Adbusters: Hipster

I just finished reading this

and all I can say is hallelujah. Hallelujah and holy shit. Somebody finally said it and said it so well. This makes me feel so much better about never fitting in and/or feeling cool with this generation's definition of subversive. Laura, can I get an amen? I read this and thought of us walking into Kiva Han laughing and smiling and the hipster girl at the counter rolled her eyes and you said, "Oh, I'm sorry- I guess we're supposed to be cold and cool now." :)

I have basically been spitting this same critique to all of my friends over the years after "noise" shows and hipster bar scenes have left me feeling so empty and pessimistic about the world and my generation. Every noise show has me looking around the room at sickly, skinny white drunk kids chicken-bobbing their heads in unison to the lack of music and I stand there wishing so badly I was born into a culture that had real, authentically meaningful collective music and dance celebrations. See powwow, drum circle, African tribal dance and then see the smokey, sad show in Pittsburgh with kids barely moving. Shit, even the back country pentecostal revivals I went to as a girl were better than this.

I had a freak out at a party full of Pittsburgh hipters recently when they all came home to a houseparty after being at the Brillobox watching some disgusting video of two girls eating shit and a second video of someone showing this first video to an old grandmother. The hipsters at this party thought that the videos were so cool and funny and I confronted them on their ageism, their total disrespect of elders, their lack of meaning and fight, and it resulted in a near fist fight and me leaving, crying. I can't tell you how many times this has happened. These kids are complete sons and daughters of the colonizers, reinforcing paradigms that reinforce our fucked suicidal shit-storm of a culture. Pittsburgh is infested with them. Spoiled kids drinking Pabst at trendy dive bars pretending they didn't grow up in upper middle class suburbs with total privilege. Wearing uniforms of cool while believing they are totally original. Doing nothing for the world but consuming consuming consuming. Thank God for Adbusters and this article. Maybe now we can all look at ourselves critically and use that reflection to create a real subversive generation. Maybe not.

I haven't read it yet, but I've heard there is an interesting counter article posted on the hipster apologist blog "Street Boners and Tv Carnage".

Notice the typical apathy and hilarious (?) irony of the blog title. It signifies the lack of emotion that this generation has to flaunt in order to be cool. Lack of care, lack of emotion, lack of real struggle. I think this guy is a hipster. Maybe my "When I was young and punk I had to hitchhike 120 miles into the city to find maximumrocknroll to order my records," sounds as silly and old fashioned as the classic, "when i was little i had to walk ten miles through rain and snow to the school bus," but seriously- this instant-everything "first-world" arrogance is killing us all. And, anyway, I did have to walk far through rain and snow to my school bus- two miles and this country, working class upbringing gave me the ability to see through this shit because the people I love are hopelessly un-cool, hopelessly hopeless. Fuck this generation. I rebuke thee.

I just got out of the wilderness of the Yukon. It was amazing. I hated to come back to civilization, but I have a life to tend to. I will be posting details and pictures of the trip later.