Henry Rollins, self-described “old and washed-up sold-out motherfucker,” took Iranian artist Shirin Neshat to an East Village record store for a European TV special, during which he’s heckled semi-playfully, and goes to town on a couple of attractive young hipster types. Or, in his words: “You should at least respect this woman (Neshat), who totally has more balls than any over-tattooed trust fund kid who’s traipsed in here in the last 48 hours.” Wow, awesome. Have a nice weekend. (TheDailyWhat)
hum, I thought Rollins was way out of line here. Should have apologized to this girl. There is practially a war going on on youtube comments on this vid.
Yeah, he seemed like a dick. (Shock!) Just really paranoid about his loss of hip status, and toting an unimpeachably admirable pal to shame kids who might make him feel bad. And really, the whole trust fund accusation has gotten so silly. The idle rich don’t really hang out at the Cake Shop, do they?
Rollins is a washed up old man. He used the Iranian photographer like a prop in his own drama.
@ gjk, Jeff K.
Yeah, I totally agree. BEN, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS HEADLINE. [/throwing colleague under the bus]
It seemed catchier than the more accurate: “Henry Rollins Comes Off as Old Dickhead While Berating Cheerful Young New Yorkers and Embarrassing Wonderful Iranian Artist Shirin Neshat.”
You see, now THAT’S a headline.
god damn henry rollins is spot on with his description of those stupid motherfuckers. you can see how everyone of them gives off an aura of being such a fucking pseudo intellectual. the hipster style is definitely on the way out and will always be fucking retarded. Hipsters have done nothing good for society and human kind and makes me feel embarassed as a young adult. that bitch with the tattoos and all the stupid fucks with tattoos sicken me because you know ten years from now they’re all ganna be regretting the fuck out of their past decisions and iam ganna be laughin my ass off as I beat the living shit out of every last breathing hipster motherfucker.
Haha, oh pcarley60 how stupid you can be. You know, not everyone regrets their tattoos. I think you’re just trying to be a Henry Rollins clone trying to be as temperamental as him. I can understand beating the shit out of a group of people that have done something wrong, but the fact that you want to beat the shit out of a group of people for being themselves is no better than being a gay basher or a super racist. Now if you were to beat the shit out of the hipsters that treat YOU like shit, that’s fine.
“but the fact that you want to beat the shit out of a group of people for being themselves”
So, to be myself I have to dress, look, and talk basically the same way as all the other hipsters around me? Or did those paragons of individuality in the store just randomly happen to be born with exactly the same taste in fashion?
Do I also have to think that people who don’t make the choices that I make are lame? Or is it that I have to base which music I “love” and “hate” on how many other people have found out about it yet?
Hipsters are most well-defined by their inability to “be themselves” without first checking to see what everybody else is doing.
(On the article, Rollins looked like a dick. He was looking for a fight, and instead of having the patience or manipulative skill to find himself in one, he just pretended one was there.)
labkeith– dressing like a group you identify does not in any way preclude someone from “being themself.” I mean, do you need to where a hoola hoop on your head to be an individual. More likely they identify with a group that– whether you agree with them or not– values fashion, iconoclasts, art, etc more highly than most people. If you think that group is also pretentious, trendy, etc. that would be pretty consistent with their values. Doesn’t mean they are not also individuals. Also, what exactly is the fashion of hipsters? There is so much variety in hipster fashion. I mean– go to Bedford on a Saturday afternoon. You might dislike the vibe– but there’s sure as hell not some monolithic fashion.
My point is more that “being themselves” is a stupid concept.
On the one hand, it is impossible to not be yourself, by definition. A rapist is just “being himself” when he rapes someone. So unless d…d is an idiot, he wasn’t being literal.
What d…d probably meant, then, was that they were demonstrating some sort of individuality, “uniqueness”, or unusual behavior (note the comparisons to homophobia and racism). This is even sillier, of course, because they all do basically the same thing as everyone they choose to hang around.
There’s also the problem, which I mentioned, of how they need to know who likes and hates a band or album before they can decide if they like it or hate it. It’s basically the opposite of “being yourself”, because everyone else dictates what you like. I asked one of my friends if she liked a song that was on the juke. She said she liked it. I told her it was Vampire Weekend, and then she got mad at me for “tricking her” and said she hates it. Try it sometime, it’s a fun game. You can also confuse them by telling them that Pitchfork likes some band that they like.
Regarding variety and whether hipster fashion exists, consider this: Banana Republic has crewneck tees in like 1700 colors. Lots of variety, but only along a small number of dimensions. So variety, on its own, doesn’t preclude monolithic fashion.
But if you don’t think there is a hipster fashion, try considering the (rather large) set of things that you will never see any of them wear. That such a set exists and is nonempty implies directly that the complement set (things that they will wear) exists and isn’t everything. I’m not going to try to list it, as that would be futile and not needed. It is enough, for me, to prove its existence.
@LabKeith
This is just random, babbling nonsense against everything you hate (coherently and articulately written, I’ll grant). Which is fine. But “they” and “them” don’t actually exist, except as strawhipsters for you to rail against.
“She said she liked it. I told her it was Vampire Weekend, and then she got mad at me for “tricking her” and said she hates it. Try it sometime, it’s a fun game. You can also confuse them by telling them that Pitchfork likes some band that they like.”
I don’t get it. Hipsters hate Vampire Weekend and Pitchfork?
This is stupid.
@Jonny
Coherent nonsense. Interesting concept.
“They” exist insofar as there are people who do some or all of the things I mentioned. Nobody fits the mold (or any mold) perfectly, but that doesn’t eliminate the utility of generalization as a descriptive and predictive tool.
Also, I don’t hate any of this stuff or the people. The girl in my example is a friend of mine, whom I like. I just think that the criteria they choose for (admittedly unimportant) decisions are silly and deserve ridicule, especially since they are so willing to tell you about them.
@Mike
Again, not every hipster agrees on every band or website. It’s the process they use to judge music and culture that is consistent and consistently stupid.
Pitchfork and Vampire Weekend, though, have become popular enough in the mainstream to be considered uncool at this point by many people who used to like them.
“It’s the process they use to judge music and culture that is consistent and consistently stupid.”
Bravo, LabKeith.
@Kiko Jones
Bravo? Christ, why do we keep arguing about some mythical monolithic category solely defined by by its negatives: person X is young, fashionable and I don’t like the “process” they use to judge culture, therefore they are a hipster; person Y is young, fashionable and I like the “process” they use to judge culture, therefore they are not a hipster.
It’s the same kind of self-reflexive lashing out that Rollins is doing in the video, an attack on his own lost youth: “I hate the fact that I am no longer young and available to new experiences therefore I will attack those who are for merely being callow, naive and inarticulate.”
Yes, of course there are stupid, shallow kids who are merely attractive and fashionable; but there are also attractive and fashionable kids who are genuinely curious about the world and in love with art. AND BOTH TYPES CAN BE HIPSTERS.
“Yes, of course there are stupid, shallow kids who are merely attractive and fashionable; but there are also attractive and fashionable kids who are genuinely curious about the world and in love with art. AND BOTH TYPES CAN BE HIPSTERS.”
You are correct, Jonny Diamond. But here’s the rub: because “hipster” has devolved into a pejorative term equivalent to, say, shallow poser, the latter group you mention would, in all likelihood prefer you not use the h-word when describing them. Which leaves us with…
@ Mike Conklin
Are you actually surprised there are vast amounts of people out in Indierockland that “like” what they are told to? Folks whose personal taste and opinions in music are voluntarily hijacked by what Pitchfork and/or their “cool” buddies approve? If you do a musical blind taste test with these folks you’ll get plenty of instances similar to those LabKeith describes in his comment.
He shouldn’t have gotten annoyed at that young woman.
Um… LOL that’s not “dope”. Sorry. A celeb who’s in his 50s, walking across a room to confront some harmless hipster girls in a record store about street cred, and embarrassing an Iranian refugee with much bigger problems to think about, is called “pathetic”. Or “self-obsessed”. Or “mid-life-crisis”. Try again, folks.