Are you a Hipster, Artster, Douchebag or Poser?

Sitting in Starbucks this evening, I was having an intellectual-type conversation with a good friend of mine. A frequenter of Silverlake clubs, she postulated that she might be miscatagorized as a hipster.

But there's a fine difference. Hipsterdom is a societal identifier rather than a cultural identifier. What do I mean by that?

I personally love being identified as a New York Jew. I was born and raised in New York and I'm Jewish. It's as simple as that. That's a cultural identifier. It's my honest and true culture; it's who I am.

Now, that sleeve-tattooed, parent-supported, John Lennon glasses-wearing, ironic facial haired hobbledehoy is not honest and true. He is wearing the uniform of a societal identity. He's the person who MOVES to New York from Ohio thinking "this is what I must dress like to look like a New Yorker"; when all the actual New Yorkers are just...New Yorkers wearing whatever it is they wear.

There's something inherently false about these layabouts. They dress and act a certain way because they think they have to dress and act a certain way to fit in to their society.

This doesn't stop at Hipsterdom. Take a Douchebag (all props to hotchickswithdouchebags.com):
You've got the pouty lips, bright orange out-of-the-box spray tan and the greased, spiky hair that reminds one of a certain lovable hedgehog from our collective youths.

But surely these gentlefolk were born in suburban New Jersey to affable, wealthy proctologist-types.

So what would make them want to dress like John Gotti's retarded, mayo-drinking half step cousin? They actually want to be douchebags. They want people to look at them and say "gee, that kinda-sorta looks like someone who watched an episode of the Sopranos once". They dress like that, find other brain-dead non-entities and go to parties where they take pictures with women who are paid for their ablity to stand within 5 feet of them for more than 10 seconds.

They are not who they are, they dress like who they want to be.

Douchebags and Hipsters (and douchebag hipsters) are not the end of the road; they are the beginning.
Posers: I dealt with this sort a lot in middle school; I thought I was all awesome spending the entire summer of 1993 getting into Guns N' Roses; everyone had been into them for years, so now I would finally fit in; finally be accepted!

But what happened? Everyone spent that summer trading in their bandannas and tight jeans for baggy pants, White Sox hats, and blue flannel coats with three buttons buttoned.

These people self-identify with people who wouldn't be caught dead in the same vacuous backcountry strip mall as them. "Oh, I'm from Indiana. WEST SIDE, BITCHES!" No, "MID-WEST BITCHES!". Wait, it's not cool to say that? You can't self-identify with...yourself? So you need to create an identity that's not yours...to self identify with?

This is the crux of the biscuit. People hate who they are or where they're from so they need to create a new brand. "Oh, daddy fucking yells at me in Ohio, so now I'm Silverlake tattooed synth pop player!"

"Daddy can't yell at me anymore, because I'm not me anymore!"

Last one! The Wes Anderson Artster (I'll copyright that fucker):

Uncomfortably tight blazer and thick glasses along with rockstar haircut? Do lots of coke and into the writings of Sarte and the films of Fellini? You're an Artster, fucker.

Is that who you are or do you just enjoy having people see you on the street; identifying you as "an artist of some type"?...well, here's news for you; it gets REALLY FUCKING HARD after film school. You might think you're hot shit, but when your 12 minute, $75,000 epic parable about the "modern condition" plays three film festivals, you're going to have to actually get a job. Save the blazer for when you're sweeping up at Insomnia, the 24-hour hot cookie store.

So if you're looking into the mirror, having an existential moment, thinking "maybe I'm just a [hipster] [douchebag] [poser] [artster]", ask yourself one question; "am I me?". If your answer is YES, than you're just a dude who's trying to live his life.