The choice to become a hipster doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a gradual process, triggered often by loneliness, a fear of maturity, and/or emotional trauma. Becoming a hipster is kind of like joining a street gang, except there’s no risk of violence and you have to pretend that you’ve read Infinite Jest. Typically, the metamorphosis into a hipster starts off slowly and with clear warning signs. However, if left unchecked, the sickness will begin to fester and metastasize rapidly. Soon, the victim will be almost impossible to recognize from his former self.
I know this for a scientific fact because I watched a friend become a hipster in front of my very eyes. One of my best friends from college, Josh, moved to New York shortly after experiencing a painful breakup (i.e., emotional trauma). Obviously, I was thrilled to have such a good friend suddenly living so close by. I couldn’t wait to hang out with him, show him the city, get his mind off things. But as soon as Josh arrived in Brooklyn and settled in, I started noticing changes in his behavior. He suddenly–and for no good reason–became a vegan, a far cry from the Atkins-diet meat-eating maniac I knew in college. At the time, I rationalized the decision, thinking maybe he’d found a new appreciation for healthy eating. I didn’t say anything. Within a matter of weeks, Josh stopped wearing contacts, instead preferring to wear comically large wooden-frame eyeglasses. He grew a blond Larry Bird mustache. His jeans seemed to get tighter and tighter. A couple of months passed. Josh started smoking marijuana for the first time in his life, which was great, except he kept trying to get everyone to go on high adventures with him. He bought a rusty bicycle at a flea market and rode it around town wearing clothes he made himself. He recorded a two-disc concept album alone in his room using only toy instruments.
Again, despite my concerns, I said nothing. He was still mending a broken heart, I thought. He’ll shape up anytime now. He must see how ridiculous he’s being. A few weeks later, Josh got fired from his dog walking job for being stoned, which he saw as a blessing, as it gave him more time to work on his art. His art, of course, being the crude, primitive tempera paintings of small forest animals that he applied directly onto the walls of his sublet apartment. To make money, Josh decided he would sell greeting cards on the street; these cards he made himself by tearing out photographs from old encyclopedias, gluing them onto note cards, then typing original poetry on the back using a typewriter he purchased at another flea market. He spent hours making his own peanut butter (when he wasn’t in the midst of one of his frequent spicy lemonade master cleanses). By this point, Josh had been living in New York for almost a year. Things had gotten out of control. But just before I was able to sit Josh down and stage an intervention, he borrowed money from his parents and moved to Japan, where he now lives and plays in a diaper ukulele band. (That’s a band wherein he and a bunch of Japanese dudes wear diapers and play ukuleles.)
This is an extreme example, but it’s true and could just as well happen to someone you love, too. The following chapters will explore typical hipster lifestyle choices (aka “warning signs” or “symptoms”). If you suffer from one, or maybe two, of these examples, that doesn’t automatically make you a hipster, but it definitely means you’re flirting with disaster. Any more than that, you might as well pack up your ukulele and move to Japan.
