Nay, embrace Them, for They are YOU!

I want to apologize to everyone for my insensitive post yesterday. It was wrong of me to poke fun at an undefined group of people that have such broad commonalities they might as well be called "upper-middle class young adults".

It makes me wonder: why is it that "hipsters" have become the scapegoats of our generation's self-loathing? Bring them up once in a while and notice the squinching faces, the gagging, as though we were talking about an infestation in our living rooms. Notice how absolutely judgmental everyone gets about a group of people whose only real common denominator is their flamboyant attempts at individuality.

What makes them hipsters even? Quirky clothes? That's surely what triggers in too many of us the hipstergag-reflex (we assume indie rock and dance-pop go along with the package, but that's hardly superficial enough to cause the reactions I speak of). So is that really what bothers us so much, the fact that they feel the need to assert their individuality? Is it we feel they're thrusting it down our throats, that somehow our individuality is being sucked away by their very presence?

I think that's certainly part of it. No one likes to be made to feel anonymous, like part of a crowd, and I'm guessing "hipsters" make the insecure of us bitter and, well, insecure.

But there's one more thing: many people feel "hipsters" carry an aura of pretension, that by their shabby-chic attire, opinions, and lack of practical, "real-world" skills they're somehow better than the rest of us. Unfortunately, this too makes little sense. Most people judge hipsters as a group, not as individuals and their corresponding individual opinions. We don't hate that guy Dave; we hate his hipster ass, his cheap sunglasses and his annoying, perfectly sculpted goatee. He's just another Hipster.

I think we need to stop being afraid of defending the common hipster. The more we disdain them, the more we sully our own integrity. The only thing our revulsion of hipsters shows is that we ourselves are narcissistic enough that we feel entitled to despise an entire group of people because they make us feel insecure about our own individuality.