Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Some of us actually do have vision problems

Earlier today, this article made it's proverbial way across my metaphorical desk. I'm still processing my reaction.

If the point of the article was to expose young people who by and large are hedonistic jerks, then kudos to the journalists. Something that really bothers me is that the writer never says where these kids are that he's interviewing or gives much insight into their backgrounds. Not that it should matter persay, but these things could very telling as to why they act they way they do. Are these rich kids from te Upper East Side or LA, or are they middle class kids from the Midwest?

I also wish that the author had spent time with the "hipsters" outside of parties and nightlife activities. I don't care what sort scene you're exploring, people act very differently at a party (especially when there's alcohol around) than they would in daily life.

I'm certainly not trying to defend the subjects of the story or totally blast the article with righteous indignation since the title of this blog does have 'hispter' int it. I just feel that perhaps there's more to this story than the author is leading us to believe.

The only righteously indignant statement I will make is that the multiple mentions of fake glasses really bothered me. I found myself wondering if the author would look at me and say I was just wearing glasses to be trendy. This an accusation I've gotten before, and being pretty much blind as a bat and unable to wear contact lenses, it's quite annoying. But in the grand scheme, that's neither here nor there now is it?

1 comment:

BonnettsBooks said...

The author of the article didn't fail to tell the story he wished to tell, he failed to account for any human history prior to the rise of the modern age of marketing. (I may be mistaken but, for this comment, I'll mark that age as having begun sometime in the fifties, with the use of computers for tracking consumer interests.) EVERY creative effort is somehow associated with something that has come before. The so-called "hipster" has more reference points from the past than any prior generation. With so much material from which to draw inspiration it's easy to lose track of any originality that might arise from all the familiar things.

Writers still write, painters still paint, musicians still play, builders still build, etc.

I'm not saying the author was necessarily wrong. I believe there's something new and different going on that he wasn't ready to see.