In Defense of Memes

All hipsters love memes, even if it's only to be ironic.

Here's my best-of.

And as if that wasn't enough, the government of British Columbia recently decided to attack hipsters in their latest campaign to combat unemployment... Not sure if it's constructive to be insulting your target audience, but each to his or her own, I guess. The six-week campaign consisted of primarily the following advertisement, with a second one about not winning the lottery found in some areas as well.

I guess normal tactics for fighting unemployment were just too mainstream.

In Defense of Miscellany, Pt. 1

This will be the first post of an ongoing series of "special feature" posts, in which I will introduce and discuss a variety of items that have made the little hipster man inside of me raise an eyebrow in interest or unintentionally slacken his mouth in amazement.

 

Number One: The Trophy Pot
I thought this was pretty good. Using a trophy as a pot. It satisfies so many things inside of me, I don't even know where to begin...

Well, first of all, it shows a sense of irreverence to sports or competition (I guess trophies can come from things other than sports, although let's face it - I would be using a sports trophy). I would happily buy an old track & field trophy from the thrift store and fill it full of dirt, just to show a lack of appreciation for physical competition. But it's more than that.

By planting something in it, you are replacing the intended function of a trophy - to reward a person for their dominance or superiority over another person, or to brag about that superiority - with an alternative one: to house and support another living thing.

Number Two: Vinyl Record Wedding Invitations
Found this one by accident when trying to learn how to cut my own vinyl records... This company takes 7" 45rpm records ("45s" or "singles") with generic square dance music on them, and just prints custom sleeves and labels to turn them into wedding invitations. If my prospective wife doesn't agree to this, I am boycotting my own wedding.

http://www.customrecords.com/wedding_save-the-date_invitation_records.html


Number Three: Every Single Thing About This Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkcGuZHPbKk

It's the music, the colour, the fashion, the segregation, the inversion, the editing... I could go on, but the drool on my keyboard is beginning to pool.

In Defense of Halloween

Now, you might say to me, "Jacob, everyone loves Halloween."

To that I would say, "That is a gross generalization, and I won't stand for it." However, you would be mostly right. Halloween is widely loved and celebrated by many people, not just hipsters.

For hipsters, though, Halloween holds a special appeal. It is an opportunity for them to express themselves without saying any words. Similar to nerds in many ways, a hipster will often plan his or her costume for months in advance, and aim to have the most clever costume at whatever sad, ironic event or obscure concert they plan on attending.

On Haloween, I attended a concert featuring a few obscure bands at a small local venue. Aside from a couple of punks dressed as zombies, the vast majority of attendees were hipsters sporting meticulously crafted costumes depicting obscure cultural references, visual puns, or ironic stripper outfits. Vintage sci-fi characters, 80s police officers and Wayne & Garth from Wayne's World were among the most accessible costumes.

So the next time you go to criticize a hipster for being apathetic or having a lack of whimsy, consider what the effort they likely put into their Haloween costume. Then chuckle in amusement and let the feeling pass.

In Defense of Indie Music

Non-hipsters will often define "indie" music as a genre characterized by depressing lyrics, nerdy band members, low-quality production and whiny lead vocalists. However, the actual definition is somewhat more technical.

Indie music is any music (generally in the vein of pop, rock, folk, hip-hop/rap or alternative) released either on an independent record label or without any record label.

Hipsters are known to proudly tout their collections of "obscure" music. Obscure music is almost always indie by definition, as music on major labels generally has extensive advertising and promotion behind it. However, indie music is not always obscure.

(Image from BBC Music News/Third Man Records)

Jack White (of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather) has been releasing albums from all of his projects on his own independent record label, Third Man Records, since 2001. His first solo album, Blunderbuss, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 200 - not exactly obscure.

You may be wondering at this point if I will ever explain the actual merits of indie music. The answer is yes. That is going to happen right now.

The upside of indie music is that the musicians are allowed to maintain total artistic freedom - they do not sign binding contracts that give their labels the right to veto material, influence their genre, or force an artist to come up with another album.

Another upside, more appealing to the left-leaning among us perhaps, is that the artist gets to keep a larger percentage of every dollar that comes in from music sales. In addition, no large corporations are receiving a cut - the percentage of profit that does go to the label stays with that small, independently-owned company.

In conclusion.
Indie music is generally created with more creative freedom and is free from corporate influence. Obscure artists are also exempt from the issue of corruption by fame, although that may be an issue for another post altogether. Basically, if you're going to criticize a hipster for their pretentious taste in music - hate the hipster, not the music. The music has merit, even if only in theory.

In Defense of Vocabulary

Hipsters love to impress you with their extensive vocabulary. They'll use words like "effulgent" instead of "clean," or "scintillating" instead of "sparkling." They are, in a word, verbose...

...which is a word that creates somewhat of a paradox in and of itself.

Anyway, now you can outsmart your (least) favourite hipsters with the help of my new tweet series!

I am tweeting two tweets every day: one to introduce and define the word of the day, and one to use it in a sentence. This began already yesterday, so to those of you who caught it already before this blog post... I incline my head and raise an eyebrow in approval of your hipster tendencies.

@lukejacobt

In Defense of Not Liking Sports

Imagine, if you will, a hipster. Now wipe that sour reactionary grimace off your face. Imagine that hipster at, say, a sports bar. Impossible? How about at a tailgate party? No? A football game? For whatever reason, hipsters tend not to associate themselves with team sports.

In Canada, hockey seems to be the one recognized exception to this generalization. But for the purposes of this blog, we will assume that the love of hockey among select hipsters is simply an irrational anomaly.

(NOTE: This article is about team sports only; sports such as tennis and golf do have a small following among select hipsters, as they do not fit into the main criticisms of team sports.)

Having holistically ensconced myself in hipster ideology, I consider myself (unofficially) authorized and thoroughly prepared to speak on behalf of hipsterkind about the benefits of Not Liking Sports. I will address my arguments separately by topic.

Violence & Competition
Violence in sports is virtually unavoidable. Sometimes it is built into the game, as is the case in American football. Players have to physically struggle against one another, offensive line against defensive line, in order to execute their plays and accomplish the goal of scoring points.

In other sports, violence can be a by-product of the game. Many fights break out between players in sports like hockey or soccer. While it is not technically part of the rules, it occurs frequently, and many fans are even more engaged when it does happen.

Fan violence is another aspect of many sports, but this ties nicely into our next topic...

Patriotism & Allegiance
When a person likes a certain sport, they often have a specific team which with they identify themselves. This creates a sense of allegiance, which in practice looks very similar to patriotism or even nationalist pride. A fan of a certain team will do anything for their team, and is heavily emotionally invested in the games played by "their team." They are not simply a fan of the sport - they belong to that team.

(As a side note, hipsters also have a distinctly negative view of patriotism, and generally hate the United States of America.)

This allegiance often leads to fan violence, especially in countries where their national sports team is a source of pride. This is exemplified in European football, where deaths related to fan violence are not unheard of. While a sports fan may feel that this extreme allegiance to a sports team is completely normal, a hipster - who probably doesn't even own a television - sees it as completely ridiculous and irrational.

Which again ties into our next topic...

Irrationality & Unconstructiveness
Hipsters do not understand the allegiance of sports fans to their teams, especially when they are not teams local to one's own place of residence. They also fail to understand the need for violence in (or as a result of) sports, since they understand it to be "just a game" and are generally believers in nonviolence anyway. Sports also fail to add to what the hipster defines as "culture" - art, music, charities & humanitarian things, etc. - and are therefore irrelevant to anything that matters.

Conclusion
Hipsters see sports as negative and useless, since sport promotes violence, does not add to culture, promotes patriotism, and - perhaps above all - does not include the physically inept...

In Defense of Desert Boots

Desert boots are everywhere; you can't get away from them. They are quickly becoming one of the most popular styles of footwear among North American men.

If you aren't familiar with them, desert boots (also known as chukka boots) are an ankle-length boot, generally made from suede, calfskin or leather, with two or three eyelets and a crepe (or sometimes leather or rubber) sole. Below are the Clark's Originals Desert Boots, modeled after the British military-issue desert boots.

The boots were hugely popular in the late 1940s and 1950s as casual wear, and have now made a comeback - primarily with hipsters and those with hipster fashion sensibilities.

But why are they so popular, you might ask? Well, the obvious reason is that they look vintage, and present somewhat of a counter-cultural image, which is very "in" right now with hipsters and generally fashion-forward folk of all varieties. But beyond the fashion is the function.

I bought a pair of the Clark's yesterday, and I must say, they really live up to the hype! They are very comfortable, and from what I can tell, very durable. And this is true of most desert boots, not just the Clark's - the simplicity of the design and construction makes them less likely to wear out.

The higher-quality desert boots are made by stitching the two leather pieces down to the crepe sole. This makes for a much stronger attachment of the sole to the boot. Crepe soles have their own set of merits, which you can explore further on your own if you feel so inclined; I will satisfy myself by simply touting their comfort and durability.

The Bottom Line:

Hipsters wear desert boots for the vintage fashion and counter-culture image, as they do with most everything else in their wardrobe. However, they rejoice inside silently because this is one of those select instances where their fashion comes with an unsolicited side-order of function.

In Defense of Vinyl

So you heard about this band that is really obscure, and you're hoping to impress your hipster friend by pretending to like them. You tell him you're really getting into this band. Then your friend, without the slightest hint of excitement, says, "Yeah, I've got their first two albums on vinyl. They're pretty good."

He proceeds to expound on the history of the band, how they formed from the remains of some other stellar indie bands that never made it, how they released these two records, how they then sold out to the man, and how their new albums aren't being released on vinyl because the band members sold their souls to Universal Music Group.

And you think to yourself, "I should've known."

Vinyl is quickly becoming a staple of hipster culture. It seems as though it's the one thing hipsters can universally agree doesn't suck. Now, aside from vinyl being less popular than CDs or digital downloads - and therefore more appealing to hipsters - vinyl possesses three attributes, generally perceived as benefits over other forms of media. These are sound quality, really cool packaging, and quantity control.

SOUND QUALITY

Hipsters can go on and on about how vinyl sounds so much better, and how you wouldn't understand.

Unfortunately, the hipsters have a point. Not only does vinyl have a unique sound that is appealing to many who favour the nostalgic and the tangibly authentic, but the physical nature of vinyl records is such that, provided the record was specifically produced to go to vinyl, it can maintain a higher audio quality than almost any other format, and even gives FLAC and WAV lossless audio files a run for their money.

This is because vinyl is the audio equivalent of film for video and photography. No matter how large you blow up an image that is on film, whether through a slide projector or movie projector, you never see pixels. They don't exist, because the picture is stored in a physical format, not a digital one. It's like drawing a picture with a pencil versus printing one off your computer. One has pixels, the other doesn't.

Now, this all breaks down if the production quality of the album isn't up to snuff. A poorly-produced or low-budget album will not sound better on vinyl than a well-produced album on a CD. And if the audio that went onto the vinyl was digital before it got pressed, the audio quality on the vinyl is of course limited to whatever the quality was before it got pressed.

The record will only be that full-resolution, film-like quality if the audio was either created purely with analog equipment and analog mastering (i.e. no computers), or if everything was created without compressing any audio files.

Realistically, the average human can't really tell the difference between a 320kbs MP3 file and a vinyl record in terms of quality. However, vinyl does have that warm, analog sound going for it, which is sort of an intangible benefit.

REALLY COOL PACKAGING

In 1971, The Rolling Stones released an album called "Sticky Fingers" which featured a working zipper attached to the cover, which was a close-up photo of a man's crotch. The listener could unzip the zipper and expose a pair of cotton briefs underneath.

In 2011, Jack White's label, Third Man Records, released what they called the "Triple Decker Record." You can watch the video here, but it's basically a record with a second record inside of it, which you can only access by cutting open the first record, thus destroying it. On the second record is an unreleased, vinyl-only track. And only 300 of these gems are being made - an instant rarity.

Now, if you can tell me of an iTunes download that lets you unzip someone's pants, or a CD inside a CD which contains anything I couldn't find somewhere else on the internet, I would be the first to denounce my affiliation with vinyl records. However, I firmly believe that vinyl still holds the corner market when it comes to really cool packaging.

QUANTITY CONTROL

Virtually all vinyl records have a serial number of sorts etched into the disc, around the outside of the label. This is how collectors and record stores can be sure of whether an album is first edition, or a re-issue of an old album.

Also, when a batch of records is being pressed, only a certain number is made from a set of masters due to wear and tear, and no two sets of masters is completely identical. Add that to the hand-numbering of virtually every vinyl record ever pressed, and you've got a pretty easily traceable medium.

All of this means that information is available on most records as to how many were pressed in total, and by which plants, as well as which batch your particular record likely belongs to. This makes it very easy for a record company to release a limited-edition record on vinyl - once the set number of records has been pressed, they can stop pressing them and throw away the masters. You now have a truly limited-edition product that is completely traceable and verifiable.

THE ATTITUDE

In my opinion, the best thing about vinyl is the attitude that comes with owning a record. I don't mean the pretentious superiority complex - that's just what hipsters develop when their record collection is more obscure than yours. What I value is the understanding that your music is something of value.

A vinyl record is just so tangible; it's something that you have to care for and protect. If it is damaged, you can no longer listen to it properly. If it's dirty, it won't sound the way it should until you clean it.

It's also so much more physical. When you play the record, you see it spin. If you put your hand on it to slow it down, you hear it slow down and you hear the pitch shift down. A CD would just stop playing, because in a way, it's not actually real; the music is just a bunch of ones and zeroes.

I think it's this combined with the limited nature of vinyl and the packaging possibilities that creates the attitude that music is something to be valued, and is so much more than just the individual songs. It creates an emotional attachment to the music that goes beyond what the songs sound like, and extends to how the album feels in your hands, how you care for your record collection, how you gingerly place the needle on the record so as not to damage it while playing it.

The physical entity of the music is like your pet, and the music itself is the payoff you receive for caring for it.

RESPONSE

If you have any comments or questions, I would love to hear them! Feel free to leave any kind of response in the comments.

In Defense of Hipsters

So Jacob wants to defends hipsters... Who cares?

Exactly. It's that kind of apathy that should make you stop and think: perhaps you are already more hipster than you thought. No hipster actually calls themselves by that name, unless they are practicing the delicate art of living life as a hipster for the purpose of irony - or what I like to call... Hipception.

Over the next few months, I will be coming to the defense of the hipster lifestyle through this blog. My goal will be to educate the masses on the benefits of being hipster, not for the purpose of creating more hipsters - it would obviously be counterproductive to make the niche any more mainstream - but rather to present a logical and rational defense of the supposedly illogical and irrational lifestyle led the modern-day hipster.

Now, while my unparalleled apathy and inability to grasp the dynamics of popularity may prevent me from being excited about writing this blog, I would like to assure you that the little hipster man inside of me is pursing his lips and raising an eyebrow with mild intrigue.