Eating my words

[paulhope]

Remember all that stuff I was saying about the film, "Load After Load," playing at the party of My Pal, Foot Foot? I take it back. Shame, shame, shame--what's wrong with me? Here's a problem with having (acknowledging) split motivations for every action

Comments

LaFatney

[ode_to_tapirs]

I have eh...you know...one of those...guilt problems...now I feel badsy! HOWEVER, yes, I do know THE FEELING. In fact, I am so intimately connected with it that I am loathe to offer any sort of wisdom...it would be fortune cookie wisdom, at best. I might say, however, that I was wilfully giving you a particularly hard time, and also (ok, fortune cookie wisdom after all) that, as a poster in elementary school may or may not have vaguely suggested, a willingness to be "called out" (even on a trivial matter such as this) is generally appreciated and admired. Am I right, or am I right? MOST IMPORTANTLY, however, based on your implication today that I may sometimes LOOK like a hipster, I'm going to have to assume (after viewing this cartoon) that you think I'm short and chubby. BURN!

LaHOTney

[paulhope]

No, no, no--no implications about you were meant by the cartoon. You are, in fact, tall and slender. It just was topical, and presented in the spirit of presenting the other side of a complex issue. That's all.

And don't be too guilty. I got what I deserved.

Re: LaHOTney

[ode_to_tapirs]

oh I know! Don't worry, I've deeply researched both sides of this issue, thanks to the ongoing debates on the Craigslist missed connections section for New York City.

idk, man.

[yourpalfootfoot]

your thing with hipsters is frustrating because as near as I could tell (and I assumed a guy, smart as you, would feel similarly) everyone, without regards to dress or dance, is literally bursting at the seems with bullshit. not a single person couldn't be called on some easily identifiable and embarrassing shtick.

certainly my pal sebastian could deliver more relevant, damning and high-minded blows to his targets. i mean, you do go to brown.

Re: idk, man.

[paulhope]

Dude, I think you're hearing me wrong if you think my intention is to deliver 'damning and high-minded blows'--I'm not trying to deliver blows at all. I've got nothing against you or Allison. On the contrary, you both are fine individuals, in my opinion.

Did you find the cartoon personally offensive? It wasn't put there to insult.

we're all misunderstanding each other

[yourpalfootfoot]

I meant it all in good humor! I don't imagine you're someone who would easily deal out a mean-spirit.

I think it would take a picture of my mother being raped by the ghost of my uncle to really offend me. At this point, I don't really find anything too shocking, so a funny cartoon isn't really going to do the trick. But I will question the motives and inspiration of an author and his work. Less to disagree with his point, but to rather bring attention to the pointlessness of his assertion. Like, sure- it's plenty easy to take a jab at hipsters, indie kids, hippies, economics students and other assorted college level douche-bags, but I just wonder if the ..... you know what? fuck it. I'm hella tired.

I guess I'm just sad that you left my party early :(

Re: we're all misunderstanding each other

[paulhope]

Now it is I who feel "short and chubby" in the irony-laden game of monkey-in-the-middle you play so deftly with the human heart...

this is hal

[anonymous]

Modern hipsterism is like the consumerist farce of historical countercultures. It's something you buy into, or at least the Ivy League version is, by wearing certain clothes and listening to certain bands. It represents the recuperation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation) of deviant tendencies into a more or less socially acceptable clique

Re: this is hal

[polishcyclist]

yeah, but you and seb are missing the crucial bit: Done well, it looks good.

And by done well I don't me AF - that's hardly hipster - or midwestern aesthetic. Tight euro-style, indie-band referencing t-shirt, sharp blazer, rip tight jeans, maybe a porkpie hat; that looks good.

Re: this is hal

[anonymous]

I was only citing AF as the mainstream knockoff of a hipster trend. This was within the general point that in the end the signature contribution of hipster culture may be giving clothing companies new ideas on how to make lots of money off the rest of the population (excepting music, which I'm not competent to judge). As a case in point, there was this guy in williamsburg who just let Levi's copy his pants exactly in order to sell them, presumably to hordes of uncool midwestern kids. I hope he gets a percentage.

in your hipster portrait, don't forget the vintage converse or the bizarrely tight sweater...and the comp lit glasses

what the hell is a porkpie hat?

Re: this is hal

[polishcyclist]

A pork pie hat is a felt hat, similer to a Trilby, dating from the middle 19th century, much the same as a fedora, but with a flattened top. The crown is short, and has a characteristic indent all the way around, rather than the "pinch crown" typically seen on fedoras and homburgs. It gets its name from its resemblance to a pork pie. The brim on a pork pie hat is generally on the smaller side, and is worn up, though it can be worn down in the front. The hats come in straw varieties as well

literary "truth"

[intertidal]

As you told Holly yourself, it would really depend on how "truth" was being defined. I'm not convinced that literature's value or purpose is to express the truth, although I do appreciate its ability to express the ineffable. Some of what I said here yesterday I found echoed, today, during my reading of Rorty's "The Decline of Redemptive Truth and the Rise of a Literary Culture," which I linked on my lj this afternoon, if you're interested.

Re: literary "truth"

[paulhope]

I'll check it out when I've got a free second.

Personally, I'm swerving towards the position that truth should be defined as what is valuable to us, for any reason.

That's a misleading statement. What I want to say is "For every purpose, we can define a truth relative to it which is, in some sense, deserving of the name 'truth.'"

[paulhope]

mmm. i guess maybe that's true.

What are you referring to here? The cartoon? Somebody elses post?

I think the point about hipsters never self-identifying as such is really apt. It's the case of a (enter dork mode) category that captures a statistical regularity that shows up when you start trying to summarize information in a lossy way, but people's own social circles are too important to people for them to generalize over like that.

Also, it's funny that so many people rejecting any label (what does indie mean? It means 'not like/dependent on anyone else,' right?) fall into the same bucket.

[yourpalfootfoot]

activism is just a trendy buzzword one can apply to anything to help himself feel better. near as I can tell, anyway. bake-sales become activist bake-sales, bicycle riding suddenly becomes something socially important, yadda yadda yadda. Hey! Who hasn't studied abroad (South America! Am I right, folks?) and.. you know, had their eyes opened, yadda yadda yadda some more. also, most activists (in providence, anyway) are upper-class whites, who move into neighborhoods that were until recently, like, hella poor.

all of this posturing seems silly. like, we're all just imbuing harmless, unimportant cliques with the the type of overwhelming and absurd philosophic importance that college students usually reserve for dissecting tv shows or poor people or whatever.

[anonymous]

it's fitting that today hipsters should gentrify places like the mission district, wicker park, and williamsburg...expelling minorities...since in a sense the whole history of american cool is founded on the appropriating the cultural cachet of being black without facing the political consequences