Today's advice column question in Salon's "Since You Asked" made me smile. And cry just a little. (But using my inside voice.)
From the question, "I'm obsessed with being a hipster:"
I think that I should be happy to be in more comfortable surroundings, yet I feel so dissatisfied. I go to my job with my wonderful co-workers, and I judge them for listening to Coldplay. I judge my kindhearted friends for not having dark-rimmed glasses and Vans. I judge my neighborhood for not having galleries, or the right ZIP code.
I should be happy, but instead I achingly obsess over Pitchfork reviews and Vice Do's and Don'ts. At work I sit in front of my computer and listen to people talk about Nine West heels and 401Ks and I just want to drink whiskey till I die. I want to read Kerouac and smoke cigarettes until my lungs are black and filthy.
Yes, quite. Ah, the melancholy of being neurotic and obsessive. In sooth, I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me; you say it wearies you.
Fo' reals.
And from the answer by Salon's Cary Tennis:
Before, when we lived in places, this need could be met by places. But we don't live in places anymore. We live in the electronic wind. We live in twitters and tweaks and snippets. We live in dream sequences and stream of consciousness. We live in downloads and compression. We live at 120 miles an hour. We live in Sensoria, Ill.
Yes, it appears we still have much ado to know ourselves.
Dear Neurotic Hipster,
Your email to me is an attempt to assert your hipsterism while at the same time gain further hip cred vis-à-vis my website. Congratulations--being mildly self-deprecating is cool. I have so much to point out including the fact that Jack Kerouac was a great writer who in real life drank himself to death and bled his French Canadienne maman dry. You like looking smart more than being open-minded and learning. You are a misguided style laggard with more soundbytes than real wisdom. You need to change your ways: nice is the new ironic.
Posted by: Suzy Perplexus | Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 03:27 PM