Nerd is my Gender
What's yours?
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Hipster Kitty: “Being real is so mainstream”.
Square Root of Negative Hipster Kitty: “Much better!”
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Urban Outrage
It’s like they say: everything is a remix (or stolen, depending on how you look at it).
By now you have probably read this story about Urban Outfitters allegedly ripping off an Etsy artist’s necklace designs.
As you know, I love this kind of thing. Nothing gets me more excited than busting someone who rips off an independent designer and tries to profit from their thievery. Extra special drama points if the thief is also a douchebag.
I’ve mainly limited my rage to Etsy artists ripping off other Etsy artists, but I’ve also been seeing an increase in the amount of made-to-look-handmade shit being hawked at hipster meccas like Anthropologie. So the fact that the handmade aesthetic has been seeping into the marketplace like a toxic mold has not gone unnoticed.
But there was something about this story that just wasn’t gelling for me. I tried to write it up several times yesterday, egged on by a persistent stream of email and tweets from outraged readers, begging for the Regretsy Thugs to put the smackdown on Urban Outfitters. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.
It’s not that the evidence wasn’t compelling.
That’s pretty damning. But what part of the design is proprietary? The shape of a state or country isn’t really something anyone can lay claim to. So you’d have to conclude that it’s the addition of the heart that makes it her design.
And that’s where this starts getting complicated.
Truche sold her first state pendant on Etsy in 2009.
Sudlow on Etsy sold a similar pendant in 2008.
So is it really Sudow’s design?
Or did they both rip off James Avery, who was selling a similar design at least seven months earlier?
Before you answer, here are more Etsy sellers selling similar designs they claim as their own creation.
Click on images for larger view and store link
Are all of these independent designers on Etsy stealing from each other? Or this is such a simple and generic idea that many people can come up with it at once? Certainly the idea of a charm in the shape of a state is nothing new; they’ve been selling those to tourists for years. Is it such a leap to put a heart in one? That seems like a logical progression from the I heart NY design, which I first remember seeing in the late 70′s.
Now, I’m not generally the voice of reason, so this is an uncomfortable position to take. But I’m just not sure I want to start a boycott over an idea that many people have had, some for years before Truche even opened her Etsy store.
I’m not saying that Urban Outfitters doesn’t help themselves to the designs of others. They certainly have a record of pilfering designs, and they may very well have stolen this one. The question, for me at least, is who did they steal it from? And if we don’t know that much, how do we know it’s really been stolen at all?
Something to think about before you get the pitchforks out.
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Bling vs. Specs
This is something I wrote for class because I’m too school for cool.
Bling (aka Large Ornate Gold Necklaces/Jewelry) We’ve all seen it: the ostentatious medallion hanging around the neck of a wealthy performance artist.
The name was popularized by a 1999 song with the title Bling-Bling. The term “bling” refers to the bling-bling of light reflecting off the facets of the jewelry. This is key - it must be ornate, gaudy, a blatant display of the economic power of the wearer. Traditionally, blacks are seen as poor and lacking in social status, so the in-your-face consumerism of bling can be seen as an empowering reaction against such negative stereotypes. This is known as conspicuous consumption. So why consume conspicuously? Well, let’s use bling as an example. When we think of a middle-class white adolescent wearing bling, the reaction is probably something similar to this: 
We mock people like that, because we see them as trying to pretend to be what they’re not, aka a poser. We wouldn’t do that if stuff is just stuff, clothes are just clothes, and each individual has a unique style. Conspicuous consumption isn’t just about wealth and self-expression, it’s about identifying with a particular social caste or sub-culture. As social creatures, we not only have an individual identity, we have a group identity. We subconsciously label ourselves, even those of us who reject labels, by how we dress. The bling-laden white boy in the West County suburbs isn’t showing pride in his identity, he’s engaging in an insensitive type of conspicuous consumption known as cultural appropriation. Specs (aka Hipster Glasses)
Hipsters are a group of people who typically don’t identify themselves as being a collective group of people for the simple reason that they share a common distaste for personal labels. They’re the natural result of our cultural cult of individuality taken to the extreme. As such, they reject conspicuous consumption because that could potentially cause them to be mistaken for a member of a particular social caste (a practice which often causes them to be so rejecting of any culture close to themselves that the only option they have left is severe and shameless cultural appropriation). And for a while, they were successful at being beautiful and unique snowflakes.
But a funny thing happens when enough people reject the concept of social castes - they become a social caste of people who share that common rejection. This is where hipster irony is born.
Specs like these are nothing new, not at all. Horn-rimmed glasses actually got their kick start in 1917 by actor Harry Lloyd. They became rather popular in the 50s as well. Some people never stopped wearing them: 
So why do hipsters love them so? Simple: they’re ugly. I mean, seriously. They’re so ugly, in the military they’re known as BCGs - birth control glasses. (They’re the only style allowed at basic training.) 
(Tasty.) Hipsters caught on to the extreme unpopularity of these glasses and began wearing them ironically, as a rejection of conspicuous consumption. Only, it caught on and became popular among the totally-not-at-all-affiliated-with-each-other hipsters themselves, and became a “hipster thing”, to the point where it’s now it’s own meme. That’s right, you can take any image, add glasses, and it’s instantly hipster. 
”A hipster can be so emphatically, conspicuously hipster that he becomes a predictable caricature or stereotype so that he becomes, unwittingly, anti-hipster.” Ironic, isn’t it? -
Hipster Pie
I ate a slice of pie before it was cool. Now my tongue is burnt.
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Hipster Hipster Dog
I liked things before they were cool, before it was cool to like things before they were cool.
Oh noes! Divided by zero!
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93. Bicycle outfits look kind of silly.
You’re just jealous of this awesomeness:
http://re1000.wordpress.com/2008/12/27/the-wanna-be-bike-messenger/
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"Hipster" as an Insult
I didn’t realize it was an insult for a while. One day a few years back, I called my boyfriend’s cousin a hipster. She fits most of the items on the list: drinks PBR, wears thick-framed glasses, rides a bike everywhere, fills her house with ironic religious/political iconography, and when I asked her what she was listening to once, she said I probably wouldn’t like it. I thought it was so obvious. But then she informed my boyfriend that I’m the “real” hipster. I was very confused as to why someone would respond in such a non-sequitor, until I learned that nobody actually wants to be called a hipster.
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“I won’t have racist shit appearing on my wall, followed by slurs against people with disabilities. I’m doing serious work, trying to SAVE lives from haters, not publish their bullshit. You make atheism look as bad as fundamentalism: narrow minded, self righteous, superior, ignorant, smug, justified n causing pain to others who areen’t like you. Hipster racism isracism. Hipster ablism is ablism. Same with all the other forms of prejudice and discrimination. You’re not funny. This isn’t rational thought. This isn’t reason. This isn’t scientific. This is hate, cruelty and stupid arrogance. You are a fundamentalist zealot, and I don’t have anything to do with trash like that. Hate is NOT reason. Shove this. Disliking.”
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I’ve noticed an increasing number of animated gifs that got featured on Tumblr only because they’re paid advertising. I guess the strategy is infiltrating the “hip” media and pretending that corporations are people too. (via Campbell’s Opens Pop-Up Hipster Soup Kitchens To Promote Soulless $3 Soup Pouches)
Genderqueer with a touch of happy humanism.
