This Week in Hipster Punditry

Both Psychology Today and The New York Times are hatin' on hipsters this week.

Behold the hipster, the stylishly disaffected breed of twentysomethings whose fog of twee whimsy envelopes Williamsburg and the East Village. Most who encounter the hipster in its natural habitat respond in one of two ways: derision or ridicule.

But science does not cast judgment. Its goal is to explore and explain dispassionately, whether the object of study be the noble eagle or the lowly nematode. So what does science have to tell us about this fascinatingly misunderstood breed, the indigenous North American hipster?

Surprisingly much.

                                 Psychology Today

Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? That’s the subject of lively debate among policy makers and academics. To some, what we’re seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to.


                                 The New York Times

SEE! Look at all that carefully crafted hatin' WE SEE YOU ADULT HATERS, HATIN'!  But as everyone knows, haters gotta hate. So, aside from cracking open a tasty bottle of haterade, the mature thing to do is to tighten one's chucks, push up their lensless glasses and take on the intellectual thrashing of the Grey Lady and the psychological establishment with well worded arguments of their own, like Ms. Monson here, read the whole thing, no quoted piece I can put here does it justice, but it's worth the read, trust me.

Have you read it yet? no, here it is again, go we'll wait...

But aside from well articulated observations, no one knows hipsters quite like hipsters and no one can rebut hatin' quite like hipsters themselves, as this, my nominated for "Definitive Hipster Anthem" illustrates so well.



Also, This week there are no new Murrayphone updates, except that Crystal, that robot REALLY wants to talk to you about that bill.