Being an Arrogant-American, I've never heard of Toronto's popular Village Voicey publication 'NOW,' but my man The Fool tells me it's a decent-sized-deal up in Canada. It's certainly cool to see my shit right up on their front page - albeit all sampled and switched up.
The author of the article seems like a very good guy - he interviewed me for this piece about a month ago, and didn't really take me out of context or make me look dumb. I think the prose in the article is excellent even though I disagree with some but not all of his conclusions.
Here are some of the parts I agree with:
- I rule.
- That Streetcarnage piece ruled.
- Obama made the Hipsters care (except Gavin).
17 comments:
Large props on your press, Blognigger. You do "us" all so proud and you deserve all the attention you can attract. With you, we're all winners! And winners never quit!
Cynicism is indeed as fun as fucking, right?
I don't know if I have reservations, but I have some experience with cultures...as an old dude rooted in the arts and sciences (not to mention the motherfucking streets).
Three long-ass points, and feel welcome to tell me to shut the fuck up, I'm Teflon® and I don't listen anyhow:
1) Hipsterism has been around a lot longer than the early 2000s. It's a pretty well-defined niche of culture that cycles like everything else. Thus, hipsterism is like in its 5th generation/cycle/iteration (developed in the '30s by us black-Jews like everything else cool, represent!).
Though pretty dead now, hipsterism'll be fresh again (re-cycle) in the 2010s. And it will always be a commodity. If you're doing hipsterism right now, you're being ironic or post-hipster (or pre-neo-hipster).
I'm guessing author Joshua is a young-ish fellow. It's cute to see the kids adopting shit as their own. There's still kids with safety pins and shit calling themselves "punk." Cute like wiggerism.
Fuck, I just watched "War Room" again and fuck if Clinton wasn't preaching the Hope and Change in '92. Carter was Hopin' and Changin' in 1980. Obama just happens to be the first Homie to do it. Seemed fresh, didn't it? Palin will be all Hope-Change for 2012.
2) So fucking what? Kids will be kids and as kids they are easily sold on the new and the fresh. The niche identification cycles are pretty salient and will work that way forever. Kids grow up, and their nephews and nieces adopt the taste and sensibilities of their "cool" pothead uncles and sexually empowered aunts.
Good for the kids. Fuck the kids. My kid will probably be an Evangelical, Republican lawyer. It's the price I'll have to pay for giving my young, Republican nephew Public Enemy and Nirvana tapes when he was 10.
RIP Bettie Page, right? When you grow up, you'll be so amused.
3) I know we're human and and all and it's our nature and such but when will we stop analyzing everything and start fucking getting over it all? Never, that's when! We're such fucking insecure babies anymore.
I guess I do have my reservations then. Shit, I was first quoted as "unexpectedly replying" to "serious and sober" questions with "a serious and soberly flippant, 'So?!'" back in 1987.
Yeah, you do pretty much fucking rule, ese. Thanks.
Rocks that you're in there but dude, this is some horseshit.
he just stole your idea and whited it all up and made it unfunny and boom it's a cover story
Robert Dobbs, Jr = cracking me up!
I was part of that generation between hippies and punks who have no real identity to speak of. Seems like since then all the generations have an identity but as soon as you describe it it changes. And everyone thinks the next generation is so cynical and will bring about the collapse of society.
He doesn't really make any new points, does he? Like Cable Guy said, he puts his own white chocolate spin on it but doesn't add to the conversation. But the comments that follow are fun.
I guess my biggest problem with the piece is how clearly defined he seems to think hipsterism is- like they have a storefront for ironic community organizing on 7th ave or something. I mean, when you walk down the streets and you see the asshole in the skinny jeans with more product in his hair than paul mitchell, you know that's a hipster and he deserves your derision and a sneer. But to think that this is a group of people who all get an e-blast from hipster.com telling them to vote for Obama and by the way wholefoods is having a special on organic tofu seems a little too pat.
Maybe history does that- creates a need for things to be well-defined and easily understood. Regardless, that's not the take I ever had on hipsterism, they were always just the fucks in front of me in line when I was five minutes late to work- the ones who can't believe they 'discovered' Tiny Cup and their friends think they're so brave for living in bedstuy.
Again, while I liked the aforementioned SC piece, I didn't see it as the definitive manifesto of the death of the hipster. I just saw BN going off on another issue that was buggin him that week.
That Trevor Coleman kid was in a band of mine for like 5 minutes.
Since when have you referred to yourself as a hipster BN?
That kid's article was kinda shitty; I made myself finish it thinking there'd be an original thought or some sort of payoff..there wasn't.
Either way, anyone wearing skinny jeans is almost assuredly sterile after a few months, so I guess it all works out in the end, right?
since when did blognig say he was a hipster anyway?
i think everybody will be complaining about obama in 6 months time anyway. he'll be too conservative for the left and too sane for the right.
poor guy.
Sorry I showed up late for the party. My all consuming need for interaction with females kept me from getting here sooner. Where were we? Oh right...
So before I rip this guy, a writer from my hometown no less, let me say I agree with Niggy's points re: the prose. It's not poor in the sense where you mean the sentences aren't tidy enough. You can smell the white liberal arts education dripping off every word of this article. It's almost as if it were written in a template for modern alternative magazine articles – which is the reason I hate reading that shit and love reading blogs. There's no character, no voice...
Anyway the problem comes from the fact that there aren't any real organized thoughts in the piece. Actually, there are really great points in the piece – but they're all Niggy's. Like everyone else here has said, what's new? What's been added besides a nice helping of boring pretense? As far as I can tell it's Blognigger's thesis, only shittier, way less concise and without humour, surrounded by about 1500 extraneous words of “so fucking what?”
I see an author who read an article on StreetCarnage that said his 'movement' was dead, and so being the hipster that he is, needing to stay ahead of the curve, he co-opts Niggy's thesis, cites the source and tries to position the source as an authentic voice for the hipster set by describing BN as a hipster from the “ground zero” of hipsterdom who has transcended his hipsterness cause he's already ahead of the hipsters and on to the next. He then goes on to poorly re-hash the thesis while loosely stringing together interviews and thoughts from other self-loathing hipsters who want to distance themselves from the 'scene' because....well haven't you heard man, being a hipster is soooo over! They even said so on Street Carnage!!
To me the author is missing the point. He seems to be trying to use BN's article as a signboard for saying: “Hey look guy's here's what's next! Don't be the last hipster on your block! We...I mean, YOU... you're obsolete now!”, instead of contributing anything significant or original to the discussion. The only new thing he contributes is a nicely coined term for post-hipsters - “hopesters”. Anyone feel a little gayer after saying that one out loud?
Hopester (nohomo).
Shit man, doesn't even help to throw a 'nohomo' in there. Still too gay.
The parts where he goes off about the recent history of the hipster 2000-2008 are way too self serious. It completely ignores an important point BN made (correct me if I'm wrong here Niggy): there's nothing wrong with scenes. Distancing yourself from a 'scene' isn't the issue. Determining whether or not we are in the Pre or Post phase of a 'scene' isn't the issue. Having a historical retrospective on scenes isn't the issue. People inherently need scenes which is why they exist. Scene's aren't the problem. The problem is believing that your 'scene' has value outside of its proper context, ie. In the real world; believing that because cynicism makes you a better comedian, it should also be how we run the world.
I didn't like the article at all. In fact this is the worst conceived issue of NOW I've seen in a while and if you check the comment board I think people are pretty much in agreement with me.
Oh well. Guess its still up to me to rep the city proper. Don't lose hope for Toronto yet people, I'm still here.
Ha! The FoOl made me laugh aloud and spill shifty diner coffee. I just boned-up in my skinny jeans too.
Ty, how the fuck are you allowed to check your iphone and COMMENT from a diner on a saturday. who is this wife of yours, the Something About Mary chick??
The best is you KNEW I was using a goddamn iPhone because "shitty" (diner coffee) came out as "shifty" (diner coffee).
The fuck you are genius of insight.
If my wife was the Something 'bout Mary chick I'd'a been fucking her instead of reading The FoOl comments on the Blognigger World Wide Web site.
Anyway, she'd rather I iPhone than flirt with the Jewess waitresses ('cuz I do). They love to serve me bacon.
She knows that I'm non-stop. Daughter too.
I thought the prose was crap. Yeah it was grammatically OK, but good grammar does not make good prose.
I thought the article was interesting and right on. FUCK! I was supposed to be cynical and hate it!
@ anon 9:45pm
Don't try that cunty "you're just being cynical if you don't like the article" shit. Just calling a spade man.
To be honest...
I posted my reaction here late last night after coming home drunk from partying, without re-reading the article, so I re-read it today and I think I was maybe too harsh on it. Or at least too harsh in the tone of my commment.
I Still don't like it. Still don't think it makes for a good read. Still stand by my call that nothing worthwhile was added to BN's original thoughts. I take back my presumption on his motives for writing the article as he did (I mean how would I know right?), although to me the article still does seem to present the switch to hope more as the 'latest trend' that just 'makes sense'. Large parts of his article, in my opinion, confuse points about hispterdom coming to an end because its ethos is flawed and hipsterdom coming to an end because its just not fashionable anymore - ie. too mainstream. Also the hipsters interviewed in the piece do seem to be confused about what to do with themselves now.
I should also say: I think part of my disappointment comes from the fact I'm a huge fan of this website and its author (BN) and I knew the article was coming out and thought it would be something different than it was. There wasn't as much about BN in there as I would've liked, there was no real expansion on BN's piece. The parts that weren't BN seemed confused. I think my reaction was partly defensive on BN's behalf because I know there are a lot of people here who will read the article that haven't read the StreetCarnage piece, who have never heard of BN, and they won't understand where the meat of that article came from even though BN is mentioned and they could look it up if they wanted. People are lazy.
For future: I promise not to post comments while buzzing and pissed cause the chick teasing me all night ended up giving me blue balls. Cool?
Sorry about eating so much board space.
FoOl: I only post while buzzing...on something (pot, pharms, caffeine, Jesus).
Blognigger: "I won't tell you my reservations about the piece just yet - lemme ask first: do you have any?"
Well...we've posted our reservations. What are yours?
[Word verification: "chive"]
pretty much like yours:
-I'm not a self-described hipster; that was out of context.
-Tony's 4:29 point about how "how clearly defined he seems to think hipsterism is- like they have a storefront for ironic community organizing on 7th ave or something. "
-The idea that "hipsterism" started around 2000ish - the jerkoffs I know who started dressing like hipsters started way before that (like those cynical "MOD" fools, yaknow? - same shit to me and it was way before 2000)
-The article said nothing about Gavin's "Voting is Gay" article, which was primarily what my original post was a response to: people who were so cynical they didn't want to vote at all, and said that Obama and Palin were interchangable and thus who cares who wins since they're all shills etc - and that EVERYONE ELSE was stupid for thinking there was a difference and voting and caring etc.
In the end, the guys wearing tight jeans and clear thick framed glasses aren't going anywhere - so don't say they're obsolete or their days are numbered - they're no more numbered than those of hippies or punks or any other "scener"...
The point of my originial article was that we should have zero tolerance for what I tounge-in-cheekly called neo-cynicism (semantic nonsense) - the primary ideal of these fools that said IT DIDN'T MATTER who won the most important election of all time.
As Tony 4:29 said, I was pissed at them that week, and I wanted to show that these people were full of shit, and not smarter than the people dumb enough to care, as dickfaces like vane$$a his crew of "those in the know" would have had us all believe.
BLOGNGR and all:
Just a quick response:
- I didn't mean to misrepresent, but I asked you point blank if you were a hipster and you said you were. But, like I said, I wasn't out to paint you as a hipster. That's just what I got from that answer.
- Point of the article was that there is def an all-encompassing definition of hipster now. And that's part of the reason it's over. They started being predictable - a stereotype.
- I didn't realise it was a response to Voting is Gay. Guess I didn't read it.
- You bet I swaggerjacked BlogN's message, just cause I liked it. I could've easily wrote the piece without referencing or contacting him at all, and just stealing his ideas. He would have never found out....But I reached out because he deserved it. Good ideas and good post, and I attributed that to him.
- All the rest of the comments: what the fuck ever. The larger point of this was to have all these hipster sheep think about what they do with their lives, and it looks like it worked.
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