The "H" Word

One evening, while I was at a party, I was in a conversation about Eastern philosophies, music, religion and their effect on the Western world. A friend of mine overheard the conversation and called me a "hipster". I was genuinely confused for a minute. It occurs to me that the word is thrown around quite a lot without discrimination. While this isn't something I'm particularly vocal about, it has been on my mind for awhile. I am more of a hippie than a hipster, although I still don't like the negative connotations attached to hippies. I don't have a beard or billowy tie-dyed t-shirt, but within my breast beats the heart of a freaky-deaky, bleeding heart, Taoist vegan. So why throw out that word?

Back in high school, "hipster" hadn't quite become a thing yet, but we did have the emo, who usurped and stained the reputation of the goth (something I, at the time, was fairly disgruntled about). Because of this rising of the overly whiny child-person, any movie, music, or book that had anything resembling sadness or personal anger got the emo label slapped on it. There was some genuinely bad stuff out there, but I tried to refrain from using the word mainly because I felt a lot of people missed out on some a lot of great works because of this stigma. So what happened to them?

Well, they grew up and perhaps learned a thing or two from their beatnik ancestors. Now we have hipsters. The same negative attitudes are now pointed in another direction: snobbery. These tossers are everywhere. You know that archetypal guy? The one who wears horn-rimmed glasses and tight clothes with graphics on them that say things like "ZAP!", which is probably not an onomatopoeia, but the name of a band that hasn't made an album yet. The one who scoffs at everything you have to say about any form of media. Well he's real, and he's ruining it for the rest of us.

You see, it all starts out well and good. A fun, albeit grossly unorthodox sense of style, a genuine interest in independent media, and a burgeoning love for hand-rolled cigarettes and cheap beer. Then something sinister happens. It nearly happened to me. If you catch yourself having a conversation about a genre of music or something, and your friend gets excited and mentions another band in the same vein. If you, like me, without batting an eye, dismissively and arrogantly say something like, "They're ok," STOP RIGHT THERE! YOU ARE IN DANGER OF MORPHING INTO SOMETHING EVIL!

I am become Hipster, destroyer of enjoying

genuinely entertaining mainstream media

See, I like the style commonly associated with hipsters, I like the music, the clothes and the cheap ways of getting drunk (see: mooching); but it's a slippery slope my friends. Don't forget to keep liking stuff and not because you're the only one special enough to have heard of it. Get excited about things, and for Chrissake stop turning up your nose at people who do.