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...