Grains. Missiles. Text. Images.
Hipstermongering
Author: mr.mhhs
So yes, everyone, it is in fact awesome to pick out gratuitously self-fashioned hipsters and have some evil laughs at their expense. And yes, their reflexive obsession with their own status as a subculture is utterly obnoxious. And the fixed-gear bicycles, unnecessary jackets, and overall hatred for sleeves makes me physically ill. really--it really really does.
And ya'll fools certainly love you some hipster hating. you have even gone so far as to call me a hipster, citing my computer, sports of choice, enthusiasm for the decemberists, and topic of academic specialization as evidence for my guilt.
well, it turns out beating up on hipsters isn't so simple.
humor me here.
meet mr. hipster. he's rocking a nice ak-47 sleeveless and an old cardigan to top off his lady wranglers from 1996. what we see is that the key to hipsters is that they think they're outside everything, that they are in unique and hip in a strategically ugly kind of way. they're bicycles make no sense. their clothing stinks like shit. they could easily choke to death on their own haircuts. doesn't matter to hipsters tho, cuz they're having fun knowing they're outside your crappy popular culture.
now meet mr. academic/intellectual/hipster-hater who thinks he's so fucking clever. he's rocking....wait, what does he wear? what does he listen to? what are his hobbies? why, i just don't know! it seems like this person doesn't own any clothes, listens to no music, and has no interests. in fact, mr. academic/intellectual/hipster-hater who-thinks-he's-so-fucking-clever is completely immune to criticism! or at least, this is how he acts when he disses you for liking fuckin "yankee bayonet."
bitch please. fact is, hipsterism is a kind of know-it-all posture that makes someone think they're better than everyone else just because they think they're really into something authentic and interesting that no one else gets or cares about. just like too many people who hang their hats on hating hipsters. hipsterism is a subjectivity (yeah, i said it) and you don't have to be wearing a fucking trucker hat to adopt it.
so the next time you wanna hate on some skinny ass stinkin' half-human-half-dog whizzing by on a hopelessly stupid bike, take a look at your own shit and find something more important (or logical) to be righteous or angry about. want a place to start? Rick Santorum still has a job.
I've held off on commenting on hipstermongering because the topic hits a little close to home (I may or may not be wearing a sleeveless tee as I type this).
I sat across from one of CWS' new grad students this morning - dude was replete with faux-hawk, Decemberists tee, and a button-laden messenger bag. At first I was filled with smugly distant ridicule as he professed his desire to only use a bicycle while he lived here and his love of dive bars because "the locals" hang out there. Yes, maybe I did vomit in my mouth a little after he and I argued the merits of BSS and their offshoot projects on the Arts&Crafts label to the dismay of everyone at the table. Of course, that vomit may have been related less to my disdain than to the amount of free food I had shoveled into my mouth only moments earlier (sadly, I tried to convince everyone we should order a stack of blueberry pancakes for the table - in addition to our own meals - but no one went for it).
But then I realized... a) at least he's not some corporate bot who wants to study the use of peer review in the B&TW classroom because that has been identified as a marketable gap in Rhet/Comp scholarship and b) maybe all of my hipstermongering really just rises from my fear of self-implication.
So... yes - instead of getting angry at hipsterism which seems to rise out of our ideologies of individualism, today I will get angry at the related (but far more dangerous) ideologies of radical individual responsibility that have enabled neo-cons to dismantle corporate responsibility and to suggest that if you're poor and disenfranchised, then it's only your fault. Of course, that means I'll be getting angry at most of my undergraduate students. You know, the ones who insist that, although race and gender discrimination was a problem in the distant past, we are so beyond that now.