Hipster Hell

To those sporting a copy of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience on the quad

By Mike Estabrook

Attention, hipsters. Intelligent peeps want to know: What is wrong with you?

You know who you are. Zach Braff and ironic tees make your loins tingle. Almost Famous is sooo how you want to live your life. If someone even mentions David Sedaris, you pee on your moccasins.

I sort of understand your perplexing neurosis. If lepers had the option of masking their disfigurement with your skintight jeans and black-rimmed glasses, they would have totally done so.

You selectively pick indie-approved staples--MGMT, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Williams-Sonoma cookbooks--to impress people with things only money can buy. One week later, you've found something new, you modernist prick.

Try asking these "well-read" snobs which existentialist writer is their favorite. After long, blank stares, a diversion: "Did I tell you I just read a Jonathan Safran Foer novel?" I guess Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Franz Kafka get no love in our narrow zeitgeist.

Here's another fun way to screw with your "smarter" friends. Any time they ramble about their insatiable love of Radiohead, ask, "So, which instrumental do you prefer: 'Meeting in the Aisle,' or 'Treefingers?'" They won't know whether to cry or jerk off to Garden State. Maybe they'll do both simultaneously.

I've always wondered where bandwagons go. You jump on them, but don't move. That's a pretty weak wagon.

I imagine my incomparably cool peers ride in a bandwagon with unfunny stickers and fedoras up the wazoo. If only this wagon would roll far away, until nothing but the minor hum of African Beats rehashed with Radiohead remains. I think that's heaven. I, however, am still in hipster hell.