Beer and Pavement

Disclaimer: This was a half-assed attempt to get a post out this week. It’s a topic that’s been on my mind a lot and another blogger has sparked some ideas I wanted to explore. Also, there’s more profanity than I usually produce in a blog post. This blog should return to some normal posting come next week.-builderofcoalitions

I use the term “hipster” a lot. It’s lazy. As one friend put it, it strips people of their humanity. While that sentiment may be over the top, it is partially true. It lumps a bunch of people into a group based on how they dress and act or wear their hair or whatever.

I’m fine with hipsters. I don’t have a problem with hipsterdom. Every generation has them. There were the punks before the no-wave kids who quickly gave way to those in the hardcore scene and the straight-edgers. Then everyone was grunge until it was cooler to be an indie geek and then I lost touch and didn’t really care.

Suddenly, along comes the hipster. It’s more of an idea than it is a person¹, but the term quickly morphed into a label for a certain kind of young person.

Carrie recently ranted about the hipster, or rather the term “hipster” when self-applied. To over-simplify and pseudo-paraphrase her post² and the resulting discussion in the comments, hipsters are basically just assholes trying to get laid. Sure, there are folks who look hipster and play hipster music who aren’t assholes³, but the point is a good one.

When one breaks down the idea of “assholes trying to get laid”, the separate parts are not all that bad. Assholes, believe it or not, are not terrible. You know where they stand (They’re assholes for Christ’s sake.) and sometimes it’s good to have one or two on your side. The other half of the term deals with folks just trying to get a little action⁴. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. To be truthful, we all want to get laid at some point. It’s part of the human condition⁵.

The problem happens when you put the two together. Assholes just trying to get laid is a dangerous combination⁶. They will sell their soul for a roll in the hay and how that affects others doesn’t matter. They’ll do almost anything for sex and someone ultimately experiences something superficial, gets hurt, or worse.

Assholes trying to get laid aren’t just hipsters. It’s this reason we use “frat boys” or “sorority girls” as derogatory terms⁷. Greek co-eds aren’t necessarily bad people. It’s when they make the decision to be assholes all in the name of a little bang-bang when things get ugly.

So, in summation, the problem with the hipster is that he/she is really just an asshole trying to get laid. The clothes are cool. I like the music, but the egotistical conquest of others’ genitals is not cool.

Image Source: I totally lifted this from excellently voyeuristic Look at the Fucking Hipster. LATFH could totally sue me, except that I don’t make any money from this shitty blog.

Update: We’re all assholes who just want to get laid.

Notes:
¹For more on this, check out the Adbusters’ piece on hipsters. Basically, the problem with hipsters is their misappropriation of some pretty cool/progressive/revolutionary kinds of things, i.e. green living, Che Guevara, indie rock, etc. and all in the name of being cool.
²And really to do no justice to her intellectual property…She just gave me an idea for a post, made me think about hipster in a new way.
³Some of these people are my friends. They really aren’t assholes.
⁴You will learn shortly that I am awkward when it comes to using alternative terminology for “having sex”. It will either come out naive or gross or cheesy or all three. So, I’m not even going to try.
⁵This is a major reason the priesthood and nunnery are so fucked up. Of course these people are going to make terrible judgments in sexuality when they are deprived of human urges. Granted child abuse is not usually a sexual thing, but rather a power issue. But isn’t it a power the church holds over these people that they can’t partake in a natural part of life? I’m not defending the creeps who molest children, but something has to change. I could go on, but I am way off track now.
⁶It’s even worse when assholes actually get together and make more little assholes. Who needs that?
⁷Among many, many others. The point here is to use a group (college Greeks) as an example on the opposite end of the social spectrum whom we readily critique their oversexed asshole tendencies.