My name is Christine and I am a reluctant hipster. I maintain that my hipster status was not willingly adopted, but determined for me, as I was forced into vintage clothes and cheap booze via government enforced poverty. However, many people (including the organizer of this blog) maintain that I "listen to The Smiths, Therefore I am." Now according to the definition provided by Urban Dictionary of Hipster,I would qualify as a full blown, Parliment smoking, PBR drinking, English majoring pustule of irony. But what condemns me to subculture exile is my continuous and irreverent denial that I am a card carrying member of this generally loathsome faction of society. In the process of writing this blog, which was originally intended to disprove any and all allegations that I find it hip to be square, I have been confronted with certain inalienable "Coincidences" that make my disposition towards being a victim of social profiling feasible: I happen to prefer a style aesthetic that makes me look like an extra from a Wes Anderson film, I belong to a Beat book club, I watch foreign films because they are "avant garde" but really because I like the intellectual implications of embracing the general alienating nature of subtitles, I pretentiously judge others for being "pretentious" as I talk about obscure subjects that I specifically read up on just to so that I can highlight their obscurity and ipso facto my coolness...the list goes on.
In light of what I just wrote, I still maintain that my alignment with the hipster culture is largely incidental; I don't aspire to achieve irony (though I do enjoy it when it manages to make an appearance in normally mundane situations and locations, such as in line at a coffee shop or the used record store) I am almost 30 and have become a victim of circumstance because things that I appreciate (because I was alive for their original incarnations) have become symbolic of the college freshman bid for acceptance through perceived alienation. Despite all of the aforementioned, I am capable of recognizing that all signs point to Hipsterville, but how does the desire for individuality, which I believe to be at the root of any popular cultural trend: prep, emo, goth or hipster, make you an outcast amongst your own people? E Tu American Apparel guy? Ok I don't want to highlight my existential crisis of the week, so I will move on...
In Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk writes " you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake." This statement rings true for all of us; the one thing we all share is the desire to forge an individual claim on the rest of the world. Hipsters just do this while standing together and apart from the rest of the gen pop while sipping on PBR. This is why, despite my own protest, I cannot hate on the Hipster fraternity; the more we all want to be different, the more we are the same. But, for the record, I drink High Life.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
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you use big words. i feel smarter after reading this post. I drink whiskey on the rocks. nice voice, though - seriously.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I go to parties and I'm like "holy crap... I'm the only one here who's not a complete freakin' hipster... who invited all of them???"
ReplyDelete...and that's when I realize that they're all saying the same thing about me.
I still maintain that I am not a hipster.
this is funny. I'm a magazine editor and I read something nearly completely identical to this post last year on another site. I work extensively with the writer who penned it. You're raising the exact some points as this other writer. You've even used the same name for your blog. The only difference is, theirs appeared online months before yours did. Maybe you should change the name of your site to the Reluctant Plagiarist and stop ripping off other people's work.
ReplyDeleteOh, and if you don't believe me, here's the link. It was first published as a work in progress in a local Los Angeles Newspaper and was published online WITH DATE AND TIME STAMP in February--Two months before this showed up.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thesyndicatednews.com/View.aspx?id=981
tsk, tsk.
EIC-
ReplyDeleteGet over yourself. The article you link to is similar in title only. If you can't read the two and determine that the writing styles are completely different, and also understand that they both quote completely different subject matter to relate to the subculture of Hipsterism, then I feel for whatever sad publication it is that you must edit.
This topic was a running joke between Christine and myself for months, stoked by a bad haircut she got once upon a time, and long before I ever asked her to write with me. When she wrote this, I watched it grow and change several times throughout the process before she submitted.
I guarantee you this arose organically and is 100% original content.
Take your accusations elswhere, if you please.
i don't know, Paul. I read both these blogs and it does kinda look like they came first. I'm not mad that you stole it. I just think u should feel dumb for being so unoriginal.
ReplyDelete