Dear Gawker: SUCK IT
Woah sister, don't go there. I'm taking this personally.
Let me first say, I don't sign petitions regarding shoes. I did, however, sign petitions for the release of Once Upon a Time in the West and Brain Candy on DVD. That's as far as I'll go in terms of pop culture petionery.
As for hipsterdom, and as a self-anointed "slack-jawed hipster yokel," let me point out that I sense a foul smell wafting towards me from Gawker's general direction. It is the heavy stench of a crusted-over pot in a clogged Lower East Side sink calling a funky lime-green undersized kettle in Williamsburg black.
Give it up! Is there a lamer or more pathetically transparent New York affectation than making fun of hipsters? Come on. What's the movie where the teenage girl says, "I want to be different just like everyone else." OH, wait. That's EVERY freaking teenage movie.
The problem with America today, and probably the only thing that holds us all together as a coherent culture, is that everyone wants to eat their cake and have it too. In morally coherent societies, this is a shameful impulse. In America, we worship it.
So, Gawker, you shouldn't drop pop culture references like the alien taco Nagix on South Park shits ice cream cones and then criticize a bunch of dorky teenagers for signing a petition to get shoes from a movie they like as "blind sheep." Your business is blind-sheppery. And just cause you can't always be the Blind Sheep in Chief doesn't mean you should lash out. EVERYONE IN NEW YORK REALIZED THAT UGGS WERE LAME AND STUPID AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU.
Wes Anderson isn't playing your silly game, AND he's winning. So don't be bitter. Its very unbecoming. I don't even understand your argument. I mean, I'm sure Wes Anderson wouldn't be caught dead in a pair Zissou Adidas even if he made millions of dollars off them. Who's the tastemaker? Who's the tastemakee? Are they in an inter-locking death spiral? Can you control the forces that made you? Is that a shark? Are you jumping it?
posted by JS @ 1:39 PM
2 Comments:
haha. excellent post, jsanjana. thanks for calling out the real pseudo-hipster sheep. unfortunately, legions of new yorkers and others who want to feel hipper than those who want to feel hip continue to read that trash. also, did you note the suggestion that the petitioners spend their money instead on tsunami relief organizations? since when did gawker become a humanitarian clearing house? i'm all for giving money, for both tsunami relief and other things, but what the fuck is gawker doing calling people out on this? aren't the events that they list and promote less worthy recipients of money than are disaster relief funds? aren't there issues facing the world that are more pressing than tsunami relief (i hear there's a place called africa)? of course, charities dealing with these issues aren't as hot right now--so who are the real sheep, gawker?
oh, and your post doubled as an excellent bit of google whoring. may it get you many hits. you deserve it.
I'd love it if there was a word that meant "wanting your cake and wanting to eat it too"...it could be turned into a noun to describe people who want their cake and to eat it too. Its a particular type of hypocrisy, but "hypocrisy" doesn't really capture the materialistic underpinnings of the concept.
I really do thing this is everything rotten with America today. There's no sense of necessary trade-offs or sacrifice. Law students headed to Cravath wear Che Guevera shirts; people who make millions on their fame demand privacy; soldiers kill and claim moral superiority; Chicks have dicks. I mean, where does it end?
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