Hipsters! Gosh!

The topic of today's post, with a little help from Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame, is . . .

What's the deal with them?

After my recent post about bicycles, I realized that I do actually need to get a post out there about hipsters and why they suck.

Now, I know what you're thinking, provided of course that you're thinking the following sentence: "Gee, Doctor Woofers, what are hipsters and why do they suck?"

Stay tuned for the answer!

*Disclaimer*

This post isn't meant to hurt the feelings of anyone who identifies themselves as a quote-unquote "hipster", merely to vent some of my irrational hatred in a humorous fashion for the entirety of the interweb to see. If you think it might hurt your feelings to find out that hipsters are what's wrong with the world today, you probably shouldn't continue reading this post.

Sums up my feelings on hipsters.

For starters, take a quick visual survey of what constitutes a hipster by checking out the website "Look At This Fucking Hipster" at http://www.latfh.com/. The people who run this site have been bringing the issue of hipsters, that plague upon humanity, to the attention of anyone who has access to a computer with internet capabilities (and now to anyone who can find a book store with the release of their book).

Hipsters.

They probably knew about this pic before it went mainstream...

I am not alone in my distaste for these unwashed masses, but perhaps I am alone in how irrationally I despise them. I mean, sure it's culturally acceptable to have a bad opinion of Hitler, but hipsters are surely nothing like him, right?

Wrong!

Look at those ironic mustaches!

I'm going to organize this rant against hipsterdom into three categories: belongings, clothing and personality. Each of these three categories is nearly enough to earn my undying antipathy towards hipsters, but together they create a trifecta of annoyance.

Material goods such as bikes and headphones.

Hipsters are defined by their possessions. As much as they wish that they could go all "Fight Club" and be liberated from their belongings, they actually go the opposite direction, and are seemingly incapable of realizing that they are their pair of skinny jeans, they are their Buddy Holly frame glasses.

Even though they like to dress like they shop at a thrift store, or scavenge their clothes directly from the dumpster, all hipsters love to buy things that help create their image or give them "hipster cred".

How hipster marriage ceremonies probably look.

Things that give them acceptance by their peers include, but are not limited to anything that Apple has ever made or will make. You name it, Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, if you tell a hipster that Steve Jobs was involved with developing it you could probably sell him a large steaming pile of cow feces.

Old vinyl records of obscure bands. Nothing screams "I am a hipster!" more than having an obscure version of a particular song on a largely obselete form of technology. It would be like if I really wanted to have a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special on Beta-Max or some shit. It makes no sense, and is often more expensive than just getting the mp3 of your favorite Clash song.

Plus you have to deal with people like him.

Also, fixed gear or antique bicycles. Hipsters fucking love these things. If they can't have one of these to get to their independent record store on, they might have to settle for a 1980's Volvo or something else suitably retro like an AMC Gremlin or a Ford Pinto if they can find one.

It just screams "I might be legally retarded!"

You might have already read my blurb against fixed gear bicycles in the previous post, but if now, here's a brief summary: they suck. Not only are the frames usually expensive, the tires fragile and the brakes non existent, they don't allow coasting. Not having to exert physical effort is the best part about using wheeled transportation.

Getting a regular bicycle and turning it into a fixed gear bike is like getting a car with power steering and then cutting the lines just so that you'll look cool for your friends. It makes no sense what so ever, yet hipsters flock to fixed gear bikes and the shops that service them like homeless people to an underpass.

I'm sure that there are other things that hipsters possess that I just am not currently annoyed by, but will remember at a later date.

True fact: All hipster closets are replete with skinny jeans.

Perhaps the easiest way to spot a hipster (aside from hearing an obscure band blasting from their over sized headphones) is by their clothing. Unless said hipster is attempting to fit in with the rest of the world, whether because they have a real job or they think it'll be ironic, a hipster will instantly be identifiable by the mismatched articles of clothing that they drape over their often androgynous bodies.

I'm going to start at the feet and work my way up with things that annoy me about hipsters.

Feet: Individualized Chucks or Rainbows. My dad wears Chucks, not because he's a hipster, but because he's almost fifty years old, and has a right to wear old style shoes if he wants to. Now, I'm not putting down Chucks, because they are nice shoes. But hipsters take them and cover them with sharpie, and sequins, and alternate lacing patterns.

WTF? Honestly, I've got no beef with Rainbows either, it's just that hipsters wear them when there's snow on the ground. What is that about? Is frostbite cool again?

I could have sworn that went out of style with dysentery.

Legs: Skinny jeans or ridiculously short shorts. Alright, without the adjectives in front of them, jeans and shorts sound like what normal people wear. Unless of course you combine them to form the almighty pair of jorts. And that's cool with me. However, I would gladly let gun control laws become lax enough to allow assault rifles for fourth graders if there was some way to have stricter clothing restrictions.

Men should not wear skinny jeans. End of argument.

Be grateful I didn't use a fat guy.

If you argue against my statement, then you are obviously someone who wears them and as such have no place in this argument due to your deteriorated mental state. Also, wearing the same style of shorts that YMCA youth did in the 50's does not make you cool. All it does is make you look gross, because your legs are usually pasty pale and excessively hairy. As somebody who has hairy legs, I am not suggesting you shave them, merely wear shorts that are closer to your knees than your crotch.

Pictured: A hipster who knows how to wear shorts (anomaly)

Torso: Up above whatever studded or sequined or random object used as a belt any given hipster wears around their waist comes the ridiculous shirts, jackets, vests and other things used to cover up their top half if they aren't flaunting their ripped physique.

Fact: hipsters love terrible shirts. Whether it's a sweat stained v-neck plain t-shirt,


a horrible sweater,

some sort of plaid/stripe combo

or just a massive dosage of their all time favorite word.

(Hint: it's irony)

After this we get on to accessories. Accessories like ironic fanny packs, or ironic sunglasses, or weird piercings, or the ever classic "culturally signficant piece of clothing until we got ahold of it" things like those omnipresent keffiyeh used as scarves.

Yes, I said it. Kanye is a fucking hipster.

That's pretty much all the space I have for complaining about the way hipsters dress, so it's on to the next category!

The most insidious trait of the hipster.

On a scale of bad personalities, ranging from angsty teenager (best) to Sarah Palin (worst), hipsters score a Snooki (previously thought to be an unachievable low). And no, that is not a compliment. The danger posed by hipsters is greatest when they are not easily identifiable via their belongings or appearance. If you see someone dressed like they were dressed by aliens who had no actual understanding of clothing, you might either assume that they are Japanese, or just a hipster.

Either way, don't take anything they say seriously.

The key character traits espoused by hipsters include, but are not limited to "irony", "individuality", "retro", "enlightened" and "pretentious". (Editors note: I know that they don't think of themselves as pretentious, but such a majority of them subscribe to that personality trait that I felt bad leaving it out.) For some reason the best way to exemplify these personality traits are drinking PBR, having terrible hair cuts, weird tattoos and listening to bad music.

First off, you may have noticed that I've used the word "irony" or "ironic" like a couple dozen times in this post, almost always incorrectly. That's right bitches, I know what the word means and the proper usage of it! Because I happen to be terrible at grammar and punctuation, you might not gather that I know a lot of words, and what most of them mean, if not how to spell them. Hipsters, on the other hand do not. This does not stop them from applying it to every single facet of their lives.

"I have a tattoo of PBR, isn't that ironic?"

No! Perhaps the toxic levels of douchebag that you are attempting to shield your eyes from have corrupted your vocabulary usage!

Irony is when you do one thing and an unexpectedly opposite result occurs, or when you say one thing and mean something contrary to what you said, or even when you're a character in a book and your words mean something more to the reader than they do to you.

Ironically, the term MILF was invented the next year.

The only way the PBR tattoo turns out to be ironic would be if he died from being hit by a can of PBR dropped from off the top of the Empire State Building. Aside from the irony, that whole situation would be totally fucking awesome... I mean... sad. Right. Sad...

Last time I checked, a PBR loving hipster and a tattoo getting hipster are often one and the same. What an amazing coincidence that this person would conceive of getting a tattoo of something he loves! I, for one, am astounded!

Philosoraptor's mind is blown!

And so we conclude this chapter on hipsters. Both because I have momentarily run out of things to type, and because my co-host needs to leave.

This joke brought to you by www.thedoghousediaries.com

For a bit more reading on the subject, check out these links, or just search hipsters in Google to see how they don't believe in the census or some stupid shit.

Wikipedia entry on Hipsters

Hipsters Desperately Seek New Anachronism to Claim as Their Own

Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization