Stuff Hipsters Hate (2 page)
Read Stuff Hipsters Hate Online
Authors: Brenna Ehrlich,Andrea Bartz
Although Mailer’s essay is riddled with antiquated references
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(and dude uses the term “square” more times than a geometry book), the hipster described in this 1957 work is basically the hipster of today. Forged in a fire fed by hippies (with their languorous nature, disdain for bathing and vehement rejection of their parents), punks (with their tight pants, appropriation and destruction of other cultures, and self-conscious snarls) and grunge kids (with their plaid shirts, sloped shoulders and wretched love lives), the modern hipster fumed angstily in his or her respective enclave, until, fueled by a special form of ennui bred from war, recession and the rise of the Twitter celebrity, they flooded the scene in full force around the end of the aughts.
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(and dude uses the term “square” more times than a geometry book), the hipster described in this 1957 work is basically the hipster of today. Forged in a fire fed by hippies (with their languorous nature, disdain for bathing and vehement rejection of their parents), punks (with their tight pants, appropriation and destruction of other cultures, and self-conscious snarls) and grunge kids (with their plaid shirts, sloped shoulders and wretched love lives), the modern hipster fumed angstily in his or her respective enclave, until, fueled by a special form of ennui bred from war, recession and the rise of the Twitter celebrity, they flooded the scene in full force around the end of the aughts.
The mainstream media’s initial response: fear and bafflement.
Adbusters
promptly deemed modern hipsters “the end of Western Civilization.”
Time
looked askance at their grandma sweaters and affinity for PBR. But soon enough, the term took on a complimentary tone. Fashion writers gushingly applied the moniker to gussiedup
Vogue
editors. Media sources began SEO’ing the hell out of the trendy term, and scores of hipster-themed blogs made their way onto what is playfully called “The Internets.” Popular gossip sites such as
Gawker
called for the death of the word not too long after magazines such as
Time Out: New York
shouted for the demise of the concept. Yes, it seems that the age of the hipster—or at least the plaid-clad, Williamsburg-dwelling, indie rock-loving variety—could be drawing to close.
Adbusters
promptly deemed modern hipsters “the end of Western Civilization.”
Time
looked askance at their grandma sweaters and affinity for PBR. But soon enough, the term took on a complimentary tone. Fashion writers gushingly applied the moniker to gussiedup
Vogue
editors. Media sources began SEO’ing the hell out of the trendy term, and scores of hipster-themed blogs made their way onto what is playfully called “The Internets.” Popular gossip sites such as
Gawker
called for the death of the word not too long after magazines such as
Time Out: New York
shouted for the demise of the concept. Yes, it seems that the age of the hipster—or at least the plaid-clad, Williamsburg-dwelling, indie rock-loving variety—could be drawing to close.
Does that mean that the concept itself is kaput? Well, if the authors believed that, we would have given up this noble pursuit long ago and written a lovely book about how to adopt a kitten or glaze pots—something much less arduous to investigate. Even though superficially the hipster of Mailer’s day is no more (the modern-day variety does not, in fact, wear zoot suits and dig jazz), the urge to be everything that society is not will live on. The hipster of the future may not read Bukowski and walk about with a fedora perched on his shaggy head, but you best believe he will probably dislike about 98 percent of the people currently reading this book.
Not content to merely observe and blandly comment on the population that we have chosen to study, your humble guides have taken it upon ourselves to infiltrate their society. Bartz likens the undertaking to the invaluable investigations of Jane Goodall; Ehrlich fancies the expedition as fitting into the realm of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Gonzo” journalism. Either way, we created this tome via extensive immersion research.
We didn’t initially set out to study this intriguing creature; we merely found ourselves interacting with males of the species after moving to New York, where we began wading in the morass known as the hipster dating scene. We were baffled by the backward world our suitors inhabited, since we had just left a structured collegiate environment where beer pong and the Greek system sadly reigned supreme.
After just one year, we had amassed a large enough stable of stories and exes to draw statistically significant conclusions. For Bartz, there was a cadre of artists with an impressive array of side careers: a former American Apparel model/ graphic designer, a neo-Marxist grad student/guitarist and a painter/ falafel chef/pot dealer. Ehrlich, meanwhile, dated what amounted to an entire indie band: lead singer/ guitar player, bassist, drummer and even merch salesman. What did all these men have in common? Besides the innate inability to return a text message or end a relationship in a proper manner, they all possessed a permeating ennui about this thing we call life.
Further exploration into the hipster realm via parties, coffee shops, concerts and jaunts in McCarren Park confirmed that that weary indifference was not limited to the males of the species, but also characterized what the poetically inclined refer to as “the fairer sex.” Conversations with hipsters of either gender often centered on topics such as “Why this band is played-out,” “How boring this party is,” and/or “How all relationships are doomed to fail because life is so crazy right now.”
Thus, through the lens of bad dates past, we mused our way to a revelation. We began to see the entire hipster subculture with a discerning eye, recognizing it as a brooding mass of cool-hunters who base their life philosophies on general dislike and self-imposed sadness—i.e., “haters.”
By their very nature, hipsters are changeable beasts, chimeras straining against the bars of society’s menagerie with the intense and inexhaustible urge to shed one skin and don a more novel persona. While the average body’s cells regenerate every seven years, rendering that human (supposedly) an entirely new person, the hipster’s process of reincarnation is much quicker.
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Other volumes on the subject of hipsters merely describe hipsters superficially, asserting that they wear tight pants, adore flannel and foster a deep, abiding disdain for shaving. But no one culture adheres to a single, immutable uniform,
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and neither does the hipster. In fact, by the time you’re reading this, hipsters may have long shucked off the hallmarks of their current oeuvre, including Keds and a love of infantile games (such as kickball). We, the authors, maintain that this reinvention doesn’t detract from the enduring validity of our arguments. Why? Because even as fads flit through the cultural zeitgeist, hipsters will cling to the core belief that everyone else is a loser.
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and neither does the hipster. In fact, by the time you’re reading this, hipsters may have long shucked off the hallmarks of their current oeuvre, including Keds and a love of infantile games (such as kickball). We, the authors, maintain that this reinvention doesn’t detract from the enduring validity of our arguments. Why? Because even as fads flit through the cultural zeitgeist, hipsters will cling to the core belief that everyone else is a loser.
At this juncture, we turn our attention to one of the hipster’s most beloved subjects, philosophy, by way of explication: Plato believed that although all people may
appear
to be different—some are thin, some are fat, some are pale, some fake and bake—they are all created from the same mold, the same “idea” that constitutes a human being. One could say the same is true of the hipster: There is a mold out there from which all hipsters are born. And that mold creates people who, regardless of hairstyle or bodily adornment, are identical in that they are defined by what they do not like. What they disdain. What they hate. Therefore, we come at last to the overwhelmingly supported hypothesis of the tract you now hold in your trembling, anticipation-laden hands. Yes, kindest ladies and most esteemed gentlemen: It’s cool to be a hater.
appear
to be different—some are thin, some are fat, some are pale, some fake and bake—they are all created from the same mold, the same “idea” that constitutes a human being. One could say the same is true of the hipster: There is a mold out there from which all hipsters are born. And that mold creates people who, regardless of hairstyle or bodily adornment, are identical in that they are defined by what they do not like. What they disdain. What they hate. Therefore, we come at last to the overwhelmingly supported hypothesis of the tract you now hold in your trembling, anticipation-laden hands. Yes, kindest ladies and most esteemed gentlemen: It’s cool to be a hater.
Liking someone or something equates a loss of power because it proves said person or thing has penetrated a shell hardened by cigarettes, literature and brooding. Contrariwise, if a hipster hates a band, for example, that instantly alerts those around him that he’s better than that band. Likewise, expressing unabashed attention for a member of the opposite sex gives the hottie in question power—if you elevate him/her to the level of romantic importance, he/she can then drop you like a crushed American Spirit, still smoking with extinguished passion. In short, hating is the ultimate shortcut to smug superiority.
The authors have laid out in vivid and captivating detail an accurate and meticulously drawn portrait of your modern hipster. We’ve included our own field notes as well as a variety of ephemera—pages torn from our subjects’ Moleskines, Craigslist Missed Connections, transcribed conversations—and divided them into categories of study (Mating, Grooming, Philosophy & Beliefs, etc.) to better educate you on our elusive subject.
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We hope that this volume will help you better understand this counterculture. Now, you might want to pour yourself a stiff drink—shit’s about to get serious.
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We hope that this volume will help you better understand this counterculture. Now, you might want to pour yourself a stiff drink—shit’s about to get serious.
CHAPTER 1
MATING
[CASE STUDY]Margaret J. is your average hipster girl. She works in publishing, edits a Brooklyn ’zine and, in her spare time, sells vintage clothing on Etsy. Ben Z. is your average hipster boy. He bartends on Tuesdays and Thursdays, shelves books at the independent bookstore on Mondays and Wednesdays, and, in his spare time, practices with his band, Torture My Heart With Your Cruelty. The pair met at a friend’s loft party after Margaret spilled her Bud Light Lime all over Ben’s raw denim skinny jeans and called herself a “fucking train wreck.” After three weeks of “hanging out” (i.e., getting drunk at local watering holes, taking aimless walks at 2 a.m. and consummating their relationship on Ben’s air mattress), Ben has ceased to contact Margaret. Consequently, Margaret has begun writing copious amounts of angsty poetry, whilst Ben has penned no fewer than three new guitar licks for his band’s first big single (they can “feel it,” he says), “I Put the Vacancy Sign up on My Heart.”
The hipster dating philosophy is a complicated dance of well-practiced moves (one step forward yields seven steps back), a power battle
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that ultimately results in one party collapsing from exhaustion while the other matches his/her rhythm to that of a different partner. The key to coming out of the fray unscathed is to cut and run before he/she decides you don’t make the cut.
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that ultimately results in one party collapsing from exhaustion while the other matches his/her rhythm to that of a different partner. The key to coming out of the fray unscathed is to cut and run before he/she decides you don’t make the cut.
Why the need to turn love into a battlefield? Basically, the self-sabotaging gene is welded into the hipster’s DNA. In mythical terms, hipsters are the unicorns—too busy playing in the sunshine to get on the motherfucking ark. While most creatures adhere to the Darwinian drive to maximize the success of their genetic material, the hipsters’ mating dance is decidedly less straightforward than others’ (see: clean-cut bros shamelessly peacocking
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to earn a ticket into the female’s bed), but, shockingly, no less successful (i.e., they get laid). [See
Figure 1
.]
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to earn a ticket into the female’s bed), but, shockingly, no less successful (i.e., they get laid). [See
Figure 1
.]
Figure 1
: Ask-Out Success
: Ask-Out Success
Hipster females approach the males, focusing their attention on the tallest and skinniest specimens, pale creatures whose spindly legs barely support their concave chests. The males act aloof, steadfastly refuse to offer the female any form of sustenance and (much like the choosy females of most known species) bypass opportunity after opportunity to mate, delaying copulation until their partner initiates it. And, in the days following roughly the third encounter, one of the pair proceeds to “ghost.” If pressed to explain his/her actions, the ghoster cites illness, fear of his/her oh-so-intense emotions or a potent (albeit anachronistic) case of melancholia. In the end, hipsters seek a mate not to bear offspring, but to produce drama, angst and, if they are artistically inclined (as most are), countless albums, paintings and books. [See
Figure 2
.]
Figure 2
.]
Figure 2
: Quality of Work vs. Artists’ Mental Health
: Quality of Work vs. Artists’ Mental Health
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