Adbuster’s Douglas Haddow has spoken! He’s unleashed a “scathing” review of the offensive, apathetic, materialistic, slacker generation dubbed “hipsters”. Cue up the Bob Dylan record because Doug is going to show you all how they used to do it in the underground when it meant something. I tried to send a letter to Doug but apparently the US Postal Service doesn’t deliver mail under rocks so I’ll just blog about it and be true to the “hipster manifesto”.
A brief summary: There is this new culture that sprung up recently that Douglas discovered by being kind of wired into the underground scene. He discovered that America’s bored youth have united and formed a new subculture, the members are called Hipsters. These kids are materialistic, egotistical, shun their wealth (I guess he looked at everyone’s tax returns to see what they were making before writing the article) and are into clothes and sex. Before reading the article I thought that was just the description of a teenager / twenty something American but after digesting this expose I realized the subtle nuances that create the hipster. Tight clothes, fake glasses, ironic gear and a need to party. These things have never come together before in culture, especially on such a powerful level. And check this out, these kids are so out of it on the cocaine that they don’t notice that they are being TOTALLY manipulated by the big evil corporations that just wanna sell stuff and make money.
Folks, this is a must read it’s scary, like how did this happen? Can Adbusters stop this? How do we protect ourselves and most importantly what is a hipster and how do I know if I am one?
Doug’s no-holds-barred critique of these hipster zombies is punctuated by this battle cry, I can’t help but get a bit misty as I read it, I’m hoping Doug doesn’t just abandon us after blowing the lid off this subculture that is eroding the soil of the USA :
We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.
Aside from being several years too late on this Douglas is right that our culture as a whole has stopped giving birth to anything new and that’s not really that big of a deal. At some point doing new shit isn’t really that cool. Remember “funk-metal” , that was something new. Writing isn’t really that new, shunning corporations isn’t new either. Complaining about kids isn’t new either in fact all it really does is show your age or show that you’re totally fucking boring. Even using the word hipster is cringe-worthy. When someone I know says it I get the douche chills as if they were taking out a Barack The Vote or Everyone Loves a Jewish Boy shirt from an Urban Outfitters bag asking for my approval :
Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice, who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom’s primary architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes, whose “Dos and Don’ts” commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.
“I’ve always found that word [“hipster”] is used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable,” he says. “I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”
That pretty much sums it up. Hipsters are good for the economy. It was a big deal when I was a kid to buy Air Jordans, now every kid has several pairs of sneakers, $150.00+ jeans, Mac Laptops, iPhones, what is the big picture really and who gives a shit? American means bigger and better, Hipsters are actually just patriots. Is this article telling me that kids are mindless consumers? No shit. Isn’t that the premise of Adbusters? Letting us know how totally dumb we are for letting Nike exist and how we should have a cobbler make our shoes from locally farmed cows where every inch of their corpse is used for something productive?
Hipsters or whatever the fuck dudes who wear v-necks and drink shitty beer are called are the first new culture to emerge since we all thought our computers would freeze on Y2K because someone forgot it wasn’t going to be the 19something forever. Most kids have now grown up having some type of web-profile their whole lives at this point. A kid into music can find the records you had to scour the earth for on mp3 in 30 seconds, they can digest a million things at once. If you wire a social networking site profile up to a doll Weird Science style a hipster comes out. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just the way the world is now. Unfortunately the humans who remember “what it used to be like” are jealous that they missed the boat. They spent their youth Lloyd Dobblering to get the attention of chicks hoping to have them touch their pee-pees , pretending to care about women’s “real feelings” and being sensitive and shit. They could have put up Barry Bonds numbers with the internet helping them get laid, that shit is steroids. Yup, this sounds like the old timer in the broadcast booth who got paid a total of 2 million dollars in his whole career bitching about today’s primadonnas. This is the asshole trying to convince me that Frank Sinatra was the definition of class and that I should take my hat off indoors.
The bigger problem is that we are in love with nostalgia, even Douglas, he’s yearning for that revolutionary spirit that gripped our forefathers and gave us subversive art like soup cans and something to believe in. It’s so tedious reading shit like this. Maybe everyone who isn’t washing organic cotton diapers right now just doesn’t give a fuck and is cool with that. If some people medicate themselves with Sparks and expensive denim who gives a fuck? I don’t listen to the radio to be inspired, I don’t want what I see everyday to resonate with me, I don’t want to live in a culture so motivated that we’re are all forward thinking radicals changing the world. I’m completely happy searching out what I want and tuning out the rest, it’s not that big of a deal really. Sure our homes are heated inefficiently, we waste a lot of shit, pop music suxxxxxx and politics are fucked up. I can’t believe I wasted my time reading a someone’s 10th Grade Social Studies assignment masked as an “article” by and adult about culture.
This article reads like a fucking Mad Lib. Plug in any “youth culture” and you have an article on current metal, hip-hop, skateboarding, graffiti. It’s all the same shit, kids communicate with their clothes. No matter what the “morals” behind the costume, people and kids specifically dress a certain way to project something hoping someone else picks up on their signal, provided it’s the right person. This even true of the anti-fashion person, same shit. Don’t try to tell me that the Punk movement or any movement had a different agenda. Once something rises to the surface it means that enough douches have latched onto it and watered it down to make it on other douche’s radars that’s all.
Puke.
TAGS: A-Rod, Adbusters, Hipster, Hipsters, Manny Ramirez, Vice Magazine
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August 1st, 2008 at 1:37 pm
“We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.”
This made me want to punch my monitor so bad. I know “Adbusters” is hardly a bastion of tremendous jounalism, but if the writer was older than 21 there’s no excuse for the overindulgent, hackneyed drivel that I just read. Also, it makes no sense at all: “The last generation”? um Im sorry bro I must be confusing all these children I see everywhere for something else. Generation PS3 is a scary one though…..idiocracy IRL.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
“Letting us know how totally dumb we are for letting Nike exist and how we should have a cobbler make our shoes from locally farmed cows where every inch of their corpse is used for something productive?” Fucking hilarious.
Also funny…
There is an annual hipster of the year award in San Francisco. Yes, I’m serious, a hipster award night at a hipster club where people actually go and vote. For real.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
nice post. it pisses me off how every old guy since the end of WW2 has declared ‘the last generation’, and every young douche has declared ‘the final victory of capitalism.’
i think you put forth your arguments well. even with hip young writers, adbusters still aims to please dying, marxist baby boomers.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
ether post
how could he miss shooting fish in a barrel?
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Pretty refreshing..
August 6th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
“I can’t believe I wasted my time reading a someone’s 10th Grade Social Studies assignment masked as an “article” by and adult about culture.”
But it must have taken you at least ten times the time to write this and your subsequent article. Or hadn’t you thought of that?