Identity and its Discontents; Exceptionalism and You

There was a time I'd have considered someone a hipster just for using the word 'bromance'. That day is long past, but the feeling remains that too many people dance a bit close to the sociocultural archetypes they claim to hate. Not that I'd care about it at this late juncture. It's just one of the few calming thoughts I'm allowed each day. Goddamn, but I'd let them have it. And there were plenty of girls who, as soon as you and her boyfriend were smoking pot together three times a week, or playing some stupid console game together, would pronounce the entire thing a 'bromance'. It was embarrassing each time. It was just a word that had caught far too much momentum, but I never quite managed to get away from it. It was always there, lurking in someone's brain where it was least expected.

Then the term hipster gained an insane amount of weight overnight. One day it was limited to the actual people one would term hipsters, and the next day it was in everyone's mouth, like saliva. Years of ubiquity and overuse have made this word so resonant that it doesn't even really mean anything anymore. This is partly because the original hipsters died more than a century ago, for the most part, and this tenth wave lacks coherence. Nobody can say that Oscar Wilde wasn't a hipster and he wasn't even [critically un-hip] England's first. Dandies were probably third-wave hipsters, even. All of which goes to say, the term is misused constantly even by people who should know better, and the critical ignorance surrounding the term or its history (1950's highpoint anyone?) just makes it an embarrassing statement on our era's ideas concerning identity.

Mostly hipster is a brand thing, now. If you think the epitome is Vice you're probably right, but then again if you didn't know that you are part of the problem. Rich people have already invested in it, celebrities pay huge sums to appear more 'hipsterish', politicians probably use 'hipster' as shorthand for politically disengaged drunks and 'creatives'. There is an aggregate concept of an hipster. He typically wears flannel and, if nothing else, a mustache. She is typically wearing one piece of denim and often a toque. Everything else is overstated but vague. Random. Hell. It's not the worst social camouflage. These days you could get by on it. But of course, no matter who you are, you are going to be called a hipster by someone you know. It doesn't matter how carefully you cultivate your interests and it can happen even without a record player.

There are few things so fearsome as the current accepted models of politics and their adherents. Anarchists are largely undisciplined and immature. Conservatives are all gerontocrats, paternalists, and varying shades of militarist. It goes without saying that almost everyone is infatuated with or ignorant of the implications of continued statism. Liberals are preoccupied with everything, like they're cats and personal rights and privileges are catnip. But really these archetypes don't exist anymore. Probably they were never true, but everyone needs some reductionism or else things become difficult to consider. You have: people who are angry, people who are downtrodden, people who are doing what they are told, half-assed people, people who have disconnected in various ways, and people who think they know what the fuck is even happening and I don't know who to blame. I don't particularly like anybody's spiel right now.

Heh, Israel pounds Gaza would be a sick name for an anarchist-hipster occupist punk group. It's cool to different people to champion one group of people fighting another. This is sometimes referred to as tribalism. This concept is followed by 'exceptionalism' which is, as it sounds, an exceptionally important type of bullshit. People with doubts about the situation that created recent global tensions: be ready to be called an anti-Semite, another term watered-down and thrown around a lot. It's like how 'fascist' used to be, in the 80's, when neoconservatism was indoctrinating its brood, fattening its captains and psychopomps, and massacring its foes in many colorful and atrocious ways. It's easier to ignore these ugly spectacles, but they still affect people. Imagine a tiny explosion, inside an aquarium that is constantly getting hotter, smaller, and busier. Imagine all the stupid things the fish would be telling each other about this explosion while the water drained out.

Yeah there's still albums to review. There's still tens of page views per day to aim for. Giving up hope is stupid and there's no grain of truth in the suggestion that the world will end on Dec 21, 2012. The Pope even said it wasn't going to happen. There are jokes. Laugh about it. Things will go on. We will not get away from the problematics of our time so easily. Maybe we'll go back to patting ourselves on the back for doing the right thing, for buying one less gadget a year, for putting one kilo less matter into a landfill, for backing 'the good guys' while appreciating the plight of the underdog, for voting, for altruism, for proselytizing our beliefs, for not giving up, for getting up earlier to exercise, for calling mom and dad because they would like to hear from you, for slapping a friend's smartphone away from them when they're not paying attention, for giving a brutal douchebag a hard time, for not shouting down our opponents, for... &c. We're going to feel good about ourselves and we're not going to think about it because feeling anything else is unthinkable and the worst kind of suffering. We are not going to become self-aware, so in some ways we are going to continue to approach disaster. I don't think we're too close yet, but that is really just hope, not expectation.

But don't for a moment forget how truly expensive all this free entertainment is. Better yet, think about that while you're out Christmas shopping and you get frustrated because you're uncomfortable standing in a slow line, helping to outsource your country's economy, or having trouble finding a parking spot.