Amerika

Let me count the ways.

1. Austin, by being tolerant, encourages parasitism.
   

   Hey man, are you going to eat those fries?

   Does anyone have some change? Anything would help. I don’t have any money and any money I did have I just left in Seattle.

   Can I have a sip of your beer? We’re all in this SXSW thing together.

   — Brought to you by the committee for realism

   Posted by: The Real Austin Experience(tm) | Mar 15, 2009 6:57:39 AM

   Wired

   A city that builds itself on the idea of tolerating everyone quickly encourages people to abuse that idea, since it’s brainless. You don’t want tolerance — you want to celebrate the good, and junk the bad, just like you do in every other part of life. Books? Keep the good, pitch the bad. Refrigerator? Keep the fresh, toss the stale. Ideas? Keep the realistic, eject the delusional. Friends? Keep the faithful, chuck the leechy.

   Austin is world famous for moochers. But these aren’t even good moochers. They’re “friends” who hit the bathroom when they see the bill coming from the register. Buddies who never bought a computer so need to use yours — five times a week. And random people on the street, many of whom are trust fund babies, who want to borrow a cigarette, have the fries you’re not yet eating, get a slice of your pizza, or just outright ask you for money. You can’t hit them because Austin is tolerant.

   No thank you. I already know that most honest homeless people are that way because they’re insane, criminal or stupid; a few just hate society almost as much as I hate a delusional, end-stage civilization. I don’t want to go someplace that legitimizes leechy behavior.

2. Popular music is trivial crap

   In the 1980s, someone invented indie rock. Musically, it’s the same stuff the big label bands put out in the 1970s. But it’s on a small label. And artier, more selfconscious. So it must be new… and because it’s new, you need it, so you can talk to your friends about it. Right?

   No. I’ve broken free. True freedom consists of knowing what you want and throwing away the rest. I don’t want to enslave myself to the novelty of music that, when compared from a distance, is all basically the same stuff. I value my time and I want more from life.

   So you can take your SXSW and put it in the same place you put that Deerhoof CD.

3. Austin is full of hipsters

   What is the disease of the modern time? Linear rational thought, or taking one aspect of a situation and comparing BEFORE and AFTER a process, and letting that single aspect stand for the many aspects of the situation.

   For example: I shot this deer and got a neat new deerhoof. But I am not thinking about the deer carcass rotting in the sun, the depletion of the deer population, the destruction of populations that depend on deer, or even where the bullet went after it sailed through the deer’s neck.

   The hipster pretends to be above all this, but because hipsterism is based on joining a crowd yet being an individual, it requires you to use a single aspect: external appearance.

   So hipsters flounce and mince past, each in some different “radical” (ho hum) combination of things that don’t fit together. Day-glo tennis shoes, ironic shirts, emo haircuts, makeup and random neckties. No thank you.

   I don’t want the trivial imposing it on me in any way. I don’t want network television, avoid advertisements if I can, duck out of vapid conversations and don’t buy junk products. My time is valuable; I’m not going to let anyone, even an anti-corporate hipster, impose on it with their trivial need for attention and control.

4. Crowds spread contagion

   When you get people together, you are not going to get any kind of organized action unless there’s a leader.

   Crowds have no leader, and since that feels good because it means no rules, they behave like children to enforce that. Passive aggression in spades.

   The more people you have together, the more they’ll resist anything resembling a direction. It’s like you’re taking the consciousness of a person and dividing, not multiplying, it by the number of people there.

Thanks, Austin, but not thanks. I have a nice book, friends and family, and plenty of Deerhoof here if I ever need it. I can also mooch a bite of my own pizza, borrow a cigarette from myself, and blame someone else for my problems, and yet when I get over that moment of pique, I can live comfortably in reality without requiring the presence of others to make me feel my lifestyle choice was a legitimate one.

Tags: hipsters