Oh, to be a hipster

But although I tend to have a lot of obscure names alongside the mainstream ones on my list of favorite things, I'm really, really too much of a slob to be deemed a hipster. I don't get the art of the ironic shirt. (Except one time we all wore I <3 Cebu shirts while we were in Bohol, so that's the sarcastic shirt.) I shop at thrift stores, but only because the mall's too boring and expensive, and I like inviting serendipity into my life, but my sartorial choices are neither ironic nor fashionable. They're just comfortable, occasionally pretty and dirt cheap.

I've loved mostly the same old bands since ten years ago, though the new ones tend to be more folk rock or old 80's singers that I've only now begun to appreciate. And I'm a liberal arts graduate who tries my best to be more environmental. I also love zines, and spend too much money on them. And I hate monopolies, so I've never had an ipod, or shopped at itunes. (Walmart and Amazon are a little harder to abjure, because who can resist all those cheap stuff?)

So what's so bad about being a hipster? Most people seem to be reacting against the pretension of cool, and the elitism that follows. Their idea of the hipster is a person who strives to differentiate himself or herself from the mainstream, but is still a follower of certain alternative trends. So is there no genuine originality out there?

For me, it's not the cool factor, I just think having eclectic tastes make me more interesting, because otherwise I'm boring as fuck. (With a dilapidated vocabulary to match.) It doesn't make me better or worse, and I love finding out what other people are passionate about, because that makes them interesting to me. We don't always fit the labels others give us, or even the labels we give ourselves. So give it a break, haters.

I mean how weird would it be to become self-conscious about my plastic glasses and my messenger bag because those are hipster totems? Labels are occasionally funny, occasionally useful, but oftentimes used to exclude or denigrate.

If there's a label that I want for myself, it would be of a poet, but that doesn't quite fit, so I'm still working on it. Oh, and I was a math nerd. (Embrace it.)