Hipsters Do Not Exist

 Is that a check shirt I see? Hipster. Thick rimmed glasses? Hipster. Fixed gear bicycle? Hipster. Ushanka? Doc Martens? Keffiyeh? Dirty, filthy, alternative, post rock, omg-so-nerdy microbrew-swilling hipsters, the whole lot of you.

I'm trying to make a point here, honest. Hipsters are people who generally tend to avoid stereotypes, labelling, and anything mainstream. As far as I can tell, they're also generally people who take an active interest in indie films, 'alternative' music, all that jazz. Rarely jazz actually. Anyway, so by definition, we're talking about a group of people who actively avoid being grouped, even if its being done ironically. Why then, is hipsterism an accepted current fad-trend-subculture thing?


Emos were pretty obvious; you weren't an emo if you didn't wear eye liner and straighten your hair, you weren't an emo unless you hung around outside local gigs talking about Hawthorne Heights. Scene kids too, you just needed the hair to defy gravity at the back and an interest in some weird kind of screamo-electro crossover. Going back before emo kids, moshers also appeared to be fairly easy to spot. Baggy jeans, black hoody, chain, desire to mosh. Easy.

I'm sure you've spotted the obvious dichotomy by now; you can't really define stereotypes for a group that defines itself by actively avoiding stereotypes. I'm 99% sure that this point has been made a million times over, but sorry, I don't read your blog, so what would I know?

All this said... read, hipsters definitely exist. They're even a little more easily spotted than some previous fad-cultures, I reckon, because they're the ones out there with their DSLR cameras taking pictures of CCTV cameras. (Ironically, I've done this. It was a first year uni assignment, I therefore feel justified in being predictable.) But if hipsters exist as a mockable entity, then surely their mass culture actions are nothing other than self defeating?

Perhaps we could all mentally split hipsterism into two cults; tru-hipsters and psuedo-hipsters. Tru-hipsters would be the ones that started playing the accordian because they liked the sound, the ones that shut themselves in their room researching 90's indie because they got bored of Slint, and the infinite other potential possibilities of culture based oddity. The other would have to be the shunned group of plebian norms, who are self proclaimed nerds solely because they played pokémon. The immediate problem with such an attitude is that noone would want to be the aforementioned shunned plebian norms, and would thus define themselves as tru-hipster, probably going to insane lengths to do so.

This reminds me, I forgot another rather important part (I think) of hipsterism: the carefully cultivated attitude of Not Giving A Flying Fuck What You Think. The hypothetical course of events presented two sentences ago would obviously turn that one on its head as well.

My personal feeling (and I'm told this is the purpose of a blog) is that soon enough, popular-ish culture will find a new and exciting outlet for Urban Outfitters to capitalise on, and the majority of hipsters will move on. The relative few that remain will, I imagine, be secretly rather happy, just as goths and emos* did, and dubstep fans one day will.

Such is popular culture, and I'm honestly cool with that. Though when flares come back in and we can't buy straight cut jeans, I'll be first out there with the molotovs.


* I'm talking Snowing & The Saddest Landscape here. No BFMV.

* I don't have many images of hipsters on my computer, and am too hungover to search out good ones. The above will have to do for now.

I believe it was Oscar Wilde who once said;

'If economists cared,

they'd do a different job'

Such an illuminating notion is obviously applicable to any job where an employee must regularly flaunt the moral codes which society generates. Some people seem trapped in employment they don't care about, but somehow lack the motivation to do a different job. I'm thinking all those pen pushing, form filling bureaucratic jobs that exist; surely ten years later noone cares about the contents of all those applications and reports. Some jobs are just like that of the economist or the investment banker though; the worker simply must not care for ethical or moral concerns. Perhaps a slaughterhouse operative cares not for the cows. Perhaps a bailiff doesn't care about those he or she visits. Perhaps an editor of a newspaper doesn't actually care about the events he or she reads daily.

 

Presumably in the latter case, if an editor cared, actually cared, about the subjects of every journalistic article he read, newspapers would only publish happy things, or there would be more murderous-editor-rampages.

Shit, maybe if we all actually cared. Like, proper cared I'm talking now. Impossible levels of caring. Maybe the world would be a nicer place. Chefs would refuse to charge for their foodstuffs, customers would demand to pay. CCTV cameras would record thousands of alien acts of kindness every day. People would give way in supermarkets, children would worry they were disturbing old people, Wu Tang Clan basically wouldn't exist.

Anyway, that's obviously all total jibberish, so lets have some black and white photos.

 

 Kinda creepy.

 

Kinda heartwarming.

Kinda vertigo.

Kinda wat.

Kinda atmospheric.

Exciting stuff. To finish things off, here is a link to a half hour mix by this amazing DJ I'm into right now. I'm kidding; I did it, so it sucks. I personally recommend sticking it on whilst predrinking, ideally about an hour before you go out.

[Warning : Politics]

Breaking : Blog Post Whines "World Unfair"

Herein lie my thoughts on Syria 'n related shizzle. Specifically the recent uprising, how it compares with Libya, and, of course, how the media have portrayed things.

So the Syrian uprising apparently started on 26th January 2011, generally with the same ideological roots as the rather wider spread 'Arab Spring'. In Syria specifically, the protestors were irate about the Ba'ath Party being in power for 40 odd years. The Libyan civil war/uprising seems to have been a pretty similar story in terms of causes, and it apparently began on the 17th February 2011. As the worst of the violence appears to be over, there are tentative claims emerging regarding the death toll. One AP/Guardian article claims 'at least' 30,000 in the worst six months.

In both cases, those do-gooders the UN Security Council were discussing the possibility of military interventions, and in both Libya & Syria, those UN Council members representing Western countries (the US & the EU) generally favoured at least some form of intervention. Russia & China supported military intervention in Libya, but have vetoed even an official condemnation of Syria. The Arab League and the 'GCC states'  (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, states around there basically) have condemned Syria and Libya. I'll get onto Israel in a sec.

That is the official line of the big wigs then, as far as I can tell. Actual actions and steps taken by individual states occasionally appears to produce exactly the opposite effect to their official stance. Strange.

Anyway, less of the decision makers, onto a quick profile of the two main baddies under the spotlight. Libya: Colonel Gaddafi. Syria: President Assad. Both countries are pretty rich in oil, and both countries are or were net exporters to most of the members of the UN Security Council. Libya holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa; their oil production, for example, was 4.8 million barrels erry day in 2006. Syria, by comparison, is small fry. Peak oil production was hit in 1995, at 600,000 barrels per day. In 2005, it was reported to be at 450,000.

We like our oil. I'm sure you can guess where my brain is leading me already, but I'll spit it out anyway. Libya, when having a long, bloody, drawn out civil war, is probably not exporting as much oil as We want. I'll even go conspiracy nuts and wildly speculate that some oil hungry customers gave Gaddafi a call and told him something along the lines of 'sort out this bloody mess before the media get ahold of it.'

Anyway, back to wild speculation at least based on facts. Syria, when having a longer and potentially bloodier civil war, aint hurting billionaires abilities to play the buy-and-sell game, and so isn't costing someone their profits.

Without running off to count articles, and play havoc with statistics, I'm going to make yet another unsupported claim. This one is that we all heard about Libya and the rebels and Gaddafi a whole lot more than we did about Syria and the rebels and Assad. It was just generally in the news quite a lot; Libya more so than Egypt, more so than Syria. I'll posit a few ideas as to why this was the case, if you'll forgive me.

a) Audiences were getting pretty apathetic once they'd seen the 50th report detailing bullet ridden hospitals and the struggles of freedom fighters. The media (yeah, all of them) judged public opinion wouldn't support another series of articles on another country, and so moved on to the next flavour of the month.

b) Governments were interested in pushing a transition in Libya, one way or another. So politicians, spokespeople & PR chaps were made available for comment; gave away juicy quotes, accidentally leaked reports, made inflammatory remarks. They provided data and quotes relating to the situation in Libya, and journalists working 18 hour days took the easy option out, and wrote the story about Libya.

c) The Libyans were better able to contact and draw sympathy from journalists & the media than the Syrians. Whether by communication blackouts for the Syrians, or the Libyans just being better at Twitter.

I imagine the true reasons for media discrepancies in reporting is a whole lot more complicated, and takes in way more factors.

Final point, one impressively biased study entitled 'the Israeli position towards the Syrian Intifada' concludes that Israel would prefer for the status quo to continue, for the Syrian regime not to be peacefully overthrown, and for Syria to continue to exist in a state 'of sectarian conflict that would continue as long as possible, rather than a Syrian transformation from situation of struggle to one of freedom and democracy.'

And hey, Israel does have some pretty powerful friends on the world stage.

Incomplete list of Sources:

If you want to know where I got a specific fact, please ask & I'll point it out!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9835879

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/us-syria-idUSTRE80S08620120201

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Libya#Oil_sector

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria#Economy

http://english.dohainstitute.org/Home/Details/5ea4b31b-155d-4a9f-8f4d-a5b428135cd5/284e36f8-7bd1-4d84-89a6-a1e9ee1b835a#aa7

I've just written about 8 introductions and deleted them all. Pretty sure nobody wants to read introspective musings about mentally justifying clogging the tubes with yet more vain mediocrity anyway, so instead, I'm just going to plunge straight into the content.

Be warned, and I apologise in advance for this intensely boring first-post, that there may be images of designer sinks popping up here and there. That is to say, it's unlikely I'll get through all my favorites before getting hungry or bored. To be brutally honest, I doubt these are entirely designer anyway, many are probably just designed. The obvious difference being that I can design a sink and I am not a sink designer.

Sadly.

 

This one, for example, totally looks like it might just be a bit of concept art. I reckon it works 'cos it kinda looks like a section of a falling stream of water? Sink-form analysis required plz.

I'm also really hoping that the existence of this image means that someone out there was commissioned to design some mental sinks. Perhaps I could find evening classes in avant-garde bathroom product design.

I don't actually want to be paid to design exquisite bathrooms for the rich and famous. Mostly, my hoarding of unusual-sink-pictures ('cos I definitely can't afford an actual-unusual-sink) stems from a desire to have a magnificent bathroom in my mansion when I'm older. 

Entertaining notions of the mad desires of celebrities is somewhat entertaining though. Cliff Richards wants a bath with an underwater tunnel leading to another bath. Yoko Ono wants a self cleaning beach floor, Johnny Depp wants one in black gloss and without any straight lines, etc etc, you get the picture.

Anyway, in a break from porcelain dreams, time to check the tiles! Is that some Roman/Greek inspired cleansing experience? Obviously for it to be truly authentic we'd need to know that the pipes were lead. Assessing whether or not this is the case wouldn't even require a spanner, a simple maths question directed toward your host will probably suffice.

I'm getting carried away now, apologies. Last one, a classic crowd pleaser, ol' spiral. Another bit of concept art methinks, but I reckon you could have a lot of fun, as long as it came with a plunger. Ideally you could train a toad or something to ride a small skateboard, underwater, round 'n down the spiral.

Anyway, I'm clearly starting to make less and less sense, so I'll finish here. Cheers for actually reading at least sentence, and apologies for the mish mash style, it'll hopefully improve as I post. When I post. If I post. Eek.

Next week, an essay on the potential benefits of introducing brown bears into the UK.