Norths & Wests is a segment of the NBN Opinion section focusing on displaying opposing opinions on a certain topic. In this article, writers discuss the merits of sparkling water.

Cassandra Brook: You’re not better than me because you drink sparkling water; you’re just arrogant.

Comparing still and sparkling water is like comparing pizza and gefilte fish—we all know what tastes best. I understand the appeal of sparkling water. You want to seem bougie because you drink Perrier instead of tap. That doesn’t make you elite. I’m not going to roll out a red carpet every time I see you because you’re not an Oscar-winning actor with a $20 million mansion and an invitation to Michael Rubin’s White Party. You are a regular person in a regular home drinking sparkling water out of the same can that your average Joe uses for his nightly beer while sitting in front of the TV watching sports and spilling tortilla chip crumbs all over himself. You, too, are a peon.

Not only are sparkling water drinkers supercilious, but they are just plain wrong about sparkling water’s taste. Sparkling water takes all of the worst parts of soda (the need to burp, excessive carbonation, tiny bubbles that add nothing to the flavor) and puts them into the sacred, natural drink that is water. There’s a reason why water is given to us by Mother Earth. It is a god-given, inalienable and fated liquid that quenches your thirst when you most need it. The cave men never asked for sparkling water because they never needed it; water was enough.

I would only use sparkling water if I were a medieval peasant whose plot of land had been split in half and needed extra liquid to spit on my villainous king who cares more about his massive chicken bone than my livelihood. Or if I were in a reality TV show and wanted to splash painful water into the face of some Brittashleigh who has a bigger yacht than me. Outside of those two instances, sparkling water is useless. Sparkling water is warfare on my taste buds and there is no peace in sight. Sparkling water tastes like if you took the bubbles from the murkiest waters of Loch Ness and then placed those bubbles into toilet water from a Porta Potty next to a Chipotle. In short, it’s shit and deserves no place in this society.

Kai Feinberg: Only masochists want water to sting.

Sparkling water is perfect…if I wanted water to hurt me.

-Here are my problems with it:

-You can’t drink it quickly.

-It gives you burps.

-It tastes terrible. Like, actually. LaCroix “flavors” are like “driving by a truck transporting strawberries.”

Safe to say, you are not being brought to Flavor Town.

It's like soda’s less attractive, more pretentious sibling. Sparkling water is for people who will willingly shock themselves if left alone in a room by themselves just to pass the time. It's water’s weird goth sibling who loves frying ants with a microscope.

Imagine soda with no soul. Just bubbles and pain with no sweetness to distract you from the knives in your tongue. Have you ever taken a big sip of nice cold water only to realize it was sour, bubbly water? Then you just have to choke it down, pretending like it doesn’t make your insides burn. I have, and it sucks.

Who looked at water and wanted to make it spicy? Do they need the extra stimulation to make it through their day? If I wanted something exciting I’d just pound a cold glass of water and stuff my mouth so full of Pop Rocks it sounds like a Fourth of July fireworks show.

Imagine swapping sparkling water for regular water in any other instance other than drinking. Would you clean a cut with sparkling water? Would you baptize a child in sparkling water?

I think not.

Water is the elixir of life for us normal people. I guess sparkling water is of similar importance for Satan-worshiping heathens who need everything to be X-treme.

Lydia Tallarini: It’s an acquired taste

When I was little, I didn’t like dark chocolate. I thought sweet potatoes were gross and that beets tasted like dirt. I also thought sparkling water tasted bitter, hurt my mouth and was in all ways inferior to its flat counterpart.

Then I grew up.

Dark chocolate is great, sweet potatoes are verging on too sweet but still delightful, beets have a delicate flavor that pairs well with goat cheese and sparkling water…sparkling water is delicious. It’s tingly, it’s interesting and it’s even more refreshing than normal water. It’s best when flavored, but even when plain, sparkling water makes an otherwise ordinary beverage, well, sparkle!

Call me pretentious if you want, but it’s not my fault that you can’t appreciate an italicized version of a simple drink. I hear people say that it hurts but doesn’t life hurt? And isn’t there a difference between pain and intensity? I’m usually a pretty calm person, but I guess sparkling water is my kind of excitement.

Also, sparkling water lends itself really well to being flavored. LaCroix, Bubbly, Waterloo, Spindrift, etc. – all of these companies agree with my new opinion and make beautiful drinks (with the exception of grapefruit-flavored sparkling water, which is foul). My favorites are watermelon and blood orange from the Bevi in The Garage. The only problem is that if I fill my water bottle with it, it tends to build up pressure and kind of explode the next time I open the bottle. But that’s definitely a price I’m willing to pay for the sweet, glittery bubbles.

Thumbnail graphic by Olivia Abeyta and Kim Jao / North by Northwestern