Since I live in the Burlington, VT area (Portland East) let me expound on what makes a hipster. A key ceremony of being a hipster is doing things loudly which proclaim how much your lifestyle runs against the grain of mainstream ideas and fashion. Using film cameras for example could not be better designed for this purpose (some idiot always points you out and proclaims theyre surprised its still made, like horses all died when the car was invented). But to give a related example lets imagine two mothers are talking. The Portlandia one will be able to talk at length about how shed never use PAPER diapers- only organic, Fair Trade, green cotton- and about the fermented soybean based baby food shes feeding- Tempeh Temptations. The key thing is to act like its OBVIOUS everyone should be doing what youd doing because its like the *only* way to be despite the aggressively impractical and often expensive nature of your ideas and practices. Such kinks must never be acknowledged. Give and take really isnt allowed- other people are sheep, rabble, etc. for eating cooked non-organic food and exposing their children to WiFi and the off-gassing from particle board furniture. Thats the kind of grand-standing hipspeak/attitude one uses to cut themselves loose from the gauche, plebeian masses. BUT the cotton diaper mom is paying mucho bucks to have a service clean those diapers (using rainwater and handmade organic soap, boiled over sage fires) and THATS okay. The fact that Prius batteries wear out and theyll never be enough rare minerals to make them for everyone is also not important. Congruence with actually helping the environment and social justice as a whole isnt critical, especially if no one hears about it. The critical things are endless ceremonies of righteous smugness that surround you and your family and friends, a bed of organic laurels on which ones prized uniqueness can be displayed for all to admire. Hands down the *coolest* person in Portland/Burlington comes back from vacation with only daguerreotypes, and even the boiling mercury part of making them would still be cool despite everything. If a man hath an LED lamp made of hand-carved aboriginal soapstone he places it not beneath a rattan Shaker bushel basket but on a stand so it can get props from all the world.~ Kardashians 5:15
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 15:43:30 +0000