Letters to the Editor
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A book for you
Read Erving Goffman's the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
It's all a big show. There is no "hip".
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Yeah, I hate to break this to some of you....
... but terms like "hipster" and "scenester" are meant to be PEJORATIVES. You're not supposed to want to be a hipster any more than you supposed to want to be a poseur or a tool or a douchebag. (These are all to some degree synonymous, by the way.)
"Hipster" is a term of derision. Hipsters are people you make fun of, not try to emulate.
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I still live in Williamsburg...
... and I never lived the sort of life you talk about LW. I positively feel baited by this letter, so I'll try to be kind. I just have to say something.
Not everyone in Williamsburg is hip, some of us just moved here when it was cheap and refuse to leave, because we are in rent controlled apartments that make it possible for us to actually live/work/attempt art in NYC. Some of us have always done our own laundry and gone to work as hipsters were coming back from parties.
I do remember that the bad vibes reached a peak about 5 years ago when people were trying to be chronically hip and would actually snicker at the work clothes, but that's over now (or I'm too old now to even rate sniping or Williamsburg isn't hip anymore!). But no, the dynamic has very much changed. You should move back LW. You could start one of the small businesses that are making my part of Williamsburg so unique and welcoming. I stopped commuting and now work here (in skinny black jeans of course).
Sounds to me like lw just needs to get out of the grind of midtown.
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Ohh to be cool again!
How old is the letter writer? If the college and job part were removed form the letter I would swear she was in grade 6. Why didn’t she just go out and buy some cool shoes? She spent years and years wearing dorky shoes and she knew they were dorky because everyone cool had Vans? Come on! The only people that wore vans were preteen skater punks...and only for a year or two in the early 00s. Oh yeah she couldn’t buy Vans because the kool kids would think she was being a poser. I really hope this is a fake letter….
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Is this serious?
This is really pathetic. I can't imagine that the LW wants sympathy and hand holding and cuddles because they sit in constant judgement of others because of their clothes or music tastes.
All I could say right now are seriously mean things. LW, grow up.
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Try being a success on your own terms--that's the only way to be truly cool
Huh, what an education reading this letter! I had no idea such people as the LW really existed. She sounds like a 12 year old, no wait, even my 8 year old has more sense than her. Could she be younger than 8?
Anyhow, from my fount of wisdom obtained from having survived 40 years of American culture, I'm willing to offer the following (I know it's all kind of obvious but apparently not to everyone!?) advice:
1. Copying anyone is uncool. Caring what other people think of you is uncool. You also absolutely cannot get to be cool by dating someone cool, or by trying desperately to copy what cool people do--these are such lame, uncool things to do! Give it up, girlfriend!
2. Focus on gaining some self-esteem already, geez. How could anyone be defined by something as peripheral as their shoes, hairstyle, their glasses frames? You can buy these things and put them on like a costume. How could that make anyone actually cool?
Stop watching/believing commercials--they have no relationship to real life, they just are designed to manipulate you into buying something. (No, "what's on your i-pod" doesn't define you, its just a stupid marketing ploy, remember.).
Instead of trying to buy and wear the costume of cool, try to find self-esteem by appreciating substantive things that actually define the real you.
Are you an artist? A reader? A student of life? An unconventional thinker? A collector of bottle caps? A radical Republican obsessed by perfecting filing system? Do you love lame bands like Air Supply? Or maybe you really do like indy music and film, whatever, revel in these things, own them, and ignore those who sneer at your "uncool" choices. If you can do this, you will start to achieve coolness.
Oh, and in my experience, the sneerers will sometimes eventually get jealous and start to mimic you. It drives them crazy when someone doesn't pay attention to their judgements.
3. Become successful. Believe me, if you
make a lot of money, or
start your own business,
become a published author,
cut a record,
get your PhD,
or are elected to public office,
or if you become a respected author,
community leader,
force for societal change,
or even if you are just able to afford your own home, kids, and car by the time you are 30,
you will automatically get loads of respect (& jealousy) from those who are currently sneering at you. (Although you won't care by then, because those people will by then be known as "losers".)
More importantly, you are more likely to be happy.
Life is short, do something with yours. Being a hipster (which you are not anyway, thank your stars) is, as you appear to already know, a huge waste of time.
When you're dead, do you really want to be know as the person who dressed cool?
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Don't watch, do!
LW's approach to her problem seems very passive. Granting the goal of being hip for the sake of being hip seems unworthy, the goal of associating with creative, artistic people in a relevant way would seem to be reasonable and positive. So what if you work in accounting? There's no reason that you can't volunteer at an arts-oriented nonprofit in Brooklyn or Manhattan, for example, that will appreciate your mix of business skills and appreciation/ understanding/ interest in what they do. As a real contributor to an organization of the hip, you might find yourself becoming truly hip -- and feel like you're engaged with the world to boot.