http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/ Discuss.

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Anonymous Mon Nov 19 13:44:34 2012 No.3160512 [Reply] [Original]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/

Discuss.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 13:49:37 2012 No.3160521 my yuppy friend told me this was 'fantastic' so I didn't read it

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 13:55:36 2012 No.3160532 File: 34 KB, 307x400, nabokov1.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3160521 >makes fun of yuppie friend >is still friends with them.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:10:29 2012 No.3160580 Baby's first critical examination of hipsters. What is this 2008? I though it was just ok to actually like weird shit now. You can have my accordion when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:13:29 2012 No.3160591

>The grunge movement was serious in its aesthetics and its attitude, with a combative stance against authority, which the punk movement had also embraced. In my perhaps over-nostalgic memory, feminism reached an unprecedented peak, environmentalist concerns gained widespread attention, questions of race were more openly addressed: all of these stirrings contained within them the same electricity and euphoria touching generations that witness a centennial or millennial changeover.

Translation: I watched this on MTV and have no clue how it actually went down.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:16:31 2012 No.3160601 >calling DFW sincere Now that is some deep irony

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:19:31 2012 No.3160608 >>3160532 You're only friends with someone if you're comfortable enough to make fun of each other.

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:23:31 2012 No.3160617

i've never actually met anyone who has lived ironically or had "ironic" taste in music, film, etc

this seems more like a perception than a reality. i remain convinced the hipster is just a figment of cultural imagination which reflects some deeper insecurity

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:27:31 2012 No.3160630 >>3160608 >IhavenoideawhatIamtalkingabout

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:30:32 2012 No.3160641 File: 7 KB, 360x145, 71DieYuppie.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3160608 >if you're comfortable enough to make fun of each other. Sure, but who wants to be friends with a fucking yuppie?

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 14:56:13 2012 No.3160694 >>3160617 >Oh you claim you like things that aren't mainstream, you must not really like them but are trying to show how cool and superior you are!

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 15:15:33 2012 No.3160724

>>3160617

this. I mean, there are people who might wear shirts ironically or might listen to a nickelback song once in a while 'ironically' (usually with friends cause its funny, or for nostalgic purposes) but nobody lives an ironic life or whatever the perception is

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 15:18:33 2012 No.3160739

there's also a difference between sincere irony and cynical irony. When I ironically say "Yeah, a Game of Thrones is probably most important book of the century" you can see the obvious, sincere message here: I don't like a Game of Thrones.

Irony does allow you to cloak yourself a bit more than normal statements, but it's still sincere.

Ironic advertising, on the other time, is cynical, because it still believes in the form of advertising but pretends to make fun of it in order to get past people's "I'm being sold something right now" sensors.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 15:27:37 2012 No.3160759 So the reaction against the last generation of hipsters is going to be super sincere people...lets call them....sinners!

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 15:58:13 2012 No.3160845
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>The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. He studies relentlessly, foraging for what has yet to be found by the mainstream. He is a walking citation; his clothes refer to much more than themselves.
Maybe that person just likes the mustache? Just likes wearing short shorts? Home-brewing is fun, and so is the trombone.
This is her, by the way.
I'd do her, but I'd also take her opinions with a grain of salt. I have no idea what this confined french academic thinks she knows about culture, but she has nice legs.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:05:13 2012 No.3160867 >>3160845 confined french academics simultaneously know everything and nothing about culture don't ask me how this is possible but you also know this is true.

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:18:25 2012 No.3160897

>>3160580
Surprisingly, the new generation is a reproduction of the previous one.
Here, in the country I live in, the kids are listening to SHIT, such as The "Flamming Lips", The "Hives", The "Cooks"... Kids listen to those bands as if they were the latest craze, or as if they were classics.
Shit is going on, but I won't let those kids leave me behind; I'm listening to Grimes right now.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:22:53 2012 No.3160907 >>3160897 >I'm listening to Grimes right now. lelelelululululololololilililililalalala

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:22:53 2012 No.3160909 >>3160897 I downloaded her discography in a sharethread a few weeks ago, which was a big mistake as the majority of her stuff is crap.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:24:53 2012 No.3160914 >>3160897 >listening to SHIT, such as The "Hives" >doesn't realise they were your new favourite band almost 10 years ago

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:25:53 2012 No.3160916 >>3160897 >>3160907 >>3160909 >>>/mu/

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:30:53 2012 No.3160929 >>3160897 >the kids are listening to SHIT, such as The Flamming Lips", The "Hives", The "Cooks" Those silly kids, why don't they listen to the awesome new bands like Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, the Libertines, and Razorlight?

Nattie !E6vWOwtorU Mon Nov 19 16:35:53 2012 No.3160947

It'd be more appropriate to use the term "Camp" in regards to hipsters. Irony implies a sort of misalignment between personal and presented views; irony usually is associated with satire, sarcasm, etc.. A democrat wears a republican shirt w/ underlying motives (i.e., social critique of some prevalent stance). A hipster, acting camp, would wear something nobody likes, delighting in the absurdity, but still being sincere when embracing a given object or style. I suggest reading Sontag's Notes on Camp, which details this quasi-philosophy's history, starting around Wilde's time.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:37:53 2012 No.3160950 >>3160759 this new sincerity fluff is super old, it's a product of generation X and the post-cold war 90s prosperity more than anything else also you may be interested to know that the brony fandom is considered a form of new sincerity

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:38:07 2012 No.3160955 >>3160947 >It'd be more appropriate to use the term "Camp" Camp is garish homo style. It's very much confined to the gay scene.

>>	Nattie !E6vWOwtorU Mon Nov 19 16:44:05 2012 No.3160967 >>3160955 I think Sontag's point though is that Jewish morality and Gay aesthetics are becoming the dominant Western ideologies.

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 16:45:05 2012 No.3160969

>>3160512

capitilism is the insanity that makes shoemakers send their children to school with no shoes, and for bakers to die of thirst.

people who make money make nothing, they feed on those that do

capitilism is a gross pyramid scheme

we are eating each other alive

we are selling our lives

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 20:55:17 2012 No.3161689

I look at the professor and I think, holy shit is this chick hot. Can't believe she's got a high IQ.

Then I think, how un-hipster of me to think that.

Then I think hipster-ism is some reaction against human-ness. Wanting to stick my dick in a hot woman is decidedly un-hipster. Why? Because hipster is a negation of humanity.

Why does modern society encourage a negation of humanity? Don't know. Maybe it's the foundation of capitalism, which hipster obviously has some sort of relationship with. The nature of that relationship is love/hate, which is the source of the irony. You may love Back to the Future, but you know by doing so you negate your own humanity. So in that respect, you hate it as well.

Concretely? You think back to your childhood and what do you remember? Back to the Future. A movie. A product. Not people. Not experiences with people. Not playing doctor with the neighbor girl. Not burying your dog. A fucking product is what you remember. Sure you may remember other things, but your mind is filled with colonies of western capitalism. You both love this and hate this on a subconscious level, thus, the hipster.

Another?

You don't express your desire to stick your dick in hot chicks. Instead, you grow a mustache "ironically", wear tight 70s clothes "ironically", wear dark shades "ironically". No outright, sincere, direct expression of you're all-too-human sexuality. No, it can only be expressed in an "ironic" way where you both mean it and don't mean it so that the machine of western capitalism is satisfied with a mating ritual that involves large purchases on dates then a marriage then material goods for children.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 20:57:50 2012 No.3161695 >>3161689 >No outright, sincere, direct expression of you're all-too-human sexuality. Ha, I mixed your and you're here. Internet, what have you done to me?

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:16:19 2012 No.3161727 >>3161689 >I am a dick. I have a body, and this goddamn head.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:20:21 2012 No.3161740 >>3160969 collectivist compassion babble

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:23:21 2012 No.3161749 >http://opinionator.blogs.. nope

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:25:21 2012 No.3161751 >>3161689 is this copy pasta what is this i don't know what to do with this

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:28:21 2012 No.3161755

>Furthermore, the nostalgia cycles have become so short that we even try to inject the present moment with sentimentality, for example, by using certain digital filters to “pre-wash” photos with an aura of historicity. Nostalgia needs time. One cannot accelerate meaningful remembrance.

What the fuck am I reading.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:37:22 2012 No.3161767 >so rather than scoffing at the hipster — a favorite hobby, especially of hipsters — determine whether the ashes of irony have settled on you as well. It takes little effort to dust them away. stopped reading here

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:38:22 2012 No.3161769 >>3161755 what is your problem with this?

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:47:23 2012 No.3161784

>other skills have suffered: the art of conversation, the art of looking at people, the art of being seen, the art of being present. Our conduct is no longer governed by subtlety, finesse, grace and attention, all qualities more esteemed in earlier decades. Inwardness and narcissism now hold sway.

I agree with this point.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:50:23 2012 No.3161792 >>3161784 Me again... This guy has a lot of really good points. I applaud his salient observations.

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:57:00 2012 No.3161802

For the tl;dr (weird on lit), from what I get the author is essentially saying irony is a way that our generation (80s-90s kids) can avoid reality. He addresses hipsters directly towards the end of the article asking them to try and live more literally.

Now, I was immediately repulsed by this as I see the literal mind as one of danger (the religious nutjobs, to be the most cogent example) but I understand that he's talking to people whose entire being is ironic. I support his message.

That being said, I hope none too many of muh 'peers' absorb this. I am considered a novelty in that I am very straight-forward and honest with those around me (while still retaining some sense of the absurd) and it makes me more attractive as a result.

Then again, my head is a little foggy from all this Johnny Walker Black. Oh, pretense, how I love you.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 21:58:00 2012 No.3161803 Her view of "hipster" as being a legitimate breed of people/ well-defined subculture is severely misinformed. Like someone else mentioned earlier in this thread, it's as if she's stuck in 2008, when this generalized view of 'hipsterdom' was prevalent.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 22:00:00 2012 No.3161804 >>3161803 She's probably writing about what she sees. What's the non-generalized 'hipster'?

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 22:02:00 2012 No.3161811

Just looked her up and found a description of her rock band.

"Four members of Glass Wave are literary scholars. The lyrics from their first album derive from great books of Western literature, whose stories are recast in the genre of cerebral rock. By translating old stories into new forms, Glass Wave seeks to preserve and revitalize the source texts that inspire the music."

Dear fucking god, no wonder she's so opposed to irony.

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 22:11:02 2012 No.3161823 >>3161802 Now all your peers will be straight-forward and honest ironically.

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 22:21:51 2012 No.3161856
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>>3160512

These articles about "hipsters" just compound the cultural dissonance.

All of it is thoroughly pointless and I have a deep disdain for anyone who takes this shit seriously enough to embrace it or write about it.

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 22:26:51 2012 No.3161868
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>>3161823
ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 22:29:51 2012 No.3161878

>>3161856
Is it pointless if it is present? Certainly, I know many a self unproclaimed hipsters, and often I have inclinations to their vacous tendencies? If it compounds this "dissonance", does the article still not make an accurate if not poignant point?

Anonymous Mon Nov 19 23:23:14 2012 No.3162025

As much as I want to shrug off the buzzing confusion that the discourse on hipsterdom instills in me; as much as I want to write it off as a useless, unnecessary exercise in cultural dissonance, part of me can't help but ask: what if these "hipsters" have it right?

The mark of these cultural entities is that they supposedly strive for new things, shunning what becomes popular or mainstream; what if they understand better than anyone else our culture today? I'm frightened by the fact that they might have a point. The endless repetition of images and the constant cry of "meaning" does actually (at least for me), in some sense, dull what I perceive as the meaning of a piece of music or a work of art.

Does the repetition of art (especially in such a rapid way) necessarily lead to banality? Do the "hipsters" (be they real or imagined) understand this better than anyone in their ironic striving for the new and the "obscure"?

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 23:34:09 2012 No.3162058 >>3162025 Yes, it does. That's what we call "pop art", IE Jeff Koons. It is not art, but merely a repetition of an image. That is not say that pop art is all the exists, but that is what hipsterdom seems to embrace

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 23:42:09 2012 No.3162080 File: 41 KB, 500x771, rapeface.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 23:51:09 2012 No.3162099 her name is Christy Wampole this makes anything she says invalid

>>	Anonymous Mon Nov 19 23:55:11 2012 No.3162105 >>3161689 Well said, sir, well said.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 00:05:11 2012 No.3162129

I know many people who would be called hipsters by this author's definition, and they are some of the most authentic and sincere people I know. Many of them do have stereotypically hipster interests (bicycles, 90's indie music records, making beer), but those hobbies are just that: hobbies. They're not into those things to put on a facade or to subvert the mainstream.
They're not overly jaded or sarcastic, and they don't have a continuous attitude of deflationary irony. They just have certain interests and preferences.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 00:14:13 2012 No.3162154 >Tags: Cat Power, David Foster Wallace, Wes Anderson I sincerely lol'd. I understand the fellas, but Cat Power has always been a paragon of sincerity.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 00:25:16 2012 No.3162184

>>3161755
I think she refers to Instagram color correction. I've always hated it. But instead of adding nostalgia I think it adds a feeling of oneiric unreality; the captured moment is a fake moment, reality is an illusion and the "real reality" lies in another place.
Hipsterism is like a continuous coitus interruptus.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 00:34:28 2012 No.3162198 Just don't post an article on your blog about hipsters; your hipster friends will hate it (un-ironically) and will not be your friends anymore.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:33:14 2012 No.3162295 File: 28 KB, 448x500, tumblr_lexm26DAr71qgoelno1_500[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3160739

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:39:14 2012 No.3162305 >>3162295 Wow. That Simon Cowell dude is fucking RIPPED these days.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:42:16 2012 No.3162311

>If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living.

talk about a blanket statement. I literally know no one who actually lives like this as >>3160617 was saying. it's true have some pretentious friends but it's not an active pretension, and it has little to do with living ironically; certainly not the "ethos of our age" that she makes it out to be. fuck her

>i would still destroy that ass and whisper sweet nothings to her in french

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:44:16 2012 No.3162316 File: 212 KB, 400x586, vanessa-hudgens-haircut[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3160969 >welcome to the edge, we've got fun and games

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:46:16 2012 No.3162319

>>3160617

I went to a party the other week that the host constructed as a film festival. At one point, we were watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie and sitting and taking the piss out of it while the whole movie took the piss out of itself.

If that's not ironic appreciation IRL, then I don't know what is. Fo' reals.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:47:16 2012 No.3162323 I blame the terribleness of mainstream society, and The simpsons

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:47:16 2012 No.3162324

"Hipster" is a term co-opted for use as a meaningless pejorative in order to vaguely call someone else's authenticity into question and, by extension, claim authenticity for yourself. It serves no conversational function but to indicate the opinions and preferences of the speaker.

Meanwhile, a market myth has sprung up around the term, as well as a cultural bogeyman consisting of elusive white 20-somethings who wear certain clothes (but no one will agree on what), listen to certain music (no one can agree on this either), and act a certain way (you've probably sensed the pattern on your own).

You can't define what "that kind of behavior or fashion or lifestyle" actually is, nor will you ever be able to. That's because you don't use "hipster" to describe an actual group of people, but to describe a fictional stereotype that is an outlet for literally anything that annoys you.

The twist, of course, is that if it weren't for your own insecurities, nothing that a "hipster" could do or wear would ever affect you emotionally. But you are insecure about your own authenticity - "Do I wear what I wear because I want to? Do I listen to my music because I truly like it? I'm certainly not like those filthy hipsters!" - so you project those feelings.

Suffice it to say, no one self-identifies as a hipster; the term is always applied to an Other, to separate the authentic Us from the inauthentic, "ironic" Them.

tl;dr: if you believe hipsters exist, you are a plebeian.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 01:48:16 2012 No.3162325 >>3162323 The Simpsons? Nobody watches that anymore.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:26:23 2012 No.3162404

I didn't bother to read the article beyond a skim, but it sounds like she identifies there's some cynicism in society which gives rise to all this ostentatious irony.

My position is that she's right about the cynicism part. The cynicism is that one (an individual) is the only one acting with any sort of true intentions or sincerity, and the hipster (some collective shadow-like figment in society) is who we distinguish ourselves from, as a capitalist might from a communist. We are cynical because we think that some guy only grew a handlebar mustache for the ironic or kitsch appeal and not because he wanted to try something new out. We're cynical because we think that someone bought an Android phone just to be different from the Apple-buying pack, and not because he did research and decided the Android phone better suited his purposes. We're cynical because we see someone in a baseball hat with a fixed-gear bike reading Dostoevsky on the subway and think his only goal is to "be seen" reading Dostoevsky, when in reality the dude might be a very avid reader both in public and not.

Essentially, because of the Internet, we now have direct access to cultures not only from countries away but from decades ago. Our access to human history is unlimited. It is only natural that some people will pick and choose things they like from the zillions of things out there to like. We are hasty to judge the guy who says he's been dabbling in Zen Buddhism, but he's no different than someone who was an avowed Communist back in the 1960s. He's no different than an acid-head in the 70s.

There has always been something outside "mainstream" culture. The problem is that we've now identified that mainstream culture is no longer so easily recognizable. It's become an amorphous system rather than set in stone. There are people out there who enjoy watching Monday Night Football and listening to death metal and reading Socrates all in the same day. People like things.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:41:17 2012 No.3162431 >>3162404 >I didn't bother to read the article beyond a skim >literature board facepalmuntoactualdeath.jpeg

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:44:17 2012 No.3162438 >>3162431 >wasting time reading some whore's worthless opinion when you could be reading something actually good

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:47:26 2012 No.3162440 >>3162438 >deciding what is "good" without reading >being bound by your inbuilt prejudices >/lit/

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:47:26 2012 No.3162442 >>3162324 >wear certain clothes Ironic T-shirts. >certain music Obscure post-(insert genre here) bands. Anything else, hipster?

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:50:25 2012 No.3162449 >>3162440 >not being able to gleam from a quick skim whether or not an essay has any substance or is worthwhile Do you even read?

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:53:26 2012 No.3162455 >>3162442 someone cannot into copypasta

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 02:54:25 2012 No.3162459 File: 57 KB, 600x401, laughing_slags_jr.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3162449 >restricting your reading because something's written by a "whore" >do you even read?

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 03:21:30 2012 No.3162499

>i've read infinite jest 3 times b/c i actually like it
>friend's g/f sees it on a shelf
>"oh i love that book! wallace was so incredible..."
>try to start a simple conversation about the book or wallace
>quickly realize she hasn't read a single word of his and only knows that "he died recently"; can't name any of his shit other than IJ

you know 'em when you meet 'em.

>>3162324

but mostly this.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 03:25:30 2012 No.3162504 >>3162499 >>i've read infinite jest 3 times b/c i actually like it Yup, you know them when you see them.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 03:26:30 2012 No.3162505

In all honesty this article reeks of someone who just read DFW and felt the need to re-digest his words with the more current vernacular of 'hipster culture'

my money is on OP being a student of hers who's going to mine this thread for the more insightful points against her to pass off as his own in class

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 03:29:30 2012 No.3162511 >>3162505 I bet the OP is the teacher trying to get talking points for the class. My experience has been that the teachers today are the the ones without insight.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 03:34:33 2012 No.3162516 >>3162511 Yeah, teachers. Those fucking cunts. Where the fuck do they get off with their fucking shit? Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em in the ear. Trying to edumacate are chillun. Come round here, I got my shotgum to edumacate them city folks.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 03:37:33 2012 No.3162524 Her music is bad and she should feel bad http://zomobo.net/yOt4M4EyDJ4

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 04:08:13 2012 No.3162540 >>3162455 Doesn't change the fact that the pasta's horse-shit.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 06:26:36 2012 No.3162649

>>3162404
Are you stupid?
You didn't read the article and yet you are giving your opinion on it?
>[...] it sounds like she identifies there's some cynicism in society which gives rise to all this ostentatious irony.
Then you write 3 paragraphs based on what "it sounds like".
Yes, you are stupid.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 06:56:14 2012 No.3162681 >outmoded hobbies >(home brewing, playing trombone)

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 06:59:14 2012 No.3162686 >>3162681 But booze is expensive and learning to make it taste good is fun what's wrong with homebrew I don't understand

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 07:13:16 2012 No.3162694 >>3162442 This is probably the most laughable post in 4chan history, and it's the epitome of everything that CLT's copypasta was describing.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 07:46:19 2012 No.3162743 >>3162686 Same. "Don't learn an instrument, don't try to homebrew because I don't like them and I don't want to be uncool" seems to be the author's view on hobbies.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 07:52:41 2012 No.3162753 Everyone is far too fucking cynical these days.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 07:55:15 2012 No.3162756 >>3162753 And yes I am aware that is a cynical statement in itself.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:03:15 2012 No.3162762

>>3161689
It's a deficit of psychological resilience to not be able to sincerely appreciate something for what it is while simultaneously understanding what it represents politically/culturally or whatever. In the long run, irony is far hokier than sincerity and just makes you insufferable as fuck to everyone who doesn't get it or sees through it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:05:15 2012 No.3162763 >>3160512 >http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/ Cool article. What's everybody's problem with it?

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:07:15 2012 No.3162765

>>3162324
>Suffice it to say, no one self-identifies as a hipster; the term is always applied to an Other, to separate the authentic Us from the inauthentic, "ironic" Them.

This post: brought to you by a grating dilettante but totally not a hipster, honest. Remember kids: there's nothing wrong with insincerely appropriating cultural traditions for the sake of profit and fashion, gentrifying a neighborhood in a decaying city, or even buying organic with your SNAP card if you really mean it sometimes.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:16:27 2012 No.3162771

>>3162404
Cultural cynicism comes from decades of having messages blasted at us telling us to buy and enjoy things with the aim of profit. TV informs our expectations about the behavior of others, and in turn forms the type of image we portray to everyone else. The ploy is so transparent to people that it becomes the default mode of interpreting the behavior of others. This is what Zizek (the "hipster" public intellectual par excellence) means when we're the first generation of people in history that feel guilty for not enjoying things. To me though, the answer is not to go back to feeling guilty for enjoying "the wrong" things, or at least ruminating about the implications of enjoying it.

Coming to terms with the superficiality of consumer capitalism isn't bad in itself, but making it a core aspect of your personality and not moving beyond it is what defines hipsterdom.

For the people who try to refute "hipsters" as a media construct aren't strictly wrong, but they'd do better to think about why it's such a compelling message to the people that throw the term around to begin with.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:25:29 2012 No.3162780

Being a hipster requires a certain amount of pretentiousness and condescension, this is pretty much inarguable in my experience. Pretty much everyone that I've met that an "average Joe" would throw out the term hipster for is an arrogant pseudointellectual. I mean, I have many hobbies and interests that normal people would consider weird or bizarre, but I don't dress like an edgy thirteen year old with a handlebar mustache. If you try to argue that everyone who dislikes "hipsters" is somehow limiting his or her own creativity or individuality, then you are just compensating for a false sense of individuality from your adheration to the worst cultural movement since the the hipster or "hippy" movement during the 1960's. Like every movemont, there will always be copycats and losers that hop on the bandwagon. However, most modern "hipsters" have no real politcal or social agendas and just wear stupid clothing and listen to semi-popular indie music.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:26:29 2012 No.3162783 >>3162771 I find the idea of having guilt for not enjoying things quite true. Where did Zizek write about this?

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:39:30 2012 No.3162806 File: 78 KB, 360x454, aj.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3162442 >>3162499 >>3162765 falling this hard for copypasta

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 08:49:32 2012 No.3162822 >>3162783 I don't have that guilt. I just have guilt for not being able to enjoy things that everyone else does. It's less about the thing and more about the social construct.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:04:38 2012 No.3162847 >>3162780 What's wrong with handlebar mustaches?

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:10:22 2012 No.3162860 >>3162847 Right? I find them sexy.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:16:24 2012 No.3162874 >>3160897 How dare you say something bad about the flaming lips. Fuck you. I long for a place where everyone listens to the flaming lips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdacUyrgK6M

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:24:24 2012 No.3162896

>>3162324
I love you

In reality, like it or not, those targeted by this "hipster archetype" are probably more intellectual, more aware, then the average person.
>we lost the art of conversation, the art of looking at people, the art of being seen, the art of being present. Our conduct is no longer governed by subtlety, finesse, grace and attention
"Hipsters" are seen, they govern their conduct by subtlety and grace, and are awfully good at conversation. By hipster, of course, I mean the person wearing clothes that can't be bought at Macy's or Walmart who the author sees having a good time on the street in a city and curses under her cold breath because of her lonely confined academia.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:26:24 2012 No.3162904 >>3162780 Go to any political rally in a city or rally for a social cause and count the number of handlebars you see, kiddie

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:32:26 2012 No.3162921

The interesting thing I find about this discussion is hipsters' connection to capitalism.

At the core, hipsters are a reaction to capitalism. This fact is surely undeniable when one of the stereotypes is a disdain of the "mainstream".

For, what is "mainstream" but those products which are being relentlessly marketed in our information-rich landscape.

The hipster tries to forge an organic identity free of the compulsion of ubiquitous, unrelenting marketing of consumer culture.

Therefore - and ironically so - the hipster is an attempt at something sincere and honest. It's an attempt to define a relationship with consumer culture where the human being is still extant as a spiritual entity and not simply a member of a herd which is "free" to "choose" its own brand of feed.

Paradoxically, being "ironic" is really the last attempt at true sincerity in a late industrial world where cynicism is the mainstream. That cynicism being exemplified by the notion that we should define ourselves by the products we buy. Indeed, the notion that we will buy products at all has become an unquestionable axiom.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:36:27 2012 No.3162929 >>3162896 Heh. Look guys, the decoy that guy left there hours ago just caught a real and living hipster!

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:41:26 2012 No.3162947

>>3162921
It is a reaction to capitalism in as much as a 400$ Nike-wearing identity is, no? The latter reacts to capitalism by strictly adhering to it, maybe unconsciously, and the former reacts to it by consciously seeing its problems and doing things outside capitalism (generally).
At the same way, that is entirely capitalism. They are giving their money and love for things that aren't used in million-dollar advertising campaigns. They are seeing the problems of big-corporation capitalism, and go out of their way to avoid it and instead give business to lesser-known products/ways.
That isn't irony. Even if they were reacting to it, it isn't irony. No one is going to look at the Jesus and his disciples, see that they reacted to judaism and traditions, and label them *ironic*.
I sense that the problem is wanting to consider everything ironic, not actually the people commonly labeled. I'm imagining men in john deer hats, nike shoes, gym shorts and fat gut propagating this term.
I challenge any of you to check out the movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, a Wes Anderson movie. Anderson is considered to be the primiere "hipster" filmmaker, but The Life Aquatic is highly steeped in non-ironic morals.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:51:30 2012 No.3162984
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>rails against capitalism
>develops his own ideals
>hates television and most of the mainstream
>wears an unconventional do-rag
HIPSTER! HIPSTER! HIPSTER!! HIPSTER!!
Fuck him, right guys? Fuck that hipster.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:52:30 2012 No.3162992 File: 41 KB, 520x337, chomsky.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >Questions everything >Wears ironically unstylish glasses >Likes linguistics (who the fuck likes linguistics) Fucking hipsters. Fucking, hipsters.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:53:30 2012 No.3162994

>>3162947
I agree with what you're saying regarding hipsters and capitalism. I agree that hipsters aren't a complete repudiation of capitalism, rather hipsters have a begrudging acceptance of capitalism with an attempt to accept it on their own terms. That attempt is doomed, of course, but "irony" comes from the effort.

As for hipster cultural works being, at their core, sincere and even "moral", I'm not surprised in light of the analysis of the entire culture being sincere.

Hipsters are ironic, but only as a result of attempted sincerity in a culture that has no place for sincerity. The irony comes from an attempt at imbuing consumer culture with true human emotions and spirituality. The result is ironic, but only because it is doomed to failure.

Those who are most crass regarding consumer culture, those who will buy an expensive - "mainstream" - product and proudly display the brand as they go about their day, have no tinge of irony, nor a tinge of sincerity for they will surely dump that product the second it is no longer fashionable.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:55:28 2012 No.3162998

>>3162896
>In reality, like it or not, those targeted by this "hipster archetype" are probably more intellectual, more aware, then the average person.

More intellectual but no more intelligent.

>we lost the art of conversation, the art of looking at people, the art of being seen, the art of being present. Our conduct is no longer governed by subtlety, finesse, grace and attention

We haven't, we've just been so steeped in propriety and sales pitches that it seems so. Hipsters are just another way of articulating propriety into slacktivism (see Occupy, activism in the US in general), and cultural vampirism. By vampirism I mean they seek something authentic out, usually from a culture or tradition that isn't theirs, and then proceed to co-opt it into the proprieties and expectations of white, bourgeois society, where they can be curators of these things and then move on since it is no longer cool, leaving pop culture to feed on the husk of what's left. They are not interesting people, but consumers of interesting things.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 09:59:30 2012 No.3163010

>>3162994
>As for hipster cultural works being, at their core, sincere and even "moral", I'm not surprised in light of the analysis of the entire culture being sincere.

They aren't.

>Hipsters are ironic, but only as a result of attempted sincerity in a culture that has no place for sincerity. The irony comes from an attempt at imbuing consumer culture with true human emotions and spirituality. The result is ironic, but only because it is doomed to failure.

No, it's more like there is no "language" to articulate sincerity due to decades of marketing rendering emotionally charged terms meaningless. Recognizing it is bush league cultural criticism, even if you're one to presume no one but switched on, privileged urban youth give it a second thought. Hipsters enter into this equation by seeking the authentic and commodifying it for themselves (and thus the rest of the culture), end of story.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:01:30 2012 No.3163021

>>3162994
To continue, and in light of this analysis, hipster culture is truly sad. It's a last desperate, apathetic, doomed, and weak attempt to humanize consumer culture - and by default, capitalism itself. It is perhaps an effort which could only come from the mind of an ultra-consumer who has a deep spiritual need for consumer culture and capitalism to mean something more than what they really mean.

So no wonder people hate hipsters: they are people so steeped in consumer culture that their philosophy of self must necessarily be contained within the philosophy of consumer culture.

A "hipster" may think that such a criticism applies to the "mainstream" consumer, but perhaps this is simply a projection since the "mainstream" consumer treats industrial culture in the same way industrial culture treats itself: as disposable.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:04:31 2012 No.3163026

>>3163021
>To continue, and in light of this analysis, hipster culture is truly sad. It's a last desperate, apathetic, doomed, and weak attempt to humanize consumer culture - and by default, capitalism itself. It is perhaps an effort which could only come from the mind of an ultra-consumer who has a deep spiritual need for consumer culture and capitalism to mean something more than what they really mean.

So what you mean is that they're bourgeois as fuck and spend to ensure they don't realize that about themselves.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:08:30 2012 No.3163032 >>3163026 No, actually, it's the opposite, they're perfectly self-aware.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:09:30 2012 No.3163037

>>3163026
That is a good way of putting it.

I think people miss the point with "sincerity" vs "irony". Everyone is trying to be sincere. Hipsters come off as "ironic" because they're trying to use an inherently insincere medium - consumer culture (i.e. consumer goods) - to express sincerity.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:15:34 2012 No.3163045

>>3163032
If they're perfectly self-aware, then they are accepting capitalism - and by extension consumer culture (consumer goods) - because they feel that there is literally no other choice. And this acceptance will come with their critique.

However, I'm not convinced that this is true of the hipster simply because, like the writer of this article and Wes Anderson, there is a true love of consumer culture in the hipster - a love far greater than that of the average consumer who treats goods as completely disposable in every way. This love was expressed earlier in this thread as the "curator" aspect of certain hipsters.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:16:34 2012 No.3163047

>>3163032
By calling attention to the fact that what they're consuming is shallow, or seeking out "authentic" things, it obscures the deeper truth that at the end of this process they're no better or interesting or sincere than their boring suburbanite moms and dads, and will end up in the same situation as them.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:20:34 2012 No.3163058

>>3162992
The interesting thing about this satire is it forces you to ask the question, why is Chomsky not a hipster?

I think the answer may lie in the fact that Chomsky is not trying to use his consumerism as some sort of expression of his self, philosophy, or worldview.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:22:34 2012 No.3163063

>>3163058
Well, before Borders tanked, I could easily drive 5 minutes to a big box store down the street for me and get his latest book. Now I can get it overnighted to me from Amazon. I know that's not what you mean, but hey, his bread gets buttered by the same dynamic.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:26:30 2012 No.3163076 http://www.inthesetimes.com/duly-noted/entry/14206/ironic_brewing/ A response, fairly interesting

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:31:08 2012 No.3163091
File: 190 KB, 552x535, Screen shot 2012-08-19 at 10.03.50 PM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3163021
Do you understand that this entire paragraph and the one preceding it is being applied to a simple choice between the latest Anderson film vs the latest Twilight, the latest Nike shoe vs the $20 plimsolls, the last independent album vs the latest Bieber album? The latest consumer craze vs a deliberated choice?
I don't understand why you think the current vehicle of capitalism is set in stone, why you think that any deliberated choice in a capitalist society is somehow an attempt to humanize consumer culture... I actually, sincerely, 100% have no idea why you think this is. You are on 4chan right now-- how much advertising does it do? None. 0 advertising. So why the fuck are you on it? Because of your desperate, apathetic, doomed, weak attempt to humanize consumer culture? No, because it is nice. 4chan's virtue is in its lack of vehement advertising. Facebook's virtue is in its lack of charges, but it exists magnificently within a capitalist culture.
You seem to think that thought has no place when deciding what to buy, but we all know this is ridiculously stupid, so I don't get your post. I can't fucking fathom your post.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:31:31 2012 No.3163090

>>3163076
>People don't usually admit to being hipsters, but I can't fight it. My partner runs an 18-piece big band and totes a suitcase bar to parties. I start my Thanksgiving baking a week early to fit it all in. We live in Brooklyn. Case closed.

This had me seeing red.

I see they decided to go full-time with the vampirism. I wonder what will happen to their bees when supermarkets start carrying gourmet honey from one of their more business savvy friends.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:32:08 2012 No.3163093

>>3163047
I hate that this discussion may have suddenly turned to a dump-on-hipsters bandwagon, but maybe it's inevitable.

At the core, hipsters may be trying to express their humanity with consumer culture. This sort of expression will attract those who are unable to see a reality past consumer culture. Those sorts of people are, as written here, >>3163026, "bourgeois as fuck".

Possibly there are other sorts of "hipsters" who are definitely more self-aware and see their consumerism, paradoxically, as a critique of that very consumerism. But then, I don't think they're hipsters. They are something else. I'm thinking more like the 60s hippies who started the Whole Earth Catalog.

Or perhaps this distinction is splitting hairs and there is some degree of overlap and a spectrum. One thing they have in common: They are both ultra-consumers who choose their products with greater care than the average consumer who they both regard as "mainstream".

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:34:07 2012 No.3163099

>>3163093

Hey, I made both of those posts.

>One thing they have in common: They are both ultra-consumers who choose their products with greater care than the average consumer who they both regard as "mainstream".

Yeah sorry, I was probably talking past you a bit in that post. I get it now.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:37:56 2012 No.3163102
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>>3163093
Read the middle of this thread. "Hipster" is an ambiguous term.

All of you guys bashing this made up ideal "Hipster" entity need to answer this question:

Where would you give your business?
Product A: Millions spent in advertising product, but the corporation causes damage to the environment or a group of people
Product B: No advertising, same value of product A, but the corporation does not cause damage

You seem to think that, on virtue of advertising, on virtue of it having more money, everyone is socially obligated to choose product A, unless they are ULTRA-CAPITALIST. Do you understand how fucking stupid that is?
This *hipster* decides that instead of buying shorts for the summer he'll just cut his old ones to make jean shorts, that he'll buy the strange looking spectacles on virtue of it being different and strange, not to fit in blindly. There is no reason to fit in blindly. There is no reason to dislike variety!
It's strange that this isn't understood on a literature board, wherein all of your favorite authors hate consumerism.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:42:56 2012 No.3163115

>>3163091
I'm not sure why you think Facebook and 4chan are "hipster" in any sense. I don't think they are.

I think we agree on the Internet. To use hipster vernacular, the Internet is "authentic". There are real people interacting here free of most (if not all) capitalist constraints.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:43:56 2012 No.3163117

>>3163102
>Product A: Millions spent in advertising product, but the corporation causes damage to the environment or a group of people
>Product B: No advertising, same value of product A, but the corporation does not cause damage

I'm an accelerationist, so A.

>You seem to think that, on virtue of advertising, on virtue of it having more money, everyone is socially obligated to choose product A, unless they are ULTRA-CAPITALIST. Do you understand how fucking stupid that is?

No, I want capitalism to unravel under the weight of its contradictions as early as possible.

>This *hipster* decides that instead of buying shorts for the summer he'll just cut his old ones to make jean shorts, that he'll buy the strange looking spectacles on virtue of it being different and strange, not to fit in blindly. There is no reason to fit in blindly. There is no reason to dislike variety!

I don't dislike variety, but cutting up your mass produced jeans to go swimming and wearing weird glasses (by the way, how much were they?) is a pretty limp dicked way of individuating yourself, if that's what you're trying to lay claim to.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:46:04 2012 No.3163123

>>3163117
>>3163115
I don't think I can resume arguing, and I'm pretty sure I've written every not so anti-hipster post in the last hour, and I want to play some TF2, but...

When you are in a city, if you're going to be wearing only the clothes that commercials propagate, you are going to meet very, very, very, insipid people. If you were swag clothes, you'll be friends with niggas and wiggas.
If, in the 60's, you wore counterculture clothing, you'll meet very interesting people. In the 50's, if you dressed like a beatnik, you'll meet beatniks.
Now, if you dress with how /you/ want to dress, wearing clothing that cannot necessarily be bought from every chain store, you will, like in all the other times in human history, meet interesting people.
You'll meet up-and-coming writers, musicians, artists, et cetera.
Have fun meeting any interesting people out of some perverse desire to have sex with everything consumerist

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:47:04 2012 No.3163126

>>3163117
>unravel under the weight of its contradictions
People will starve and die in the billions if this happens in an uncontrolled, unintended fashion. The only end of capitalism worth fighting for is where capitalism is destroyed by its replacement.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:48:04 2012 No.3163127 The definition of Hipster is simple. A hipster is someone who defines their identity, or at least their external identity, by the cultural products they consume.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:52:03 2012 No.3163139

I think real hipsters are a very rare thing: people who actively choose something because it is not mainstream or against current thought. Those few people who genuinely make choices based on this policy I don't mind. I can even understand why they may blindly choose things which are counter culture because simply rejecting the mainstream is the important thing here, not what you replace it with. True hipsters also are those which avoid consumerism by making choices against the system.

The issue is, and most people hate these type of individuals, are those who see the rejection of the mainstream as cool or fashionable and blindly follow those who originally reject the mainstream. Those are still blind consumers who follow the trend and those are the ones everyone hates.

Sadly, those are the vast majority of what one would call a hipster.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:54:03 2012 No.3163145

>>3163126
>People will starve and die in the billions if this happens in an uncontrolled, unintended fashion. The only end of capitalism worth fighting for is where capitalism is destroyed by its replacement.

The working class will prove equal to the task since I envision the end of capitalism as more of a whimper than a bang. Mostly due to peak affordable oil.

>Now, if you dress with how /you/ want to dress, wearing clothing that cannot necessarily be bought from every chain store, you will, like in all the other times in human history, meet interesting people.
You'll meet up-and-coming writers, musicians, artists, et cetera.

I self consciously rock my $5 fruit of the loom tshirts bro. The clothes don't make the man, not even in the way you think they do. Get off, scum.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:57:14 2012 No.3163153

>>3163102
I'm really not sure at all that hipster is an ambiguous term. People seem to know exactly what you're talking about when you say it. You yourself seem to have a complete understanding, enough even to give examples of behavior.

At the core, there seems to be a relationship with consumer culture. As you've illustrated, that relationship is not one of rejection, rather of symbiosis. The hipster accepts capitalism, but on his own terms. In that sense, hipsterism goes back to at least the Whole Earth Catalog.

I think the big question regarding hipsterism is, is it a sincere and real attempt at improving the world and our relations with each other or is it yet another manifestation of crass consumer culture (albeit a very sophisticated one)? You have read in this thread critics from both sides. I really appreciate how you could be the first to truly support hipsterism.

Personally, I fear I'm probably a hipster. Not sure. I see the whole phenomena as less a movement or trend and more as simply a reaction.

I believe if I am a hipster or have hipster tendencies, they are more reactions to consumer culture rather than choices stemming from a fully conceived ideology. Maybe this is what the author of the article was getting to. She is a hipster without intending because being a hipster is a reaction rather than anything else.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 10:57:14 2012 No.3163154 >>3163123 I wish I could hate you to death you fucking poseur trash.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:01:13 2012 No.3163165

>>3163153
Look, being able to criticize consumerism isn't a fucking intellectual achievement. I'm not sure if you're aware, but the culture at large is deeply cynical about marketing as well. It just doesn't care enough or doesn't have enough free time or affluence to seek alternatives. So there is a class (and thus race, if you're in the US) dimension to this that people have seemed to miss in this thread.

Except me, I'm the uniquest of the snowflakes among the blizzard of utter ignorance and confusion. Love me.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:02:13 2012 No.3163167 >>3163127 I can agree with this.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:04:14 2012 No.3163172

>>3163154
lol

I too am amazed at the notion of how dressing a certain way will influence who you meet. I suppose it's true to an extent, but I'm not sure exactly how much. I don't imagine our society as stratified by style as much as the author of the post does.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:07:13 2012 No.3163180

>>3163172
Cue some idiot dispensing trite advice about having the right combination of fashionable talisman garments will win friends and influence people because the world is full of automata that will give you what you want as long as you appear like you want it. That's not even social climbing anymore, that's more like social panhandling, or pimping yourself out to the expectations of others.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:10:13 2012 No.3163188

>>3163165
>I'm not sure if you're aware, but the culture at large is deeply cynical about marketing as well.

I completely agree. I don't think what you've brought up refutes anything I've written, but rather expands on it.

It's an interesting concept that you're playing with: Everyone would be a hipster if only they had the time and money. I'm not sure I can agree with that. Although you're definitely asking a great question: Why would some become hipsters and others not? You are maybe right when you say only leisure time and enough wealth allows one to make the choice. But there are those with enough time and money, but they don't react to consumer culture by becoming hipsters. Why not?

I also think that the hipster isn't attempting to criticize consumer culture at the outset. Rather, it happens as a reaction to incessant marketing.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:15:13 2012 No.3163194 >>3163180 What's wrong with me that I want to read this essay?

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:16:13 2012 No.3163196

>>3163188
>But there are those with enough time and money, but they don't react to consumer culture by becoming hipsters. Why not?

Well, IMO, it's not a strict causal thing. I guess it's more like a preference available to a predominantly youthful demographic to individuate themselves from their parents and society. There wouldn't be any hipsters if there weren't people trying to signify their affluence by shopping at Nordstrom or Saks at the mall or whatever.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:16:15 2012 No.3163198 >>3162984 >>3162992 Jesus Christ...

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:17:15 2012 No.3163200 >>3163194 It means you want to learn more about the inner life of jerks. Which is fine.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:18:14 2012 No.3163203 >>3163200 Yeah, I do! haha I'm always up for that.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:25:34 2012 No.3163211

>>3163196
This is interesting. So not only are hipsters reacting to consumer culture in general, that is marketing and "mainstream" behavior, they are also reacting to the consumer choices their peers and parents are making. I can see this.

In a way, hipsterism is a criticism of consumer choices hipsters' peers and parents are making. The implication is that these choices are profound.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:25:34 2012 No.3163212
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I'm back from TF2

Do you guys realize that what you wear is important? Why do you think it is more important to NOT think about what you were than think about what you wear a little? It is your outward appearance. It is the first impression, it is what people see first. Studies show that it plays an important influence on your character.
If you're going to wear something, why not wear something you agree with? Are you mad because these "Hip" people care about what they wear? Do you not like looking nice? How many authors are there that don't care about looking nice?
look at this photo. Fucking Ezra Pound, one of the mosti influential editors. LOOK AT HIM. HE CARES HOW HE LOOKS. IS THAT A CRIME NOW? It shouldn't make you disrespect a person. How often do you guys go outside?

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:31:33 2012 No.3163217
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How about this:
I enjoy music that isn't played on the radio.
Wow! Wait, wait! Hear me out!
This isn't a rule, it is simply that most of the music played on the radio I don't like. It is a generalization. In fact, I love WQXR and the Fordham radio station at times. But most of the time I don't like what is played on the radio. I like The Flaming Lips, I like the Dirty Projectors, I like this outfit named Women, I like all of that, and I also like Chopin, Schumann (especially his Carnaval), Tristan und Isolde, whatever. I used to play the classical guitar-- does that make me hip? Because I had an interest that you don't like, that makes me some kind of bizarre meta-consumerist?
So, let's add this up:
I enjoy lesser-known music, generally.
I enjoy a unique interest.
Okay, what else... I don't like wearing clothes with labels. I prefer solid colors, jeans, plain shoes. I'm not sure if this makes me a hipster, but I also wear skinny jeans, jean shorts, v-necks, and gender-neutral clothing. I like how it looks on me-- please tell me what crime I'm committing.
So I enjoy: lesser-known music, a unique instrument, blank clothing, eastern philosophy too,...
I must confess I don't need glasses yet, but if I ever do I will probably buy silly looking ones.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:33:35 2012 No.3163220 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_yq1DQRDpE

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:36:34 2012 No.3163223

>>3163212

Look I'm all for dressing yourself well, and even dressing in a unique way, but there's a limit to what that can do for you interpersonally. Don't get all condescending about "getting out in the world" when you actually think outward signifiers of affluence or fashion determine what social circles someone can access. That's not strictly the case, unless there's a dress code man.

You're - in some significant ways - the guy I described in this post: >>3163180

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:37:34 2012 No.3163228

i would rather be a hipster all day than be some guy calling people hipsters seriously

and i like better everything than you and that's important to me. i also go to work in fine suits and almost all of my weekend clothes is a mishmash of uniqlo and h&m because it's cheap and doesn't carry any logos

fuck all yall ive read more tolstoy than you too. what you got? all that philosophy degree treating you right? fucking guffaw in your fat nosebreathing face

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:39:34 2012 No.3163229 >>3163223 no clothing doesn't make the man, but once the man is made, clothing sure does help. stop hiding behind your "well clothing doesn't strictly do everything for you interpersonally!!!!!" and realize that nothing does everything

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:39:34 2012 No.3163230

>>3163223
>That's not strictly the case
You admit that it is the case to some degree. You admit that you aren't likely to see a swag-clad Brostoevsky-lover drinking Assam with some Harvardian grad students.
What I'm saying is that most culturally-aware people care about how they dress, and it is very interesting being around culturally-aware people. In a fast-paced city, first looks are importance... this is a fact. So in cities, how you dress is importance-- but not more important than your inner garments, obviously.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:39:34 2012 No.3163232 >>3163228 >muh identity >muh clothes >muh books You're case in point yo

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:41:34 2012 No.3163237

>>3163230
>What I'm saying is that most culturally-aware people care about how they dress, and it is very interesting being around culturally-aware people. In a fast-paced city, first looks are importance... this is a fact. So in cities, how you dress is importance-- but not more important than your inner garments, obviously.

I dislike the idea of trying to impress people for reasons I personally don't care about. They should be paying me to do that.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:41:34 2012 No.3163238 Holy shit. Who cares?

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:42:34 2012 No.3163243 File: 9 KB, 226x273, Bloom_wut.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3163212 >I'm back from TF2 >How often do you guys go outside? Dynamite post, sport.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:44:34 2012 No.3163249

>>3163237
Well then good for you kiddie, you found your own anti-capitalist niche to fall into, congratulations and no one gives a flying noodle.
The point is that you shouldn't care if people /do/ personally care about appearances, even to a derivative quickly approaching 0 but not quite reaching it.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:52:36 2012 No.3163272

>>3163249
>Well then good for you kiddie, you found your own anti-capitalist niche to fall into, congratulations and no one gives a flying noodle.

You cared to reply.

>The point is that you shouldn't care if people /do/ personally care about appearances, even to a derivative quickly approaching 0 but not quite reaching it.

I care when people dispense unsolicited advice about what garments I need to wear so the extras in the movie of life view me in a more positive light. The important point that eludes you is that there are no bullet points on the back of the box of the recipe for "social success". Assuming everyone who thinks that the situation is different is a maladjusted misanthrope actually exposes your own cynicism, not just about them, but about other people.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:54:37 2012 No.3163275

>>3163230
Yes, I will agree that you can't dress like a homeless man and expect to be welcome in certain places/situations.

Although the range of acceptable when it comes to clothing is extremely large. Much more than what I imagine you are implying. I'm not entirely sure though unless we move this conversation to /fa/ and use lots and lots of pictures.

There are many other factors in play when it comes to fashion as well. The temperature, your age, your sex, the geographical region of the country, the location, the situation, the context. If you're a hot young woman, for instance, you can wear any tight, casual clothing just about anywhere and have no problems.

You also seem to be implying there are many people who use their clothing as cultural signifiers of some sort. I don't think these people are in the majority. I think most people dress "casually" so that their dress becomes a non-issue. You perhaps disagree. Not sure. You seem to be implying that people who have different dress styles will not associate, that I think is definitely not the case. People change their styles around to a large degree as well.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:54:37 2012 No.3163276 Are all sultions to capitalism naive and unsupportable? Is it in general agreement that capitalism is not the ideal way ?

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:56:36 2012 No.3163279

>>3163272

>Assuming everyone who thinks that the situation is different is a maladjusted misanthrope actually exposes your own cynicism, not just about them, but about other people.

This is amusing coming from a guy who was lionizing a Nazi sympathizer mere posts before.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:57:36 2012 No.3163280 >>3163276 >Is it in general agreement that capitalism is not the ideal way ? No. Not in the slightest.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 11:59:36 2012 No.3163283 >>3163212 He looks like a fucking poof. I would immediately dismiss him based on his outward appearance.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:00:36 2012 No.3163287

>>3163276
>Are all sultions to capitalism naive and unsupportable?

I think social democracy is an acceptable solution to capitalism's contradictions. Something founded on post-keynesian political economy seems simpler than scrapping it and hoping the working class comes out on top of the revolutionary tumult.

It's also the best we can hope for c. 2012. Bring it, Marxists.

>>3163279
I wasn't talking about Pound, but responding to the guy talking about Pound!

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:01:36 2012 No.3163288

Even if there are no definite examples of hipsters as the author defines them, there are still groups of people, groups that vary vastly, that define themselves based on consumer culture and things instead of ideas. They may be doing this consciously or not, but it's still a problem. Using the term hipster is just a way to speak very broadly about certain distributed ideas in our culture. I think the author makes a few good points, especially about not being able to communicate, but blaming irony is wrong when this form of irony is just a symptom of a much larger problem with society in general.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:07:38 2012 No.3163298 >>3163287 >I wasn't talking about Pound, but responding to the guy talking about Pound! Ah, apologies. Sleep deprived etc etc.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:10:38 2012 No.3163307

>>3163288
I think you're really getting somewhere defining it as a problem. The problem is, as you've stated, groups "that define themselves based on consumer culture and things instead of ideas."

I think what has happened is that capitalism has won. Acceptance of consumer culture is axiomatic. Ironically approaching consumer culture is all that remains of a criticism of capitalism.

I'm not sure there's really an alternative. The article, like many others, implores us to live sincerely, whatever that means.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:14:18 2012 No.3163315
File: 954 KB, 1000x1506, 1347494010798.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>3163288
>>3163307
>there are people that define themselves based on consumer culture and things instead of ideas.
But the people that define themselves based on consumerism are FAR from hipsters. The people that define themselves based on consumerism are the rednecks that sincerely wear John Deer hats and only drive Ford (because it is made in America, of course!!1). It is the people in the innercity that cause riots when new Nike shows come out-- I'm dead serious, this happens often-- and will take $200 from their child's welfare receipt to pay for these fucking shoes. It's the age group 14-24, often called bros, that wear overpriced garbage because it has a man on a horse on the top right of the shirt, or only wear gym shorts, or only wear under-armor.
THOSE are the consumerists. These "hipsters" she is describing, these are the people that have no problem only shopping at second-hand clothing store, they buy fair-trade coffee, they only buy independent records, they are as far from capitalist victims as you can get. I promise you this.
But there are varying layers. There are those who will buy logo-less clothing at any cost, and then there are those like to the left who most likely buy everything second-hand.
You fucking posers think that you are against capitalism because you aren't a hipster? Why can I imagine BIll O'Reilly saying this?
If you are against capitalism, shop second-hand.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:17:18 2012 No.3163321

>>3163307
>I think what has happened is that capitalism has won. Acceptance of consumer culture is axiomatic. Ironically approaching consumer culture is all that remains of a criticism of capitalism.

This sort of capitalism is only prevailing among a class of people for whom it already worked, except now their tastes are more idiosyncratic. I mean okay, if our prototypical hipster's (parents) aren't of the aspirant 14% of the top income quintile then so be it, but it's likelier than not.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:19:20 2012 No.3163323 >>3163315 >thinking that there's a way to consume without tacit acceptance of consumer capitalism >the year of our LORD twenty and twelve ha ha ha america

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:20:20 2012 No.3163324
File: 575 KB, 1024x683, 1352614385803.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

itt
>look at this girl! she has personalized interests and buys her clothes cheap from thrift stores, she rides a bike to work and buys fairtrade coffee, she buys local food, she is against Walmart-- what a capitalist slave! She is so naive! I bet she doesn't know how much of a slave she is!

>>	this thread is stupid now Tue Nov 20 12:23:19 2012 No.3163329 File: 91 KB, 930x818, 1352337271230.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3163315 >If you are against capitalism, shop second-hand. >If you are against capitalism, shop pic related also >2012 >not making your own clothes shig

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:24:19 2012 No.3163330 >>3163324 >implying that isn't a trap lying in wait

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:24:19 2012 No.3163332

>>3163324
>she espouses an anti-capitalist identity through consumerist slacktivism
>unaware that doing so lends capitalism the appearance that if we just do it a certain way it can be sufficiently humanized
>lives in a gentrified neighborhood anyway

Nice attempt at slipping that one under the radar.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:25:19 2012 No.3163334 >>3160512 The people you describe still consume, and then define themselves based on what they've consumed. You're missing the point.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:26:19 2012 No.3163336 >>3163334 Meant to quote >>3160512

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:27:20 2012 No.3163340 File: 412 KB, 509x555, 1345769758213.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] This is the only way to consume. BURNING with enthusiasm.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:28:19 2012 No.3163341 >>3163315 The people you describe still consume, and then define themselves based on what they've consumed. You're missing the point.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:31:20 2012 No.3163347

>>3163340
>>3163334
>>3163332
>>3163329
>>3163324
>>3163323
>>3163321
>>3163315

I think this is an interesting discussion and not at all settled.

Did the Whole Earth Catalog change the world for the better? Did it simply prolong the abomination of capitalism and consumer culture be teaching consumers conservation practices? I'm not sure. Is there a such thing as sustainable capitalism? Is there a way to get there through capitalism itself?

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:40:20 2012 No.3163355

>>3163347
>Is there a such thing as sustainable capitalism?

No. The biggest challenge now is the approaching end of affordable sources of oil. Especially in the US burbs and other parts of the developing world where that's almost a guaranteed catastrophe/social upheaval etc. if the infrastructure isn't ready for a transition to greater oil scarcity.

>Is there a way to get there through capitalism itself?

Well, solar panels and nuclear will sound a lot better to countries currently relying on coal and oil when the climate chickens come home to roost and oil is $600 a barrel. It will require tremendous central planning to redesign/repurpose the infrastructure to those ends. So maybe after the initial shock people will be come more attuned to the idea that capitalism needs to go.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:47:20 2012 No.3163365
File: 67 KB, 450x604, 1350345759137.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

It seems everyone here is defining capitalism as necessitating an uneducated and uncaring populace.
Can someone tell me why this is? The crux of the argument against the Hipster Aesthetic is that it interferes with the definition above of capitalism.
Do you not account for those who willfully do not shop at Walmart because they are against their ethics despite low prices? Or those who won't shop at Chik File because of their anti-homosexual stance?
There is a growing effort to increase the awareness of the consumer... why are you against this movement? I think this is the future of capitalism, truly. It isn't against capitalism any more than regulations and unions are. Imagine if 50% of the consumers will only buy fairtrade non-slave-labored products....
I'm serious. If you account for consumer awareness, then Hipsterism is the solution.
There. This is what I derive. This is flawless.
And it isn't like awareness has been absent from capitalism in the past. For instance, many times in history people wouldn't buy from jews solely because of their jewishness.
So tell me, what is your excuse for not being a selective consumer? I dare you.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:47:20 2012 No.3163367 File: 19 KB, 300x254, mark rippetoe.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] i don't believe in irony as a concept but sometimes i pretend to, just for irony's sake

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:54:18 2012 No.3163380

>>3163365
>There is a growing effort to increase the awareness of the consumer... why are you against this movement? I think this is the future of capitalism, truly. It isn't against capitalism any more than regulations and unions are.

Look I'd prefer better regulations, a gov't that carefully allocated subsidies and planned the economy to a greater degree it does now. I'd definitely love the return of organized labor as a platform to accomplish this, even if it's a pipe dream.

>Imagine if 50% of the consumers will only buy fairtrade non-slave-labored products....

Then prices would skyrocket. In the US half the population is classified as living in poverty or near-poverty. Like it or not, that's hostile to their interests without the reforms mentioned above.

Consumer literacy isn't even in the same league as the social changes a social democratic state or labor unions could ever bring about. In fact, they have a proven track record of accomplishing great things, and also having their gains reversed by capitalism.

The problem with trying to humanize the consumer side of capitalism is that it actually has the opposite effect by re-legitimizing the system by giving it an "ethical" inflection.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:56:18 2012 No.3163384 >>3163365 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g Watch this.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 12:56:18 2012 No.3163385
File: 328 KB, 1280x1707, wqp3p.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

went downstairs to get some bugles, had thought that article in op was written by some old woman who has become too out of touch and autistic to realize that things can signify different things to different groups of people
also does the new york times think people wear trucker hats in 2012? haha
who knows, maybe she doesn't believe any of it and was just being ironic

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 13:04:20 2012 No.3163400 >>3160739 bro havent you read society of tha spectacle "Every new lie of advertising is also an avowal of the previous lie."

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 13:39:13 2012 No.3163463 >>3163365 even those that fight the creature do so from within the creature. if they succeed, all that happens is that they eat the losing half, and go on, satisfied until they are eaten in turn.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:03:28 2012 No.3164469 >>3163058 Chomsky is not a hipster because no one is a hipster.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:09:06 2012 No.3164484 Hipsters give irony a bad name. But living without it is just silly.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:18:33 2012 No.3164514

Anyone else notice an article called "How to Live Without Irony" doesn't have the directions to live "without irony," contained in it?
"...determine whether the ashes of irony have settled on you as well. It takes little effort to dust them away." She never explained where the effort goes or what to do with the effort.

And here's the nuclear core of the bullshit factory:
"This ironic ethos can lead to a vacuity and vapidity of the individual and collective psyche." Can't irony simply be a release of tension, as it has been in plenty of other examples one could pull out of their ass (theatre and cinema leap to mind) like she has in the article? Why does it have to be a dichotomy, and a doomsday dichotomy as well? We are ironic to blow off steam, and then we address things seriously, or the reverse order.

"Historically, vacuums eventually have been filled by something"
What a completely lazy thought, lazy culturally, lazy analytically, lazy in outlook towards historiography: you infer the vacuum, there wasn't some magic point in history when _nothing_ happened. "Historically, stuff happens after nothing much has happened." Well, no shit, that's because of where you're focusing your view to perceive it as happening: not much happened here, that doesn't mean nothing happened everywhere.
"— more often than not, a hazardous something."
Hazardous to who? To what? What a shitty slippery slope, at least moronic political pundits can trot out an amusing parade of horrors, all this bitch has is gloomy ambiguities.
"Fundamentalists are never ironists; dictators are never ironists; people who move things in the political landscape, regardless of the sides they choose, are never ironists."
I can't think of any better argument for living ironically than this.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:34:57 2012 No.3164559

This weekend a cynical hipster decided to jump in front of a bus after a heated debate about what constitutes real 'genuine' music. The debate involved a 23 year old hipster male and his lady friend. Some say it wasn't much of a debate at all, but more of a display of douche baggery by the hipster, and say the girl was being victimized for her poor choice in music.

"Alls we were doing was talking about whether Linkin Park was corporate rock or not," said the victim of the hipsters vitriol, "Well, he was anyway, I just mentioned that I liked that new song that they had put out last year, with the transformers and everything, and he just went crazy on me. 'All their songs sound the same!' he said, 'they use a formula in every one of their albums! They're sell outs!'. Just on and on and on. I honestly think he was frothing at the mouth at one point. It was really scary."

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:35:59 2012 No.3164560

>>3164559
Eye witnesses around the same coffee table say that earlier, before the harsher part of the argument, say they could see traces of hipster disdain and an overall saturnine attitude when he talked about wal-mart, sweatshops, and how "Rancids not real punk" all in the same breath.

"I always thought the kid was a bit of a jerk" said one of the victims friends, "I never understood why she even hung out with the guy. He's just a bit of a bummer whenever hes around."

Other patrons at the local coffee shop who witnessed the heated battle of polemics go down confirm that the verbal abuse on part of the hipster was uncalled for. One person even called an animal control squad on account of they thought they were witnessing a bout of rabies induced anger.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:35:59 2012 No.3164562

>>3164560
"I couldn't understand a word the kid was saying. He was just shouting uncontrollably. I tried to ignore him and drink my coffee, but then he stood up and his mouth started foaming, I knew he had some disease. So I called animal control."

But before animal control could reach the starbucks, the girl being yelled at took a stand for herself, and used the hipsters logic against him.

"I didn't really understand his argument. Every artist has a formula, why should I not like a piece of music or an artists collection of paintings because they're similar? Thats WHY I choose to listen to those artists, because I like the kind of material they put out. I asked him why he liked his music, I mean, sonic youth has a forumula, so do the decemberists, and the shins, but I don't see him going on a rage about how they're all sound the same."

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:36:59 2012 No.3164564

>>3164562
It was in these vital moments, in his angst filled poetic waxing fury, that he was apparently most vulnerable to logic, and came to the conclusion that he needed to commit suicide. Very few people have the will, or even the self respect to pursue a debate with a hipster. Those who do, with the proper tools, are apt to break a hipsters conception of life, the universe, and everything- the results are almost always disastrous.

His parents (who he was living with at the time) hired a spiritual channeller to talk to his ghost in the hopes that he would help explain himself more.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:36:59 2012 No.3164566

>>3164564

"It really hit me how much of an asshole I was and have been these past few years," said the Hipsters disembodied personality, "Like, wow, I really was an asshole, man. I've seriously been the biggest piece of shit hypocrital scum, ever, for over half a decade. I've been a sheep for the hipster machine, and knew it, and totally denied it, man. Especially about how other people behave and what their personal tastes are. And when that revelation came to me, at that magnitude, in that short span of time, I felt a renewal of life. I was making myself not like certain things and not enjoying the variety life has for double standard political bullshit, and now I didn't have to do that anymore, I was free.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 20:37:59 2012 No.3164567

>>3164566

"My instinct at that point, because of the 7 year hipster lifestyle I lived, was to do the most ironic thing i could at that particular moment in time, and kill myself."

Best Selling New Age Quack, Sylvia Browne, has also laid claim to channeling the young hipster after his death, and it just so happens that everything she channelled from him confirmed her entire philosophical worldview, and on top of that, that you should go buy all her books.

Daniel Day-Lewis !!bggsHKbvDir Tue Nov 20 21:17:02 2012 No.3164689

Christy Wampole is/was in a 'cerebral rock' band according to wikipedia.

>Christy Wampole, a Ph.D candidate in French and Italian at Stanford, worked primarily with French musicians before joining Glass Wave as lead vocalist. She began to perform French cabaret and chanson in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex as a duet act called The French Jazz Project with saxophonist, keyboardist, and vocalist Pascal Valcasara.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 21:18:01 2012 No.3164695

>>3164689
The songs on Glass Wave's first album retell well-known stories from western literature.

Track 1: Balena. The first track, an instrumental ("Balena" is Italian for whale), includes humpback whalesong recorded by the renowned environmentalist Roger Payne in the late 1960s. The viola part is played by music historian and Stanford professor Stephen Hinton. The first and last songs of the album share the theme of the whale.

Track 2: Echo. This song retells Ovid's myth of Echo and Narcissus from the point of view of the nymph Echo.

Track 3: Creature. The creature refers to Doctor Frankenstein's creation in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818.

Track 4: Lolita. The song's narrative voice is that of the nymphet Dolores Haze from Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita who expresses disgust about her new life with her middle-aged lover Humbert Humbert.

Track 5: Nausicaa. Nausicaa is a Phaeacian maiden from Homer's Odyssey. She meets Odysseus, but a relationship between the two never materializes.

Anonymous Tue Nov 20 21:19:01 2012 No.3164696

>>3164695

Track 6: Helen. This song recounts the Greek mythological figure Helen of Troy's remembrances of her life before the Trojan War.

Track 7: Ophelia. Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's Hamlet, narrates her own descent into madness. She sings about Hamlet's murder of her father Polonius and Hamlet's apparent instability.

Track 8: Mrs. Bennet. Mrs. Bennet, the mother of Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, enumerates her successes in finding spouses for her five daughters.

Track 9: Freud. Told in the voice of Sigmund Freud, who has had a significant impact on literary studies, this song explores the human subconscious. The song includes a thinly veiled reference to Twin Peaks, David Lynch's television series from the early 1990s.

Track 10: Annabel Lee. This song illustrates the form of the elegy. The poem "Annabel Lee", published in 1849, was Edgar Allan Poe's last complete poem.

Track 11: Moby Dick. Based on Herman Melville's epic novel Moby Dick, or The Whale (1851). This final song echoes the whale theme of the album's first song Balena. Apart from the initial chorus of mariners, the lyrics are sung in the voice of the great white whale after the shipwreck.

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 21:21:01 2012 No.3164704 File: 2.18 MB, 480x360, 1341592726411.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>3164567 Sylvia Browne did that? She is one ballsy bitch!

>>	Anonymous Tue Nov 20 21:36:40 2012 No.3164748 >>3164567 >implying the most ironic thing wouldn't have been to keep living as a hipster Women can't do anything right.

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 21 12:08:43 2012 No.3166122 bump niggers

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 21 15:13:29 2012 No.3166594 bump

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 21 15:17:19 2012 No.3166608 >>3161792 >This guy has a lot of really good points. I applaud his salient observations. The article was written by a woman

>>	Anonymous Wed Nov 21 15:18:18 2012 No.3166611 >>3166608 gender doesn't exist, silly.

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/lit/ - Literature