the time they do, our generation will either be gone from the industry entirely, or we will be the grandparents they visit once a year out of obligation. Warm and appreciated. Irrelevant to the conversation happening around the fire.

But they will find their way back to the campfire. We just won't be around it.