The New York City Anti-Hipster Forum
you have no idea what a thrill it was for me to unexpectedly read about you this morning.
I always thought my opinion of hipsters was a bit harsh, but frankly it all looked like a huge waste of time. When I read the article in the Times yesterday, it suddenly dawned on me the real reason why people dislike the hipsters...they're exclusionary. A rapper might look at your bling bling and think it's not quite "nuclear" enough, but he'd never look down his nose at you. The only reason I don't wear those tight tee shirts with small town little league team names is because I actually played in Little League. On top of which they make girls with boobs look like they're wearing an intertube around their neck which explains why all hipster women can be mistaken for boys.
People, do something individual. Put down that copy of Tolstoy you're obviously not reading and go work for the DNC or the Democratic Party on weekends so that people with voices like that of (insert random fascist here) get smaller and smaller day by day.
A thank you so much.
Here's a letter to The Times regarding the article...
Dear Editor,
I’ve just finished reading Vanessa Grigoria’s “The Edge of Hip, Vice, the brand” on the cover of the September 28, Sunday Styles. What I gathered from the piece was two basic points. One, that Vice is a flash in the pan and two, that I am a white supremacist. The New York Times Magazine had an exclusive with us for a year. We spoke to Dwight Garner for hours upon hours, week after week, but alas the story was canned. We were led to believe one of the reasons for this was that his piece was, “Too positive.” Eventually, the story was pushed to Grigoria who, having only learned of the brand at a recent fashion show, was asked to become an expert in less than two weeks. Instead of getting the credit for the ten years of pop culture commentary Dwight had researched, we came across as a new fad that was born yesterday and could easily disappear tomorrow.
On top of that I feel I was goaded into turning my potentially Western chauvinist politics into white power politics because I was told that the piece had been rejected again for being too positive. It put us in a position where we felt if there were no tension there would be no piece. I suggested juxtaposing my Western, Christian politics with my co-workers Eastern, Islamic politics. When that didn’t spark an interest I believe I was coerced into making it a racial issue. When the piece finally ran every incendiary statement I had made, (from an email, to a haphazard cell phone conversation, to a bad joke made several years ago), was glued together and crowned with the words, “White supremacist.” I believe that is simply inaccurate. I have always taken pains to convey that being pro-Western is not a racial issue. I feel I was baited into sensationalizing my politics and was all but told the piece could not run if I didn’t provide the writer with something shocking. I think this is an unfair and inaccurate portrayal of my beliefs and would like to see a retraction.
Sincerely,
Gavin McInnes
Co-Founder,
VICE
Here's more on the subject. It should be noted that I have had nothing to do with the magazine for over two years. Jesse Pearson is the editor and he defines what goes in the magazine.
http://www.viceland.com/cgi-bin/...=3;t=145;
st=210
On one hand, it is sort of unfortunate that Mr McInnes now has to point-blank defend himself to the world at large -- a world which before the nyt article knew not and cared not of his existence -- and can only do so through the modest voice of a blog comment.
On the other hand, its fucking hilarious.
This incendiary prank is getting out of hand. For those of you that don’t think my American Conservative was a blag, I will pay $1,000 to anyone that can find an example of “Terry Richardson publicly trashing Clinton.”
He doesn't deny what he said, he just thinks he shouldn't be held responsible for it, b/c he only said it because he really, really wanted to be in the Times. Overruled!
True, but the quote is pasted together from several conversations.
"Proud to be white" was a response to "are you ashamed to be white."
The closed borders / assimilation thing was a suggestion to juztapose that with my Islamic co-worker's views which are exactly the opposite.
The NY Press thing was an unforunate joke that, without the corresponding photograph (me as a skinhead, my co-worker as a soccer hooligan, and my Pakistani co-worker as a student fighting us) became really, really bad.
I'd rather be here in LA than put up with these complete assholes. Some of us have to work for a living, ya know. Some people know that character and charisma don't come in a down low and blue-collar shopping bag. How pathetic that the NYT covered these posers.
for fucks sake gavin, just shut up. nobody gives a shit about what you have to say.
oh, and why is everyone at vice so fat?
Mr. McInnes! You fucking suck. Most people don't offer up winky-wink xenophobic quotables in the hope of being able to come all over their own name in the Times. "Incendiary prank" is what most of the oh-so-unhip un-Viceable demographic considers your piece of shit mutant, glossy offspring and all of its Brooklyn drones to be. Fuck you if you think you can apply the same soul-crushing, pleathery ironic detachment to your race baiting via skinhead "jokes" and American Conservative blow jobs. Refer to the "Cool Fascismo" issue of Adbusters when Vice needs help marketing some new faux-retro line of S.S. hipster sunglasses. That's "f-a-s-c-i-s-m", Gavin, and yes, with your help I'm sure it'll be the hottest new shit in Williamsburg. Wink.
p.s. "Destruction" tattooed across your back? Not scary, not scary at all...
The NYT invented the "exploiting hipsters" angle. Hipsters don't have any money. They can't be exploited. When we said we don't want to have anything to do with that shit she said, "it's very hipster to say you're not a hipster."
Anyway the truth is all this press is just a joke. If you've ever been interviewed by mainstream press you will notice that you can get away with saying anything. The NYT took the joke a little too far and that's regrettable but you know these people never leave their desks right? No mainstream press person, that has ever interviewed us in ten years of interviews, has ever heard of the magazine before starting the story. They never fact check. Ask Jayson Blair.
I realize the NYT gag was going a bit far and will be saying ear buring left wing shit starting now to counteract it. I think that will help the overall message and that is: baby boomer media is total and utter bullshit.
Stay tuned.
Gavin, again! How much more fucked up could you get? The hipster fascist doth protest too much, and all that. So now Mr. Closed Borders Forever is here too say that the NYT is a "joke" too!?! Gotta love those cutesy Times editors, always running front page features just for shits and giggles! You seem to not be noticing that you are the stupidest person in this room, and basically trying to cast off the surging hipster nightmare of the past five years as some imagined gag is making you seem more crazy, not less. "You can get away with saying anything"??? So, in addition to having terminally rancid taste in all the dregs of pop culture, you're also a delusional, compulsive liar? I knew the force behind The Wrongness had to be crazy, but this! Please, no more. It's almost too perfect.
Your rambling incoherences prove nothing about the state of bullshit in baby boomer media, either, sir. They only go to show that eighth-grade reading level journalism for the masses still has the power to make a huge, permanent chink in the insidious, exclusionary shit-peddling armor you've been trying to pass off as the Lifestyle of Cheeky Filth(TM) for far too long. Fuck you, I say again.
You're all painfully retarded.
The tatoo doesn't just say "destruction" it says "destruction creates." That's writted across a massive jellyfish that is holding two people in its tentacles: Chiang Kai Shek and Fidel Castro. Those were two immigrants that came into a country, wiped out the previous cultures and started new, prosperous ones. I also have a machine gun on my arm that says "arm your desires" in Arabic. The days of the West are numbered and I will be the impetus that destroys it. I am turning America inside out from the outside in. Soon George Bush will be in the tentacles hands and a new creed will take over.
DESTRUCTION CREATES!
The only border that should be closed is the one that let your fruitcake self here from Canada.
You're sick and your tattoos suck.
Gavin: Does Canada have a terror-alert level for schizophrenic, maniacal jellyfish? The best part is that it doesn't even matter if you're trying to be "funny" anymore. This kind of "end of the West via ugly, shiny belts" black hole logic of yours is going to suck up a huge swath of your "psychographic" fiefdom...Indie rockers fiddling on every Williamsburg street corner beside burning piles of Vice back issues. Keep spewing that brutal shit of yours - it's sooooo totally vintage crazy.
Gavin, you poor sonofabitch, I will allow you to post your defense on my comment board, pathetic and insincere as your reasoning may be, but I will not allow you to further promote your shitty, hate-filled brand on my site. That's why I've erased the last post.
Good lord, please tell us what it said.
If you take this conservative trend seriously you are as stupid as the baby boomer media that runs with it.
For example, Here is proof that The American Conservative article was bull roar:
-$1,000 to anyone who can find an example of Terry Richardson trashing Clinton.
- find me a place on our site where we said people thought gays were making women diet too much.
- show me something from the art collective I made up called Sofia.
There’s also the part where I said “Jesus was gay” on Bill Maer’s show Politically Incorrect. Is that right wing?
True, the NYT thing was going way too far but that was about 5 different quotes totally taken out of context and twisted into a sensationalist angle. She took the joke way too far.
Gavin, please quit before you lose any shred of cred you once had. You know it's about the money and if you think hipsters have none to buy your shit, all your ad pages would be blank and W'burg rents would have skyrocketed. Sure, some may not, but c'mon. In SF, there is a similar species, known as "Trustafarians".
I used to think "Vice" was tweaking people's (mis)conception of fashion,
sex, music, drugs and the alternative lifestyle and that in itself,
beyond its obvious cynicism, which is easily sold, if not. The joke is
easily had, was a fun, if not funny, look at the seriousness in which
people took themselves, but upon reading the claptrap of
self-congratulatory tripe in the American Conservative (is Gavin looking for investors from Orange
County?), I've gotta say this dude is one scary motherfucker.
He doesn't make one good argument as to why we went to war and seeing
the date this was written you have to wonder where this addled brain's
mind is?
That this war is maybe out of hand?
is costing us more than even Iraq's oil can possibly supply? I though conservatives were about cutting excess waste and expenditures?
not this ideological fool.
Like what Bush will sell congress, "if you don't give me more money for this war, then you are allowing the terrorists to win."
Anybody, and i mean anybody who buys Bush's and his money/power
grubbing/grabbing cronies (un)reasoning seriously needs to have his/her head examined. This dude, Gavin and who he serves (and i thought vice
was about railing against serving anybody) needs an ideological
lobotomy. These people are out of control and abso-fucking-lutely
irresponsible, with yer money and mine, w/people's lives and well being.
So this nouveau riche fat-fuck wants to hold on to his newfound
riches by decrying "liberal" fucks and buddying up to his new cigar smoking "friends"??
Hey, who cares. Just don't let the world know how neo'con you are.
Tired. Next.
So 20th Century...
Though I agree with The American Conservative about as often as The Nation you should know a few things:
Neocons (like Bush) are pro-invading Iraq.
Conservatives (like Buchanan) are anti-invading Iraq.
That's why it's so fun to play poltics with Americans. They don't know what they're talking about. It's irresistable. Like trying to convince Christians that Jesus was gay.
Gavin: Do you have a tattoo of the G.O.P elephant sucking its own dick, too? Consider it, you fucking lunatic.
Just to help recalibrate this argument, I'll quote Mr. McInnes from his NY Press interview:
Q: Don’t you get hostile being in this neighborhood every day (williamsburg)?
GM: Well, at least they’re not fucking niggers or Puerto Ricans. At least they’re white.
The jellyfish is all pro-immigration get it?
One minor detail about that quote. The interview was accompanied by a large photograph werein I was dressed as a skinhead, my co-worker was dressed as a soccer hooligan and the other founder, a Pakistani, was dressed like a student. We were all bruised and bloodied like we had just been in a big fight. Of course, thanks to the internet that was taken out of context and the PC lunatics ran with it. Again, no fact checking, just like the right.
If the article in American Conservative was a joke, then why don't you call them up and ask them to print a retraction, or a new piece with your true views, Gavin?
The other part that is troubling about several of your comments Gavin (let's assume I get them in context and am totally sensing your irony and/or humor in each them) is that some of the impressionable idiot nation who follows you actually believes it! Now, you are not responsible for their low IQ's, but nonetheless, the attitude spreads when you say things with such seeming conviction.
Also, it is true that cons and neo-cons differ in their view of pre-emptive American action overseas and other foreign policy issues (plus many cons actually believe in this Jesus stuff, whereas most neo-cons just pay it lip-service to get votes and money), but that is pretty much where the differences end, so don't split hairs. You don't exactly strike me as some well-read political scientist of any regard, so take it easy on us lowly Americans who have helped build your "$10mm per year" empire.
Either you are the best satirist since Jonathan Swift, or a complete wussy retracting everything under fire.
I saw the NY Press thing with the picture and didn't think it was funny at all. Though I was shocked to see an internet version without the picture become this mass email. They probably got thousands of dollars in advertising from that stupid gag.
Don't you see these guys love this shit? They got rich building controversy and every time someone freaks out at them they get more money. Just shut up about it already. They are laughing all the way to the bank.
I remember back in newsprint days Suroosh was all about toting the magazine as a Jihad, muslim thing. They got bored of that and went on this tangent. They'll probably be in the Zulu Nation next week. Do what I do. Just roll your eyes and deny them the satisfaction.
They are mentally ill coke heads that are using you as a selling tool. The best thing to do is just stop picking up the magazine.
As Aimee mentioned in her post, I find it outrageous that big-money media is bank-rolling these twats. Somebody should start a petition to pressure Warner Books and Atlantic Records to drop their deals with them.
I'm sorry to bum you out but the Warner Books and Atlantic Records deals were one time deals that are done and over with. The book is out and on the shelves. The Streets is sold and put to bed. The label is independent now. And the book, if Jim would take the time to read is probably the most anti-white, anti-conservative book ever distributed nationally.
no offense Jim but don't you get it? They fuck with people. I don't always agree with it but it is kind of funny sometimes.
Why don't you do your own thing and stop worrying about what other people are doing?
I'm telling you, next week: Zulu Nation.
d-soldier, i thought you were going to shut up about it, so why post again? 
You are of course, absolutely right about these guys totally loving all this.
And you bet the mag can be funny, but like Gavin says, he apparently does not have anything to do with it anymore!! So, Jesse Pearson, not Gavin, gets that credit I suppose.
Whine, moan, whine moan... bitch all you want--you know you still read VICE. They're rocking on your dime, and it's pathetic self-righteous whiteys like you that keep them so "fat".
Do you stand for anything, Gavin?
I believe in cartoons and arguing and cocaine. I believe playing devil's advocate is the best way for people to get to the truth. I believe cartoons are honest and amazing.
Someone needs to wash your head out with soap, Gavin McInnes.
how do we even know that IS gavin mcinnes?
vice sucks.
people who think vice does not suck suck.
the sunday styles section is a delicious guilty pleasure treat, like eating pop-tarts in the bathtub, even when it exposes me to levels of shallowness and self-centeredness that would otherwise make me lose my lunch.
aimee's website is like eating BROWN SUGAR FROSTED pop-tarts in a luscious bubble bath. mmm! keep it coming!
That is indeed Mr. McInnes. He sent me an e-mail from the Viceland.com website.
Hello all,
I just took a minute to read through all the comments here regarding the NYT article about Vice, which is of particular interest to me as the General Manager of said company. Don't ask what the job title means.
Last night I was visiting my father, a NY Times reader, and he asked me what I thought of the article. My answer was this; shallow, poorly researched and inaccurate. He also asked if the people I worked with and for were as awful an his impression was when he read it (my step mom asked the same thing). They are not awful people. The staff and the trio of founders are all writers and creatives (sorry for the ad industry term) and we make a magazine that is by and for our various peer groups. Ingeniously, we work with a business model that makes it free to our readers, employs us, and is paid for by advertising from companies large and small, grass roots and corporate. Unlike nearly every other magazine, our editorial staff is not restricted to subjects our advertisers will approve of (which is also to the advertiser's credit, either as a free speech thing or a straight business move). We lose advertisers on a regular basis due to content or imagery. Rambling, I know, its a bad habit.
Everyone is hating Vice here, and for what? Vice uses corporate America's money to explore topics and ideas that are both under the radar of mainstream mass media and antithetical to the agendas espoused by corporate capitalist culture. I thought that this kind of convention breaking and reality questioning was what this board would applaud.
In short, don't believe the hype, anyone who has been interviewed before knows that misquotes, author and editor agendas play heavily into how you are perceived. I was there for some of the interviews, and I remember wondering what the writer would take away from it. Now I know, its not what I got out of it, but hey, what can you do? Also to the concept that we (staff or owners) are getting rich over here...as GM I know what people earn at Vice (hope I don't get fired for saying that), and everyone is underpaid. Not rich, we just work long hours, with the owners working even more late nights than the staff.
Finally, while Gavin has an inflammatory sense of humor, language, behavior and a prankster's spirit, he's no white supremacist. I'm Jewish, I'd kick the crap out of him if that were the case...then lose my job. I am of the opinion that he uses drugs in the category of somewhere between 'a tad too much' and 'you think he's going to live?' While we were in San Diego recently he confided in me that 'the White man is pure evil' and 'Chinese people have magic powers'. Since I'm marrying a woman of Chinese descent next spring, I was appreciative of the heads up on the latter.
-S.M.
-general manager
-Vice Magazine
sounds like you're trying to back pedal out of your own grave you dug. now let's get this one straight. aren't you guys from canada? if you are, and you say "We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life." hmmm...maybe you're right. maybe the borders should have been closed awhile back before vice relocated to good ol' brooklyn. vice has mastered the art of taking "youth culture" (cassandra report pg. 14) and burning into the ground just like mtv. keep up the good work you fat fuck!
now that poor, underpaid vice-man saul has pitched in to defend his boss (who blows his money on coke and spends his hard-workin' days at the vice helm obsessively posting comment after comment on blogs), it's even more apparent that all you vice staffers are deluded, high on self-importance and white powder but devoid of empathy, logic, or tolerance. stop tooting your own horn. vice has done nothing for mainstream OR underground 'hipster' culture but incite groundless controversy and spout off slurs just to get a reaction and to make a dollar. i don't buy ANY of it, gavin and saul. your attempts to defend vice's mission and backpedal over the shitty things you've said in the past are truly pathetic.
1. This site is a testament to 'obsessively posting comment after comment'.
2. You don't know me, or the staff well enough to have said those things.
The other day I thought I'd screw with my best friend's head, so I said, "You know, you're a fat, ugly skank and I'm sleeping with your boyfriend." Do you think she took even a minute to check with her boyfriend, or look in the mirror (so simple!) to determine if she really was a fat, ugly skank? No, she just got really, really mad at me, even after I said I was just joking! Gawd, you'd think people would understand that it's just fun to screw with their heads!
Saul - It's called The Conquest of Cool. Somebody (Thomas Frank) already wrote a book about poor schmucks like you cool-hunting to pay for their next batch of coke. Apologists for morally and intellectually bankrupt shitfaces- like Gavin today proved himself to be - are equally as condemnable as the PR fellatio jobs they give. Suck it.
You guys are such fucking pussies. Vice is classic stuff and if you cannot recognize that, then you’ve proved yourselves to be the nerds you really must all be. Vice Magazine is a joy to read each month because it takes the piss on any and all, but as I said, if you cannot see this then what’s the point of trying to explain.
I'd love to see you give that explaining thing the old college try, Charles.
VICE rocks, it rules, it's on god's bed-side table, it's not a hipster magazine or guide, and shouldn't be. Gibson SG guitars are for rockers. Even if Jack Black plays one. I think the vice-haters who've written recently here are "Dont's", wouldn't that be a safe assumption? take pictures of yourselves, haters, and send them to vice. watch as your comments are tweaked in their next issue. Eat chocolate and get trashed. Stop taking shit so seriously and go smoke some grass.
What a little suck weasel. I bet if the baby boomer media offered him a well-paying gig, he'd take it in a minute. What is Vice, anyway? Never heard of it.
Touché, CB! We're "nerds"--I guess that pretty much settles everything.
I am really disappointed, I thought Vice mag was kind of touching b/c it tried so hard to offend & I really liked the piece on shopping with Lumidee. I see that some of your loyal readers are either complete morons or big fans of Chuck Palahniuk.
Guys, you can't say obnoxious shit like that and expect to have a NYT reporter carefully contextualize it for you. duh! Like most of your own writers would go out of their way to stop an interview subject from looking like an asshole.
Aimee, you win!
I've never been to this site before, having wandered here from Gawker, but I never thought the posters would be such a tight-asses. C'mon, dressing up like skinheads for an interview and spouting off like a racist, that's classic stuff. Everyone needs to get off their high horse.
I can't believe how badly people have missed the point- to creat discussion, to get a laugh, and to point out how much stupid phacking free time you all have.
See? See? See! The whole deal was to get everyone up in arms over nothing, that's 'no thing.'
And he did it. He phacking did it. Like Turk 182, only without the (really) slutty one from Sex in the City. Like a tree falling in the woods- its only controversial if people react to it.
So... to all of you overly sensitive kids out there (and there sure are a lot of you phackers) drop it. Or, just go and check the definition of "Moibus Strip."
Whatever you do, quit throwin yer shite at Vice and Dr. McInnes. Throw it at yerselves.
This is all very entertaining. All the back and forth reads like a retarded gang war. It's too bad Gavin pussied out and sent his douchebag brigade to defend his sorry ass.
Nice neocon punk'd job, Gavin. After you and Ashton quit laughing at what retards we all are, don't let the door hit your asses on the way back to utter irrelevance.
Things that are true:
-liberals today, especially in New York are knee-jerk idiots that have race so far up their ass they are unable to discuss anything logically.
-Pat Buchanan says a lot of smart shit. He quotes lefties like Susan Sontag all the time. You never hear the left quote writings of the right. Please show me something he said that is erroneous.
-mainstream journalism is a joke. If I want to write for NME about The Strokes for some extra cash I can Jayson Blair it in an afternoon. If I'd like to meet Buchanan for lunch I can pound out a supposed trend for his magazine like that.
-Baby boomer journalists are lazy. If they read about something in another source they just cut and paste it in their own.
-immigration in the West is a mess. You can't discuss it in this country without being labelled a white supremacist. That makes me so mad I can't help but antagonize the left. Of course, sometimes they go too far and that's the risk you take.
-the left needs to relax and say some bad words. Shit, you guys have so many rules. You're like the new puritans. Am I allowed to say, "shut up you're going to make me barf" when a gay friend tells me about the dick he sucked last night? Can I have all the rules broken down for me please?
You've already proven yourself far too stupid to understand the rules. How old are you? 34, 35? If you don't have any sense of tact by now, I'm afraid it's too late for you. And for God's sake, you fucking moron, you're supposed to be the one with the massive media empire, why don't you use it to mount your defense, instead of piggybacking on somebody else's blog? You are pathetic.
Slightly off topic ... is Vanessa, the girl who interviewed you, hot?
This only picture I've seen is cute, but maybe you could clue me in, having spent time with her.
Oh Gavin, you really fucked it up this time...it's too late to say you were punking the establishment when your racist/xenophobic caca has been a well know embarrassment for quite some time. Problem is you're not intellient enough to pull it off...You've exposed your hatred. No advertiser in their right mind is going to want to be associated with your magazine and its "pro-white" agenda. (Notice how all the covers of white people are glamorous or sexy and all the covers with black people they're either drug addled, dopey, ugly, or exoticized? Take a look, it's true.)
You played into all your hater's hands. When you're as arrogant and drug-addled as you are, and paranoid to boot (dude, get off the blogs!) you're bound to self-destruct. That's the problem with hubris.
See ya.
so the truth comes out: gavin mcinness=ann coulter. baiting uppity liberals for fun and profit. while daddy wanks off to treason, their rebellious urban outfitter wearing spawn can be punk rawk, read vice and "embrace conservatism".
brilliant racket. karl rove is shedding a little tear.
I can't help myself here...
It seems to me that everyone on the site isn't taking much time to formulate a logical argument to pose to Mr. McInnes. It kind of feels like I'm listening in on a Ethics 101 class, where no one has an objective opinion but everyone can say things like, "Fuck you, suck my dick, your wrong, I hate you."
This is an opportunity to talk with someone who, despite the rantings on this site, at the very least is worth having conversation with.
Whether or not I support and like McInnes's opinions, or even his magazine (I do like the magazine), it still seems to me like he is the only one (perhaps aside from a few random postings with glimmers of hope) who is conducting himself in a logical manner - that is, addressing the points in the articles in question, addressing the reader's "questions", and displaying the ways in which he was misquoted, taken out of context, or purposefully gave misleading information.
After the frenzy of the last year and the seemingly unseen ironies (Jason Blair reviewing Stephen Glass or working on a piece about stress in the workplace for Jane, anyone?) why is it so difficult to understand an editor of a free, largely uncommerical, decidedly funny albeit greatly skewed magazine throwing the media and some of his readers for a loop?
Someone please post something intelligent, because it's getting a little boring listening to everyone threaten McInnes with the mind of a two year old who hasn't been fed for days.
"Give it the old college try," I think, was the quote in mind.
Vanessa Grigoria seems to be the real loser here. Could anyone be more out of touch?
have we actually read the NYT article, people?
the writer's name is VANESSA GRIGORIADIS. not grigoria. gavin misspelled it first, now al (above).
at least get her name right before you try to insult her story or her reporting skills.
Chris - Gavin doesn't seem to deserve any kind of logical q&a forum here. All he does is piss out condescending "I pretend like I'm a bigot but am really just uber-impenetrable devil's advocate" bullshit. Yes, he has some explaining to do for the "ironic" race teasers he's thrown out there, but it seems all he can do in response is remind us that we'll never be cool enough to "get" what he's trying to do. I think it has something to do with alienating all but a shred of empathy your audience has for what you're saying, and then winning their loyalty out of their fear that you'll turn on them, too--a great big DON'T carved onto all of our foreheads, forever. Vice is against EVERYTHING, don't you know! Just don't give a fuck! Woo hoo!
To Gavin McInnes. Boo Hoo! Oh my god. I have trouble believing you wrote this. If you are truly this naieve about the media, hire a PR person yesterday. How could a "media mogul" like yourself not know that everything you say is fair game and can be used however they see fit. You have no business being in business. I was offended by your publication but thought it was kind of funny as it was "tongue in cheek." Now, I don't believe everything I read but after reading your quotes in the NY Times I will never pick up your racist rag again. Once was enough. I don't care what context you were quoted in. The quotes were enough to convince me. There are plenty of "liberal" hipsters with deep seeded racist, sexist and homophobic beliefs that read your pub cause deep down they're with you. If you hadn't received $10 million in cash from the dot.com looting your publication wouldn't exhist. I suggest you squirrel some of that away or at least get some PR counsel...
Christ almighty, I certainly don't have the time (or desire) to read through 65 comments bashing some random Canardian.
Does anyone. really. give. a. flying. fuck. about ANY OF THIS?
For real?
Bess. No one asked you to read it, no one asked you to care. If you think the point of this is to bash some "random" Canadian, then you'll also believe that Gavin is going to open the next Vice office in Alabama. Real, all too real.
i care!
this whole hipster thing is the most interesting cultural phenomena our generation has put forth, like it or not.
there are distinct characteristics of hipsters which place them right here, in our time (and somehow transcending our time in their obsessive era-nostalgia).
no, we're not black, and we're not working class. get over it. america is mostly middle-class and white.
we all acknowledge vice magazine as important. we don't necessarily like it, but it's a cultural force and it's important to us because we are its demographic. this type of scandal with an editor of, say, spin magazine would not make us flip a shit the way we have in the comments section of this blog. maybe we didn't choose to be the demographic. maybe the magazine chose us.
my gripe with vice: it became overly corporate. plain and simple, it reduced itself to an edgier version of MTV with some of the corporations it used for ad sales.
another point that should be taken from gavin's comments in this forum is that he REALLY wanted to be in the ny times. that, and some quotes out of context, is his excuse for his racial comments. real fuckin' punk rock, gavin.
By the way, as a friend points out, if any of you own the Vice book it's real easy to debunk Gavin's "just kidding" retraction simply by flipping to his essay called "Stop Immigration NOW". If he's really punking the media, then his "evil plan" goes back 3 whole years. Either you're a genuis, G-man, or frigging stoopid. Me thinks the latter. Also, if he had a leg to stand on, and was "taken out of context" by Ms. Gregoriadis, than he has a real clean libel/slander suit on his hands. Instead Ms. Gregoriadis is off to Rolling Stone, and Vice's future remains precarious. The only worse thing in the USA than being called a white supremicist, is being called a pedophile--innocent, "just kidding", or not,it's hard to wash the stink off. See you, hate to be you.
I like how Aimee Plumbly calls them "hatemongers" while she has devoted a whole year of her life slandering various groups of people in NYC. Aimee, you're pathetic and your writing sucks. At least VICE is funny. What's your excuse?
the "just kidding" retraction is hilarious. he sure spends a lot of time hawking this project usa stuff for it to be kidding. also, some of the things in the amcon article he points out as examples of bullshit aren't - for instance, he did have an article in vice about gay guys being the source of the whole emaciated aesthetic. i don't get exactly where saying that you did something you really did do is "kidding".
gavin, were you just kidding when you told my girls that sadomasochism was the best way to get over incest? cause they sure thought that was a funny joke. ha, ha. by the way, it's bad journalism to take quotes from people without their authorization ("don't hate me because i'm beautiful").
aimee, you're the fucking best.
getting through all those posts was tedious, but it's kind of nice to have gavin here, reading it all. at the very least, it gives me the opportunity to chime in and say that i can't stand vice for no other reason than because of its flaccid prose. now aimee, on the other hand, is quite the stylist.
Amen to that.
Much ado about nothing. Get back to the anti-hipster rants. I was enjoying that stuff.
i loved vice when it was still in newsprint. those were the days.
aimee i adore your writing. it is far better than anything i see in vice. except perhaps the fashion do's and don'ts.
hey, at least the rag is free.
"this whole hipster thing is the most interesting cultural phenomena our generation has put forth" - i fucking hope not
"no, we're not black, and we're not working class. get over it. america is mostly middle-class and white."
That has to be the stupidest statement I have read all day. Perhaps you live in a cave. Perhaps this is why you enjoy Vice, because it keeps you and your kind cushioned in a bubble of shit.
"C'mon, dressing up like skinheads for an interview and spouting off like a racist, that's classic stuff."
Classy. For Halloween this year I think I will portray Gavin McInnes.
"I believe in cartoons and arguing and cocaine. I believe playing devil's advocate is the best way for people to get to the truth. I believe cartoons are honest and amazing."
Gavin McInnes
I haven't seen much evidence of truth in your publication, Gavin. I think it sucks. Cartoons and arguing are cool, but methinks you sniffed a bit too much shit and are deluding yourself where the truth is concerned. Maybe you can create yerself some swell super heroes to keep all the brown skinned ppl out of your empire. The best way to find the truth is not by needlessly and shamelessly insulting masses of people.
After months of staying tuned with aimee and wondering, am i a hipster? what are hipsters? do they suck? I now know the truth. Apparently, no! i am not a hipster, yay! hipsters are white racist gen x'ers from the midwest with a 'me me me' agenda. and yes, they suck.
Ach..
"this whole hipster thing is the most interesting cultural phenomena our generation has put forth"
Um, last time I checked the word "phenomena" meant something that CAN'T be explained.. not something that results directly from trustfund babies with too much time and money on their hands seeking identity validation.
Gavin McInnes = the new Soy Bomb
I drive a truck for a variety of agricultural concerns. Often during my travels I find that the glare of the sun often impedes my vision. In order to redress this imbalance, I have chosen to wear mesh backed caps with a front visor. These caps restore my visibility so that I may continue with my occupation. I used to spend no more than $2 on these caps, often receiving them for free from feed warehouses or petrolium refuling areas. Recently, however, I have found the the prices of these caps have ballooned to the level of an expense I can no longer absorb on my working class salary. So I am forced to drive into the sun bareheaded and with poor vision. On more than one occasion I had to swerve the truck severely to avoid an accident because of my inability to shield myself from the glare. I fear that I am going blind. During sunsets while driving Westward, my eyes often tear up.
This is the most people I've ever seen comment here. Isn't that proof that mcinnis just says things for a rise?
no, dusty, i don't live in a fucking cave. and no, i didn't go to a small liberal arts school in the middle of fucking nowhere.
i'm just willing to bet that most people posting to this forum are WHITE and are not working-class.
and if you take a stroll around the lower east side on any given weekend, you'll see mostly WHITE, twenty-somethings who all look mostly the same, who all look as working-class as the bush administration. you'll see black youth peddling 'coke and trees' to hipsters smoking cigarettes out on the sidewalks. you'll see chic lounges in alphanet city, a far cry from the LES of the 1980s and prior.
by pointing this out- that hipsters are mostly white and middle-class and are actually a cultural force- does that somehow make me a bigot, or somebody living in a cave?
really, all you hipster fucks have to give up your struggle for street-cred and just acknowledge that you're the inheritors of a sold-out, college-educated hippie generation. get over it. you're leaving pop-culture in the dust. you're a cultural force. you've got spending power. you're trend-setters. you're hipper than suburban youth. you're smarter than the average truck-driver. don't hide it. don't be ashamed. and for fuck's sake, don't be so goddamn defensive when somebody calls you on your shit.
you live where you live because that's where you want to live- in a cosmopolitan metropolis. you want to meet like-minded people who are around the same age as you. you want to live in the city. in the process, you gentrify neighborhoods and piss a lot of people off.
aimee- you say shame on atlantic and warner bros for doing business with 'morally irresponsible...hate-monger' - NO SHIT! it's atlantic and warner bros. did you expect major record companies to allow morals to get in the way of profits? and to throw out a 'shame on you' line, it almost reminds me of helpless hipsters-with-conscious chanting tired anti-war slogans with a remote expectation that they're saying or doing something worthwhile. you're not.
wake up. this is not wesleyan university- this is the real-world. don't expect moral responsibility. and for fuck's sake, don't go pointing fingers with 'racist' and 'hate-monger' like you're some missionary of correct.
the world is incorrect, and gavin should be the least of our worries.
I agree. It's like when everyone was mad at Lenny Bruce. People are so worried about comedians and other random people.
I think there are a lot scarier forces out there than a drunk guy that likes to push people's buttons.
Oh please! You're comparing Lenny Bruce, a comedian who fought the law long and hard for greater freedom of speech, a man who defended himself in court against frivilous charges, a man who made his name and endeared himself to his fans by being brutally HONEST, a man who went to jail for his beliefs, a comic martyr who was actually funny; you're comparing him to this McInnes schmuck? This is a guy who has made a name for himself by LYING to his interviewers and LYING his readers, SLANDERING a talented reporter, SPEWING hateful, mindless GARBAGE to legions of idiots to no apparent end save for stroking his inflated ego and raking in money and when he's called out for it, he hasn't even a shred of ability left to defend his actions among his readers, much less in a court of law. This is a man who has exploited the homegrown ideals of punk rock to produce a magazine absolutely devoid of thoughtful or substantially challenging content, a magazine not worthy of the ink it's printed on. I would bet my life that this asshole would stab his own mother in the back if it meant saving his own ass. And you compare him to Lenny Bruce? You couldn't be more wrong. I agree though, that there are a lot more worthy causes to argue over than this crap ...
"i'm just willing to bet that most people posting to this forum are WHITE and are not working-class."
i'm not "most people" but i am black. i stopped reading vice a couple years ago after i got tired of seeing white boys use the word nigger too much. i hardly see hipsterdom as a cultural force. i would however like to see the aisles of my local thrift in my overwhelmingly working-class neighborhood free of any more fauxhawked white kids looking for ill-fitting ironic tees.
I'm glad the whole "Canadians are fruitcakes" angle has not been picked up on this thread. First, because it's well, homophobic and second because it's a wildly inaccurate picture of my relatively pinko country. In response to that sentiment--there is nothing less Maple Leaf than Gavin & Vice. That's
why he left, guys! Canada has racism, absolutely. We also manage to
peacefully include the most diverse city in the world (yes, that includes
NYC) according to the UN and to formally recognize two official languages and cultures. Our federal cultural/immigation policy is known as
"multiculturalism"-something Gavin pukes all over as often as he can. Was it Pat Buchanan who called us Canuckistan? We marry gays, don't prosecute pot use and have begun the first safe drug-injection program in all of North America. (The last two being a thorn in side of the US drug administration
that I'm particularly proud of). Gavin has his own problems, but don't
assume it's a Canuck thing. America made him a star, afterall (to be fair,
this is true of Celine Dion, Mike Myers, Nelly Furtado...)
yawn.
another self-righteous canuck. i suppose you wear a maple leaf on your backpack when you travel to europe, just so they know you're not american.
how many americans actually knew that the USA accidentally bombed canadian soldiers in afghanistan? not many! why? because americans- and the rest of te world, for that matter- don't give much of a shit about canada.
why?
because molson and CBC's hockey night is the extent of canadian culture. because, however 'chill' of a place to live canada may be, canada does not matter on the world's stage.
from,
a dual-citizen in montreal
(who is sick and tired of self-righteous canucks.)
"this whole hipster thing is the most interesting cultural phenomena our generation has put forth, like it or not."
Is it possible to formally withdraw from one's own generation?
...
What's so wrong with people who like mesh trucker caps, anyway? It certainly seems like a whole lot of people are more-than-willing to jump on this bandwagon, but mostly all I read about is what these "hipsters" dress like.
Am I the only one who thinks there's something backwards about disliking an entire group of people based on their wardrobe and their personal interests? Has it ever occured to you that maybe more than a few of them actually, honestly LIKE these tidbits of style, and that you're punishing them for following that impulse?
I'm far from perfect, but at least I don't lump people into groups like that. Shame on all of you.
Thanks, Kirstin, my thoughts exactly.
I'm white, went to a small liberal arts college, shop entirely in thrift stores, have a shag haircut, and date a boy who used to have a faux-hawk, but cut it off when they spread from the trendy to the geeky. I come from a middle-class family in Madison, Wisconsin- not the suburbs, for sure (we don't really traffic in suburbs in Madison), but a nice neighborhood. My father is a doctor, my mother is a school principal. I have absolutely no money ever, because I have 'artistic aspirations', and temp in the meantime to keep from being subsistent on the bourgeoise folks. Deplorable, right?
On the other hand, Dad's a holocaust survivor and my mother's parents were alcoholic, and she ended up homeless twice in her childhood. They both sought the stability of middle-class American existence, and they acheived it nicely; it's because of this that I can go out and artistically aspire.
I'm friendly, witty, articulate, have impeccable taste in film, music, and literature, and am probably cooler than you. I m universally well-liked, have a huge Friendster network, and talked about it all the time back in March till I wore out on it a bit.
I once wore a trucker hat, but stopped when they started getting sold in malls.
Do you hate me yet? If so, why?
Seriously here, think about it: why?
You know what I think the bigger arguement thats happening here is? America is finally moving through the spasms of becoming continental. Its one of the first times where a generation isn't killed off by a major war, raised with a higher standard of living than known is this country before, went to college, didn't struggle through a depression, and was raised on a relatively large amount of 'culture' - i.e. didn't live on the praire with three books and a one room schoolhouse, and finally has yet to suffer any destablizing blow to its rein. There are those who are enjoying this unheard of level of affluence and comfort (hipsters). Then there are those who either by way of white guilt, or actual suffering, are fighting virulently against this enjoyment. Whether or not you 'get it', it really doesn't matter, the paternalistic ramblings of most guilty liberals are quite noxious. Almost as equally noxious as the apathy, ignorace, and exceedingly consumerist ideals of hipsters. Any group who uses groupthink will bug the hell out of me. Make your own damned identification. Define your existence on your own terms. Hipster, essentially the shameless enjoyment of elite privalege, happens everywhere. Furthermore, why so much hate for the middle class? The middle class is what this country needs. Christ, you wanna be a thirdworld country with a massive defecit, a small ultra-elite, and a huge fledgling population of poor people? Well, thats where we're heading in america. So lets all put down our elitism and really think about what it means to have luxury, to have a good stable middle class. Otherwise, bashing a free magazine seems to be the most impotent arguement anyone can have.
Dave Marston
Ah, but see, the difficulty is in defining what a Hipster actually is.
Aimeeeee seems to believe it's anybody with a taste for Chai and a Salvation Army charge account, as well as- paradoxically- politically correct views and several old Vice magazines lying about, in keeping with that crap 'Hipster Handbook' (which was such a ripoff of the brilliant 'Slacker Handbook' of the 90s). Probably 2/3s of us reading are thus defined as 'hipsters'-
Problem is, that's not the case. So is it the trust-fund babies who mix their Salvation Army with Vera Wang and assymetrical haircuts (which cuts the hipster population down considerably)? Or their more street-thug friends with indie sensibilities? Because those kids drink Pabst instead of chai, and it's hard to hear them say anything political at all.
Except for the ones who like chai and have political viewpoints.
I dunno, as a semi-longtime Williamsburg denison, I think the word 'Hipster' is used as a catch-all to describe a vast number of really varying types with a few commonalities (a taste for the avant-garde, left-leaning political views or left-leaning apathy, thrift stores, irony, etc.)
The venom seems to come from one echelon to the next- who perceive that they may be hip, but are pissed that there are people out there who believe themselves hipper, and are thus neccessarily insufferable hipsters.
It's all kind of insecure bullshit. Who gives a shit if one kid's photography habit trumps another ones vinyl collection for cool points, or if that girl's homemade t-shirt seems more self-consciously glam than that other girl's cardigan?
How many times do I have to go to parties where I hear one group bitching about another, unknown group as being hipsters, only to hear that other group returning the complaint.
Shut up, Aimeeeeee.
Shut up, everybody.
Good point, Dave. Furthering this idea, I think Gavin is winning the war on this one, if not the battles. If you are really that angry with Vice and its ethos, don't pick it up. Boycott the products and services advertized in it and write letters to those companies telling them so. Write letters to your congressmen telling them what you think. Just write the letters - old school, with pen and paper - because this still has more impact than 1,000 emails. I say Gavin is winning because he is the only one to put his money where his mouth is by exercising his first ammendment rights. Please, take advantage of your superior education and fight against the people you disagree with, be they white supremacists or egalitarian fat-cats or even the ACLU. Just don't think that armchair banter about what's to be done is doing any of us any good.
Hey Gregor!
When you say shut up, I throw up, and then your momma comes around the coner and licks it up!
Personally I find Americans to be too sensetive. My problem with saying that hipsters are bad is that anyone I've ever seen say it seems to be saying it out of some kind of anger for not being part of it. It to me seems to be overweight girls and boys that feel as though they are getting older. That is what I have seen.
As far as the quotes go, I believe mr mcinnis leans to the right (not as a joke even though he says it is) and the black guy at vice probably leans to the left (but he didn't get into it too much in the article because he finds it to be boring). I think gavin "exaggerated" (as he put it) his position to show how uptight the people are. I think that the 92 posts here prove it.
Why do people make this a witch hunt for everything? they said they do not agree with him. I don't think he agrees with him. I think all there is to learn is that you can't discuss certain things here. In Japan everyone has to adapt to a Japanese way of life. I am not saying we are better than you. I love it here and will be sad when it's time to go home. One thing I will not miss is how uptight people are. You cannot say too many things.
I am sorry if this is offensive to you. I love all peoples!
Oh yes and also this. I went to the website yesterday and I read very carefully for several hours. I find it to be all over the place and mostly just funny. That is why I say "uptight." Just because one person who work there says a bad thing everybody blames every part in every way. That is also why I say "witchhunt." I saw an interview with mcinnis in "time out" today. He sounds like a drunk person who says silly things. Anyway, I am tired.
SORRY TO SAY SO MUCH!
I think it's perfectly fair and good to chastise racists and try to get rid of them. Most of the social and political problems we face in the world today are a direct result of racists trying to 'cleanse' their culture or exploit another 'inferior' people. And if, as McInnes claims, he's not actually a racist but only 'pretending' to be a racist, I say: well, too fucking bad. If you act like a racist, and you're not clever enough to highlight the 'satire' you intended, then in my book you should suffer all the consequences of people's gut reactions, be they sensible, violent or whatever. Because if there's one thing more contemptible than a racist, it's a fucking stupid asshole. You're 2 for 2 Gavin.
I know many more people to be angry about but your life is your decision! Sorry if I made you angry!
Damn, Narumi, willya quit with all the apologizing all the time! It's fucking annoying
Gregor is "friendly, witty, articulate, have impeccable taste in film, music, and literature, and am probably cooler than you"
I don't hate you Gregor, I just think you're a pretentious wanker.
Vice is featuring Narumi as a must-have accesory in its Spring collection.
See, but I think the problem that people have with the whole 'hipster' thing is that most of the people seem confident. A lot of us came of age when the whole indie-rocker culture sort of focused on scads of vocalized self-consciousness infused with the same amount of taste-snobbery.
Now the self-consciousness is unvocalized, and the rocker-set presents itself as 'I'm rad, and I still like rad things', which I think garners a lot of venom from people still uncomfortable with it.
I'm fine with it either way.
Holy shit, can`t everyone just be themselves? How fucking hard is it to be genuine these days? That`s my beef with the whole hipster scene - it just doesn`t seem honest.
Being comfortable in your own skin is hip. The hipsters Aimee describes are simply punks who don`t have a fucking clue who they are. How sad for them.
you'd think with all these college degrees people would learn what the word "fascist" actually means. especially when applied to a FUCKING MAGAZINE.
the most obvious political leanings these days among the "hipsters" are the left-wing simpleton, "bush=nazi" style of political sanctimony (bush is no nazi - at best, he would have been a nazi symp). i don't think rampant neocon style conservatism is going to become huge all of a sudden, even if there are going to be sudden shifts on traditionally accepted (amongst the college and post college sets) politics like affirmative action, immigration, the welfare state, states' rights and so on. a liberal/leftist point of view has been entrenched in most colleges for a minimum of 20 years now - reacting against that has, for the most part, as much substance as any sort of youthful antinomianism.
but pretending there's only one side to political issues (i.e. the liberal side) is going to hold for only so long, especially in light of the (imo positive) shift towards a generally pro sex, pro gay (or at least apathetic to sexual choices, which is the most we can expect from neighbors who aren't going to play with our naughty bits) ambivalence or outright acceptance of drug use and an (at most) barely religious attitude, something which no doubt most conservatives aren't going to be very happy with either.
if nothing else this is as encouraging an attitude as we can have on any large scale - hopefully there will be more an emphasis on the notion that only you should be able to control your body (in regards to sex, drugs, when to live and when to die, and so on) and maybe eventually move that over to the next step of realizing that control over property and income are as vital as what you smoke, drink and fuck.
"Its one of the first times where a generation isn't killed off by a major war, raised with a higher standard of living than known is this country before, went to college, didn't struggle through a depression, and was raised on a relatively large amount of 'culture' - i.e. didn't live on the praire with three books and a one room schoolhouse, and finally has yet to suffer any destablizing blow to its rein...Hipster, essentially the shameless enjoyment of elite privalege, happens everywhere. Furthermore, why so much hate for the middle class?"
this is a good attempt to place hipsters within a historical context, but i think it overlooks some of what makes hipsters distinct.
first of all, the hipster generations has lived through dramatic events of 9/11. maybe the whole hipsterization of downtown was happening well before 2001, but i don't think it became prevalent until post-9/11. aimee's blog, as far as i know, did not exist before 9/11. vice magazine, as far as i know, has enjoyed more popularity/notoriety since 9/11. even the music after 9/11- a few years ago, irving plaza had pop-punk and ska booked solid...now interpol is selling out the venue, a far cry from the naivety and feel-good catchiness of late 90s pop.
while our generation has had it pretty damn easy, we've also had to realize really really fast, if we hadn't already, that the world is a messy place, that the 90s economic boom is over, that it's easier to get fired than hired, that admitting ourselves as american before our int'l peer comes with a certain stigma attached. we've had to realize, like the burgeoning generation in nuclear crisis in 1962, that the world is a terribly unstable place, that skyscrapers collapse, buses explode, and worldcoms fold.
shit, we were mostly cynical before 9/11. now what?
we're neither for nor against anything.
now, juxtapose the culture we dig- the books, the music, even nostaglia- and juxtapose our habits, lifestyle, attitudes to anybody in bush administration, to fox news, to american flags on luxury SUVs, and what we have here is the making of a generational clash, a counter-culture which defines itself in its style and tastes, and increasingly, in its politics. the achilles heel of this counter-culture is its affluence, much like the affluence of hippies as contrasted with blue-collar workers and vietnam soldiers/veterans. but given the current set of social/political circumstances, i would bet that we haven't seen the last of hipster/youth/counter-culture, that we haven't even seen anything more than some intrigue, some grumbling neighborhoods populated by the disaffected cool.
another poster wrote, "Hipster, essentially the shameless enjoyment of elite privalege, happens everywhere."
first, most obvious point of contention, is that hipsters live in urban neighborhoods. second, and i guess this is what aimee attempts to nail in her blog, is that hipsters have traits that are hipster, and these traits ar
you're an idiot. being a "hipster" has nothing to do with 9/11. good for you that you moved to nyc after college, pre- or post-9/11. who gives a fuck? you'll never understand the effect that 9/11 had on people who grew up in nyc, so don't pretend it was some kind of profound influence on you or "hipster" culture. this post-9/11 renaissance you described was in full gear before 9/11 and would have happened one way or another. to that effect, the backlash described here on this site would have happened too. this nyc-hipster culture, as glamorous as it seems on first snort, is vacant, vapid and superficial. gavin is a racist homophobe who is too fucking white to understand that subversiveness does not come from slandering other races, genders or cultures. it just fosters a sense of anger from those too stupid to understand the "irony" and those effected by racial and gender politics to find the irony at all amusing. its easy for a wealthy, heterosexual white male to spout off offensive comments, but those who have to live with being the target of oppression every fucking day don't find it funny.
grow up and drive yr daddy's SUV back to canada or whatever wealthy suburb you were brainwashed in. get the fuck out of my city.
If Gavin et al left Canada it's likely because they couldn't profit from "hipsterism" or garner this much attention here. What the hell is a hipster anyway and why would anyone waste their time to give two shits about it? When there's a massive complex interesting world to explore, it seems like a fucking waste of time. gavin=one side of the coin. anti-hipster movement=the other. Same bloody boring coin if you ask me.
your city?
my family, until shortly after my birth, has been in the lower east side since 1904, when they arrived in this goddamn country. several members of my family live in rent-controlled apartments on the LES, for 50 bucks/mo, next to apartments that start at 2000.
i currently live with my parents because i can't afford the RENT in manhattan.
so 'guy'...fuck you when you tell me to get the fuck out of your (gentrified) city.
my point about 9/11 is that it has affected pop-culture, and all other peripheral culture, in ways that cannot be calculated, but in directions, i am certain, that would not have been taken if 9/11 had not happened. i really don't see how this can be disputed, or even understated.
i realize that approaching hipster culture from the vantage point of 9/11 is perhaps insensitive to the more important implications of 9/11- innocent victims and subsequent domestic/international events...yet i don't see how i'm out of line by stating that the prevalence of hipster culture is a consequence of post-9/11 cultural reality.
now let's review some buzzwords (in order of their appearance) in your response, guy, which i think are indicative of an awfully predictable 'PCU' syndrome: 'racist homophobe', 'too fucking white', 'races, genders or cultures', 'wealthy, heterosexual white male', 'target of oppression'
YAWN.
Wow, I just went here
http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?...p?
msgid=3876844
and read this. It says everything that my bad english was trying to say. It's very mean but it says the truth. Don't get angry please. Here's what it says:
"I just got back from a "hipster" party in the dreaded Williamsburg. As i Looked over teh crowd (sorry abotu the typos I am wasted on free beer), I thought to myself "People hate these'hipsters' and thedy don't give a shit. THey are dancing their ass off to Journey while fat old suburbanites rail against them into teh abyss."
You anti-VICE anti-racist, word police liberal fat suburbanite fucks are not invited to the party. You're not supposed to get it. If you didn't hate it it wouldn't idnetify a generation. Don't you get it? Teh harder you scream the louder we laugh. The more you pontificate the happier we are we dropped out of school. Keep trying to be freedom riders. We are living our own lives, in reality, away from our parent's history. You went to Woodstock. We burnt it down. You had affirmative action. We had Jayson Blair. You had overspending. We had drug dealing. Keep emailing each other on the blogs. We are out there, in the cities, living and loving life. Isn't that truly why you hate us? Why don't you stop BLOGGING (what a hilarious word) and accept the fact that you are fat, ugly, old, irrelevant suburbaites. Focus on your kids. Go to community meetings and get a new stop sign near the school so it's safer. That's your role. Stop trying to figure out VICE. Youve never read it. You don't get it. And you're not invited.
sowwy
-- Bobby Kennedy (mutabaruka1000...), October 4th, 2003.
First of all, the economic status, race, gender, age or sexual orientation of those who comment on this blog being of any importance at all to this topic is in itself alienating and bigoting. If two people, one who is white and middle-class or the other black and upper-middle class, and you don't know the identity or social status of either but they both post negatively or positively towards this topic...how will you be able to disparage either for their opinion? You won't. So don't
go there.
Secondly, true liberals don't *consciously* indulge themselves in
inflammatory language such as misogynists, racists, or homophobes
are inclined to do ( consciously ). Those who do so consciously are NOT
liberals. They are at best psuedo-liberals. And yeah, there's
a helluva lot of psuedo liberals out there. Many of them with shag haircuts and heavy caffeine buzzes. Personally,
I wish they'd drop out of their art
curriculum's, put on the suit and tie and go enroll at Bob Jone's University where their truer sentiments could
more freely express themselves.
Thirdly, and lastly, the 'Tag! You're It!' expressions of Gavin's admitted
cynical perspective on everything and everyone, is indicative of a man who appears to have stopped developing emotionally or intellectually around the age of thirteen. He's not alone, unfortunantly. The justification that because something can be mocked it therefore should be mocked is passable at that age, but it does nothing that seriously explores the topic of interest. And it must hold some level of interest if it is deemed worthy of
the time taken to write about it.
I'd just like to add that the accusation was made that Aimee is somehow a 'hypocrite' for having written about various encounters
with the northeast contingent of
hipsterdom. The difference is that
she is not targeting women, blacks,
or gay people for instance. Each of which were born the way they are.
There's no scientific evidence to date
that hipsters can't help what they've become. Although I suspect that now that I've written that, someone holding Gavin's particular perspective on Life will certainly try to find some.
"Why don't you stop BLOGGING (what a hilarious word) .."
As opposed to what? You're far
more life-living, cooler-than-thou COMMENTING in a blog?
Yeah. Uh, sniff some more coke. It's
doing wonders for your 'intellect'.
( snark! )
I doubt that anyone from Vice is really much of a facist or a racist despite their proud attempts at making it look that way. I guess it's the kind of thing that used to pass for comedic irony, a more cynical take on the kind of shtick that third rate shock jocks beat into the ground years ago. It's like an escalating nuclear arms race of shock value humour. Funnyman 1A. says something coarse then funnyman 1B. has to say something coarser to get a laugh. It's real cute in your import-shoe-clad hipster world but less so when 8 year olds start hearing that crap and calling each other niggers. And I'm so out of the loop that I can't even tell if he's kidding about the cocaine.
it's just too funny for words!
This was originally posted on I Love Everything, where we're also debating this.
http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?
...3876844#3892559
You know, something I find pretty disturbing about the way people have reacted to McInnes' glorious and important confusion, here and over at the Hipsters Are Annoying board where he posted, is that they've considered it a weakness rather than a strength that he's all over the place, opening all the boxes.
Aimee Plumley listed ten different explanations McInnes had made for his remarks, as if this weakened his case. Sure, it would weaken it if McInnes were in some convergent situation where there is only one 'correct' way to act, to think and to explain. But McInnes is (hey!) a 'style labber', not a witness in court. His principal duty is to 'brainstorm'. His job is to be a sort of Baron Munchausen, an idea firecracker, exploding all over the place, not a 'responsible MD of a 10 million dollar corporation'.
I want McInnes to make important and suggestive mistakes, mistakes we can have a 600 post thread about. I'd much rather have him wrong than 'right', because the idea of people being right (or 'correct') alarms me. It implies there's only one way to do things. Didn't the feminists tell us that this is not about who's right and wrong, it's about who has power? Patriarchy is a master narrative, but it's not 'right', it's merely central. So we dislodge it with lots of competing, alternative narratives. We open up the field to competing 'truths'. Herstory, black studies, gay studies. All that. The more, the merrier.
Aimee should retitle her blog 'Divergers are Annoying' or 'The New York City Anti-Fabulist Forum'. She should examine the real roots of her need for corporate MDs to be clear, uncontroversial and authoritative rather than effeminate, ludicrous and confused. Because sometimes being publically confused is the best example a 'leader' can set, especially if he stumbles in the process across some of the most important issues of our time.
So we just have lost of metanarratives with no ultimate horizon of truth!!!
What is the highest ethical standard that one can aim for under this? The right for anyone to say anything ...
As if the most important thing is to keep the field of discourse open for a free play of meaning with no ultimate truth value, rather than to impose a hierarchy upon it (because hierarchy seems so 'yesterday').
I'm sorry but I can't advocate this kind of ethics.
You're implying an amazingly simple model of 'truth'. Let's get down to specifics. The 'truth' we're working with here is McInnes' intention in making the statements he made to the Times and others. 'What did you mean, Gavin?' Now, the Intentional Fallacy states that while a speaker's (or author's) stated intentions should not be ruled out of account, his explanations should be seen as no more reliable or authoritative than his original statements. By providing us with so many conflicting answers, McInnes has simply pushed us further into the hall of mirrors. Do we take literally what he said in the Times, or what he then said on this forum? Or do we simply enjoy the hall of mirrors for its own sake? You may not find the values of self-expression and play sufficiently sturdy, but for me (and I write for Vice, by the way) they're absolutely key to life. As for an 'ultimate horizon of truth', the thing about the horizon is that it's always at a different place, depending on where you're standing, and you can never reach it.
This is the funniest shit ever. People who take anything this serious are HIlarious.
Mikey, my man! Snap open a Pabst Blue Ribbon with me! Woah!
According to Momus, George Bush a genius and Iraq is his masterpiece.
I loathe Bush, Yancy. But I kind of like the hall of mirrors that makes me look like that. Ho ho ho! Just imagine if I really was that shape and couldn't squeeze through the door of the Kreuzberg Marxist Leninist Chess Club!
I don't think the notion of some ideas being "right" or "correct" is all that hard to grasp. Hate=Bad. It's a pretty universal concept. Using racism and hatred to sell sneakers and then spinning the inevitable backlash as some kind of Lenny Bruce martyrdom is not on a level with running a concentration camp, but it's still pretty friggin' despicable. And all this intellectual posturing in support of it is even more disturbing.
Hate=Bad
Except when you hate bad things, right, because that's good, right? I mean, you have to hate bad things, don't you, because otherwise you might have to try to understand them, and that would be 'intellectual posturing', wouldn't it? So hate is good when you hate the things that everybody knows (because everybody thinks the same way, right?) aren't right or correct, right?
Hey Momus, if it's really you, I'd like to tell you that I really like Stars Forever, it's a great album. Anyway, as for Mr. McInnes, let's not chalk up his thin schtick as more than it actually is. First of all, just to correct you, I've never written ten reasons for anything associated with that twat, and I certainly wouldn't call what he says the least bit, as you say, 'effeminate.' Really, Momus, Baron Munchhausen is far too much the gentleman to be compared in even a passing reference to McInnes. And it's not that I don't want to hear any diverging talk, but if I'm going to listen to some 'controversial' views and opinions I do like them to come with at least a dash intelligent of self-awareness, which, in this case, might effectively have elevated his badly disguised 'ironic' hate-babble into something a little more worthy of serious consideration. I have experienced enough 'provocative' art to be dead certain that this guy is not "opening all the boxes" but rather simply attempting to up the ante and remain in the front lines of the lucrative new asshole business now that the big-money has deemed it safe for general consumption. You see, I still believe in the value of intention, regardless of what action follows. And though I can never really be sure what his intentions were, I'm willing to go out on a limb and make a guess they were, at best, unknown, and I give no credence to hollow gestures. The only reason I spouted off about this in the first place was because when I read some of the things he was quoted as saying I was offended. You do know what it means to be offended don't you? Or have you successfully liberated yourself from such base and visceral emotions? You should watch your step lest you get lost in your own absurd, post-modern ?hall of mirrors? and fall victim to your own starving cerebrum.
Edited By Siteowner
Momus: stop being such a nightmare and deal with the simple fact that Gavin is a complete twat.
Aimee, thank you for your kind comment about 'Stars Forever'.
Can I ask you how you thought you came across in the NY Times piece? Because I think you were just as badly represented as Gavin was. The bit they quoted from you was a list of things that hipsters do 'and I don't'. Including the fact that hipsters take digital photos and put them on their photoblogs... whereas you put words about them taking photos on your textblog. Isn't that just a very, very fine distinction in the battle between love and hate, good and evil, right and wrong (which your readers seem to think is a pretty clearcut and cleancut one, a sock to the jaw of the obvious villain of the piece, the hipster)?
You and Gavin have a lot in common. You both hate hipsters. You appear together in the New York Times, you also appear together in the New York Press. Have you ever been seen in the same room together? How do we know he's not your 'evil' twin?
Not to stray too off topic here but taking digital snapshots of hipsters or your foot is hardly a skill or much of an art. Writing (about hipsters or your foot)involves a little bit more than just pressing some buttons and plugging in USB cables. And sorry, but most people still agree that hate=bad. Yeah, I know all those dumb college philosophy arguments of "Is it ever O.K. to knock an old lady down? No?..But what if you are pushing her out of the way of an oncoming bus?" It's stimulating to engage in these kinds of edgy debates in the dorm but it's not really applicable in the real world.
taking digital snapshots of hipsters or your foot is hardly a skill or much of an art. Writing involves a little bit more than pressing some buttons
It absolutely doesn't involve more. Press some buttons on your keyboard and you write. Press some buttons on your camera and you photograph. Whether one activity is more artistic depends on the results, and the personality and taste of the person judging the results. There is no hierarchy of the arts, no art inherently more dignified than any other, and every judgement of art is ultimately a personal one. Personally, at this point I love photoblogs and am tired of text blogs.
What I was pointing out is that if the writing in question is a critique of the photography in question, not only is its agenda set by the photography, and not only is there indeed something approaching a mild form of hate (which for me is not necessarily a bad thing -- there are many 'noble hates') in the writing, but also that there is perilously little distinction between making blog content with one set of buttons rather than the other. Pot calls the kettle black! At the risk of being accused again of 'intellectual posturing', I'd ask you to google Freud's 'Narcissism of small differences'.
And if you don't want to google it, here it is: Freud pointed out the anomaly that minor differences between individuals and groups are particularly prone to be the occasion of bitter dispute and hateful acts.
Is Gavin McInnes a twat? Yes. Is Gavin McInnes doing what a magazine publisher should do -- taking risks, being interesting, and raising the crucial issues of the day? Yes.
Does everybody, deep down, know what's right and wrong? JOE LIEBERMAN FOR PRESIDENT!
Given that the last two posts have respectively mentioned the words 'kettle' and 'Freud' (surely something latent going on there), I think I should point out that McInnes' different reasons for his comments that cancel each other out remind me of Freud's broken kettle (I never borrowed your kettle - The kettle was broken when you gave it to me - I gave it back to you unbroken).
The point of Freud is that you're trying to hide the fact that you broke a kettle.
So perhaps McInnes is really trying to say sorry for the fact that he made all these dumb-as-fuck outré comments which he didn't really mean.
All of which makes him stupid, insecure and tragic. Perhaps that's what he was trying to hide all along.
[And by the way, the point with the highest horizon of truth is that there really is something true, out there in the Real, not some endless flux of 'truths': it's just traumatic and unsymbolisable. That doesn't mean we give up on the regulative ideal.]
There are some situations in which it might seem desireable to agree that there is 'one correct answer' (although even science and the law tend to work with provisional answers, and even religion requires 'faith'). But in media and politics the idea that there might be 'just one right answer' becomes somewhat sinister.
Sure, many cars try to look like BMWs. Sure, many magazines put the same blonde woman on the cover. Sure, many political parties copy each other. This happens because of conformity and conservatism, not because there is a 'correct' way of doing things. Today's 'correct' may well be tomorrow's 'wrong', and today's 'wrong' may be tomorrow's template. Let McInnes be wrong, it's an important role. In fact, let hipsters be wrong too, because tomorrow you too may be photoblogging!
But this is what everyone says! - "Don't believe that your truth is worth any more than anyone else's truth otherwise you end up with concentration camps". I would argue that it seems more self-evidently desirable not to have one truth today which is why it's so important to insist - not that there is one truth per se, but that there are things that are truer than others.
Perhaps that's the one good thing that comes out of it: McInnes says something that forces liberals to confront their relativism in the guise of free-speech.
Oh yeah, and I really like 'Ping Pong'.
look
fascism-a type of government where the state owned businesses , but on paper said businesses were owned by individuals-fascism also has strong-state philosophy like socialism(as theyre both outgrowths of hegelianism) -in other words, the difference between fascism and socialism is parctically nill-so a word to all of you rabid left wing diaper soakers(nazism=national socialism
honestly, the only thing I LIKED about that gavin guy was his political comments-and since when is being proud of your race racist? black people do it all the time, and cracker-ass left wing punk ass honkeys like yourselves bend over backwards to kiss their black asses for doing so
I dont know this gavin guy, and personally reading vice makes me come away with the peculiar senstaion that ive just been barfed on, but hey i like the guys politics
"It absolutely doesn't involve more. Press some buttons on your keyboard and you write."
That's just plain silly.Is this writing "QWERTYUIOPASDFGH"? No, it's typing. There is a big difference between photgraphs and snapshots and likewise, between an essay and a pizza menu. The personal intent of the creator and the individual interpretation of the audience is a dynamic that can go a million different random ways. And while I don't judge any "ART" as more important than any other, a piece of tangible work with obvious craft, skill and intent is going to be more highly regarded by most folks and usually with good reason. If you want to call a urinal on a gallery wall ART, I ain't stopping you. But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna laugh at you when you put it on your credit card and take it home.
Howdy 'yer cowards,' watch out for lightning strikes in the next few days ... I'll be watching you, and it ain't gunna be pretty when it happens
This is why no one cares about philosphy anymore.
Sure, there's no truth. As far as I'm concerned you'd have to be insane to argue that there are Truths. Nevertheless there are true statements. "True" signifying provisional, subjective, but above all practical statements. It is true that hipsters are twats, that human life continues largely unchanged in spite of the lack of truths, that potentially constructive populations are wasting energy enjoying "halls of mirrors" when other populations are in despair. I'm not saying hipsters should all give up and join AmeriCorps (although it would be in my interest) but maybe they could make things of relevance to the masses. Beautiful things. That they do not, do not try to, and probably would not, is the cause of this whole little give and take of ours here, right? That is, the willful disengagement of the young, rich, educated, and urban, from the historical urban experience is a legitimate cause of alarm. Hate? No, hate is for people we know, once loved, gave birth to, it is a private and personal matter, like, doy, love. But antipathy is surely called for. Denunciation is called for. Shame is called for. And so some cry out against them. Some will be convinced and some won't. Some will cry back. And maybe someone will win. That's how it goes. As it happens I'll take a side, those people make my life materially and aesthetically less pleasant, so fuck 'em and I hope we win.
If you want to call a urinal on a gallery wall ART, I ain't stopping you. But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna laugh at you when you put it on your credit card and take it home.
Kevin, you do realise that you're describing one of the most famous and important artworks of the 20th century, don't you?
a piece of tangible work with obvious craft, skill and intent is going to be more highly regarded by most folks and usually with good reason
But doesn't market research tell us that what's highly regarded by most folks is Staind?
Why is it that people like Yer Cowards defend Vice's nigger-chink-frog nightmarish funhouse of meaninglessness precisely for its lack of truth, and then bash all of us because the little anti-hipster comment box has failed to come up with the Grand Unified Theory for the reason that Gavin so obviously sucks so much ass? All he's done that's worth admiring is somehow managing to convince a bored, overprivileged generation facing a planet on the brink of collapse that there's nothing worth building or saving except a giant shit heap laced with shards of narcissist, coke-dusted mirrors.
Didi, no one here gets to the heart of the matter like you did. Cheers: Fuck 'em, we will win, hurry up please it's time, etc.
but gregor, you're not confident (i read a little of your blog). you're pretending. because you think you your veneer of confidence will pass for coolness. and if you like all the same things as the other hipsters do you will be cool. you're all big fakes. you are scared to be yourself. this is why i pity the hipsters. you're little sheep.
Didn't market research tell us that America's favourite painting was a boat in the sea with a backdrop of Mount Rushmore?
I can't remember the study, but that's what it was.
That was painters Komar And Melamid--they did a world survey....(The Finns likes brown/geometrics, Canadians liked farms...)
incidentally, those artists also designed the cover to uber-hipster Dave Eggers' book AHWOSG...coincidence?
Momus, like Gavin, you have a talent for rationalization.
I don't think that anyone is asking the key question here -- who invented "the hipster" and why?
"Hipsters" are not a social grouping, they are a marketing fiction, used by the Times as much as Vice (although differently). Simultaneously loathesome and enviable, the figure of the hipster acts alternately as mannequin and fall guy. And since nobody identifies themselves a "hipster," so who is going to challenge you?
Attributing social change, or even cultural trends to "hipsters" is at best lazy, and at worst a cynical obfuscation.
[and btw If you want to find an actual group of ugly, snobbish posers, try looking in the executive offices of the Times...]
who invented "the hipster" and why?
Jesus, of course! Because God told him to do it. Tune in, turn on, drop out, and come follow me!
No, I'm kidding, it was Norman Mailer in 'The White Negro'. No, it was Sartre in 'Nausea'. No, it was Oskar Wilde. No...
Clever, Momus (momo?) -- reference reference puke. But do you have the balls to address my point?
I have gigantic balls, Sam, and furthermore I'm in a good mood, so yes you can call me Momo and yes I will answer your point.
"Hipsters" are not a social grouping, they are a marketing fiction, used by the Times as much as Vice (although differently).
Surely they can be both?
At the age of 8, I was, in quick succession, a mod and then a hippy. Mod and Hippy were both genuine subcultures proposing alternative ways of living one's life. Yes, they were both also categories of people you could market to. But so what?
You know, it always alarms me when people are so quick to say this or that social phenomenon is 'just marketing'. We live in a culture which can market just about everything. Does that mean it can invalidate just about everything? Why should the mere fact that something can be piggybacked by capitalism invalidate its inherent capacity to express something 'other than capitalism' or to point elsewhere? And why should capitalism be seen always as the dominant partner? Isn't youth culture also 'piggybacking' capitalism in this case, taking it over for its own purposes?
To quote Larry McCaffery: 'One of the good things about capitalism is that it's blind to what it sells. The system isn't really the enemy. It's blind, all it wants is to replicate and do more things.'
Attributing social change, or even cultural trends to "hipsters" is at best lazy, and at worst a cynical obfuscation.
Why? Sure, some social change is going to come from Arnie Schwarzenegger and Craig Venter. But some social change may well come from kids who went through art school and moved to a places like Williamsburg (or Silverlake, or Prenzlauerberg, or Nakameguro). While not the only sources of progress, those are rich petri dishes for the culture of future memes. Ideas do originate there, whether they're ideas you like or not. Finding out 'who invented the hipster' will not eradicate those places or the people in them or the ideas in their heads.
I think you missed my point, Momus. I *actually* think that "hipsters" don't exist. There are a wide range of contradictory social groupings and phenomena which being papered over by the word "hipster." The fact of there being the label "hipsters" doesn't detract from what these groups are doing, it just gives people an easy way to ignore it. I'm not saying that there aren't real people in the world, I'm just saying that this "hipster" that everyone is fussing about isn't one of them -- that's why he's such an easy patsy.
The "hipster" is an amalgamation of buying preferences designed to sell ad space in magazines. If you look at Aimee's "What is a hipster?" section, she has taken a list of purchases and pretended that it describes a meaningful commonality between people. This may fly if you're in marketing, but I would hope that people can see each other in slightly more comprehensive terms.
Kids do a lot of important, ass-kicking, and lovely things; giving credence to the "hipster" can only blind us to them.
Aimee: Hipsters do exist and are bad.
Momus: Hipsters do exist and are good.
Sam: Hipsters don't exist, and are bad.
Who's going to stand up for the line that hipsters don't exist, and are good (like fairies)?
Momus - Hipsters are *only* good if they don't exist.
i would however like to see the aisles of my local thrift in my overwhelmingly working-class neighborhood free of any more fauxhawked white kids looking for ill-fitting ironic tees.
Why? Are they putting the price of the shirts up? Do you want only one type of person in your hood? Do you hate fun?
Personally, I'd have no problem if Aimee only started the Anti-Hipster thing to get a book deal and produce one of those 'Hipster Handbook' type things -- walking the fine line we know so well between mockery and admiration. Would other people have a problem with that? Would that make Aimee the same as someone who goes to a thrift store and buys into someone else's style? And what if the book made Aimee richer than any of the hipsters she's talking about?
What's the subject here? I'm right no matter what I say. I'm a poor Mexican kid and none of you can relate to me. I used to wear mesh hats because they kept my head cool and the sun out of my eyes. Now I gotta save up to buy them. I wear a shirt and jeans everyday and have a plain haircut but I still manage to have more genuine friends than you. What I do today is popular next week and I don't need to be credited with it. Street art is SO cool.
Americans are so funny, you all make me laugh. Aimee is a product of hipsterism, and that's the funniest part. It's policital correctness gone mad.
I have to say, I like vice, pick it up everytime and never considered it hipster in the first place. Wait a minute, the entire hipster term doesnt exist in europe anyway, so again, americans are funny.
Thing is this, I hate trends...and all you haters AND lovers of vice are pathetic. Just read or dont read, get over it.
Gavin, hang in there but dont let anyone call you hipster this or racist that. I bet vice uk will never have a problem like that..
As a fuckign designer living in Ecuador (very 3rd. world) i read about your stupid ramblings about somebody you've never met, discussing whether its ok or not to write fag in a fuckin page or wear a fuckin trucker hat or not while walking down your fuckin cool (?) blocks. im fuckinm starvin here, makin $50 a week designing shitty logos for shitty companies selling plastic watches or phone-ordered veggie food.
Please stop ditching Gavin, He has made a great mag who makes fun of you stupid motherfuckers who whine abo4t everyth5ng because you have such a fuckin easy life and dont have anyth5ng better to do. try masturbation instead.
P.D.: And you G., send me a fucking one year subscription for your glossy assfucker.
entire hipster term doesnt exist in europe anyway
it takes a while for new things to get out to all the consumers of American culture, just wait a while
"this whole hipster thing is the most interesting cultural phenomena our generation has put forth, like it or not."
ummm... this person is joking, right?
of course we hope this person is hopefully joking. but then again, what else has been 'put forth'?
anyone wanna take a stab at the most important 'generational' events/currents in america since, say, the first gulf war?
i mean take a serious stab, excluding irony and super-clever responses.
1997 interview...
McInnes : "When we're 35, we'll be living on Tahiti with our 14-year-old native girlfriends, smoking Cuban cigars filled with Thai weed, saying to each other [affects ridiculous English accent], 'We really did it, didn't we, chaps? We really showed them--the pricks!"
http://www.montrealmirror.com/AR...1097/
cover.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commen...1068792,00.html
Anti-Hipsterdom hits England
When did the left wing people become so unfunny? I remember reading National Lampoon in Japan when I was a child. Now I come here and the left wing people sound more like religous right wing.
1) whoever said momus & gavin have
a talent for rationalization made
the most intelligent and accurate
observation yet
2) Narumi, sounding more religious
than the religious right wing theocracts and BEING religious right wing theocrats are, fortunantly, very different things
*shaking my head* As a native of this city that you more ironic-than-thou fucktards now call home, I just don't get it... Maybe I've been in a cave the past few years, but who the hell cares about what everyone else is doing/saying/listening to/wearing? The only reason the so-called hipsters piss me off, is because I can remember a time when living was reasonably affordable in many areas NYC that would have been deemed "unliveable" by the rest of America's standards... read: people of color lived there.
Now that the white folks have decided to pay for their sons and daughters to come back to the big city, it's turned into anytown USA (Thank you Rudy Mussolini). This place has become just another boring cultural cesspool filled with contrived posers and self-serving, pseudo-intellectuals. Shit man, I long for another crime epidemic to scare you schmucks back to Bumblefuck Kansas.
I really am pissed off by you
so called hipsters because I was
a hipster long before you.
hipsters DO have money. That's how theyre able to BE hipsters. They need to buy the wardobe(even though they say its from goodwil), buy their cds(or use their expensive laptops to download), and they need money to go to shows and hipster bars. They basically need money to buy themselves a new identity once they decide they want to become a hipster. However, they don't work. They get money from their parents.
oh please. I am so fucking sick of all this left wing humourless bull crap.
You can't make a fucking joke any more because of some of these intense pc wackos.
why are we so easily offended. vice readers do not take any of the un-pc posings seriously.
It's come to the point that the only thing that shocks anymore is un political correctness. Obviously.
So quit your clamoring onto the easily-offended train and take a joke.
Because your censorship loving, pseudo liberal crap is more offensive than the overly ironic, self absorbed crap.
Yeah. Stick to rationalizations.
Works real well for you 'a'.
Does that stand for 'ass' by any chance?
You're not offended by that question
are you? I thought not.
As for aimee's writing, it's not
really great writing anyway. Anyone can go out and methodically detail flat observations of the world around
them.
"I went to the city park. It was
crowded with families and lunch
time workers and stoners. Some
wore low rise jeans that were faded.
Some wore Dockers. The stoners
have greasy hair but hide it under
trucker caps. And they're all
dumber than me."
Big deal.
Wow- I surfed onto this discussion and would just like to say that I am glad I live in Philly, where these "hipsters" do not exist
wow...this went from over 100 comments
now down to 92..
keep up the censorship aimee...you're
on the run eh?
Actually, it's a fuck-up in the commenting system tally, they're all here. I don't censor regularly, only for stupid bastards like you ...
xsjasfsdvhbvefvaef
you should see the hipsters in London,
Dukes of Hazzard car, moped, fossilized beards, t-shirts with completely obscure or ridiculous logos such as minnie mouse, scuzzy fluorescent socks with filthy baseball boots and velvet blazers, undecorated peeling bars with stupid names..... sound familiar?
I am here in London suffering, since as this is the European capital of hipsterfication.
Hipsters have even pushed up the house prices in the poor shitty areas where the poorer could at least afford a house, not so anymore thanks to 'trendy wendy' and her clique.
So you see, so deeply entrenched are these tossers that they now have even some political and economic power.
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
This calls for mass action.
We can begin by scraping the stripes off their reconditioned 'shit first time round' dukes of hazzard cars.
Then i thought that we could put them all in a rocket and blast it off with enough air to reach Jupiter or somewhere, and then they can die slowly. After no life signs can be detected we could open the hatch and suck them out into space where they will be immediately freeze dried and thereby preserved as a warning for all developing alien races.
What dya all think. I think that this should be adopted as an international policy.
Really makes you think doesn't it...
http://thehahawall.blogspot.com/
This is the peak of civilization
warning: unedited ramble ahead.. I'm on my lunchbreak.
Well, after having read this whole mess, and not wanting to bother re-hashing all the valid points that everyone has seemed to made.. I have one observation I'd like to add to the shit pile:
Like somebody else, Momus I think?, pointed out.. stop for a minute and really think about it. Why do you hate hipsters? Answer is cliche as fuck but simple to me: jealousy. Think about it, seriously.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a self-described anti-hipster closet hipster-culture-obsessed college kid and poor to boot. No living off of trust funds for me. Not all, but most (like, 99.9%) of hipsters DO have money. And... your point is? What I'm trying to get at is, I like hipster culture. And reading vice. And this website (which is just the other side of the same hipster coin imo), and comments section like this. For all the self-righteous anger coming from all directions, one thing is for sure: it's interesting. Hell, there's more to life than just working and stuffing your face with food just to face another day of "decent working class hard work, blah blah" I mean. I'm the last person you can accuse of not being able to identify with working class practicality.. I grew up in foster care, I'm 19 and completely support myself by waitressing full-time while taking night-classes, take the LA public trans. system (in and of itself a grand feat, I can assure you) etc. etc. That's just to ward off the uber pc hate mongers who might accuse me of being blinded by "privilege".
What I'm trying to say is: people like me might have every reason to hate hipster/vice culture (way more so than all the posturing anti-hipster hipsters on this messageboard) but I agree with what momus said. In a nutshell.. hipster culture is aesthetically appealing to me, and the gavin/vice controversy/smoke and mirrors gag/all around pretentiousness is INTERESTING. It is sociological crack, it is cultural masturbation, the more intelligent half of the debate on this board was INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING AND FUN. It is an escape for me to type in "hipster" and "vice" on google and read funny, controversial, lunatic and above all else PROVOKING stuff in my spare time from slaving away at a minimum wage 5 dollars (after tax) an hour job and busting my ass trying to get to school w/o being shot (I live in the ghetto, and am a conspicuous target for being an asian female).
So, all in all. Don't be hypocrites. If you aspire to be hipsters, and are just envious of the fact that you don't consider yourself to quite stack up, I mean sure you can always retreat to second-level status of self-posturing as hipster haters aka the Class B hipsters. Or, you can just own up like me. I hate a love/hate relationship with hipster culture.. love because it's FUN, I mean god you have to admit that at least (it's the only sub-culture out there right now that appeals to me on an aesthetic level.. and yes a lot of it is driven by clever marketing but SO WHAT IT MAKES ME HAPPY AND APPEALS TO THE PART OF MY BRAIN THAT LIKES PRETTY) and hate because.. well, "hate" only in this context meaning jealous. Sure, hell, I can own up to being jealous of rich, young, intelligent and aesthetically in-the-know kids with nothing but time on their hands to entertain themselves and their friends, whether it be using hallofmirrors/intellectual masturbting (like this whole messageboard so far) or whatnot. BUT AT LEAST I CAN ADMIT THAT. I am jealous. I would do the SAME if I were in their shoes. I fit into all the above categories except the part where I have the financial (and thus the entertainment/time/filling my life with aesthetically pleasing activities) advantage. Gavin, and vice crew, and everything momus brought up.. well, they seem to be doing just that.
What it all comes down to is, if you had the means, you'd all aspire to live the "hipster lifestyle" just like the people you profess to hate. But then again, that's not really hate, is it? I'm sure more then a few people do sincerely loathe the hipster/indie aesthetic.. (which I can't comprehend, really), but from all the hiding-behind-pc-puritanism seen so far in this discussion, all I get is a whif of distinct bitterness and envy.
Jesus...
Roseanne Barrs comments on the bill Maher show about the war no one wants a war. She's white trash with money.
Commenting by HaloScan
