Op-Ed: Southern Brooklyn Mourns “Die Hipster,” Our Valiant Digital Defender Against The Hipster Hordes
I always thought it was so trite to begin a post, essay, or any piece of writing with the definition of a word but, as an homage to the anonymous everyman who spoke for so many of us Southern Brooklynites — the writer behind the eponymously-named blog, Die Hipster, who abdicated his literary throne this week — I offer you the definition of the word “prophet”:
A person gifted with profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression.
While Die Hipster, by no means, claimed to “speak by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed,” the perennially exacerbated wordsmith took to the Internets to decry the “culdesacian culture vultures [who] have basically destroyed art and music just about to the point of irreparable,” in his final post on the site.
The targets of Die Hipster’s wrath may have had blessedly little to nothing to do with our end of the borough (at least for the time being, for hipsters are a transient breed), he took the Herculean task upon himself to protect our Southern Brooklyn enclave from their unicycled migration like a modern-day Davy Crockett staving off those who would breach the Alamo.
Die Hipster’s frustrated, acerbic posts, targeting, oh so charmingly, the nasally-voiced sub-culture adherents of independent, anti-mainstream everything — also known on the site as Zachs, Zoeys, Calebs, Ethans, Megans and Mollys — gained a massive following, racking up 1,097 followers and an impressive 2,795,840 visitors since he debuted on the WordPress platform in December 2010.
Why did we enjoy Die Hipster so? Well, because it’s fun to make fun of “Polly-O string-cheese-shaped fauxhemian beardos” who get their kicks from buying $5 cups of “babyccinos,” while we vapid, working class knuckle-draggers make ours in Keurigs or, perhaps out of sheer necessity, buy the $2 Anthora variety from the corner bodega. And because it’s just plain nuts to have chickens living on your cramped Red Hook property so you can enjoy “cage-free, organic, cruelty-free fucking eggs.” That’s what farmer’s markets are for, silly! And don’t even get me started on what the trust-fund try-hards consider art (Warning: NSFW!).
I’m of the mind that people should embrace a live-and-let-live philosophy. Do what you want to do, dress how you want to dress, listen to whatever music you want to listen to — just don’t hurt anyone. I’m sure I speak for many Brooklynites who are pleased that their old neighborhoods, which, over decades became crime-addled slums, are now safe to raise families in… but, come on.
Brooklyn was, is, and always will be an urban environment. The original concrete jungle. The county of Kings is not a place to grow organic, sustainable, rooftop everyfrigginthing. And a single-person dwelling in Billyburg — the streets of which, 15 years ago, were about as safe as those of Anwar Province after dark — is certainly not supposed to go for $4,200! How do those crazy kids afford to live there, while they sleep until noon and work for minimum wage as glorified, tattooed and handlebar-mustachioed baristas or candy cane-shaped keepers of the kale?
These are the questions so many of us have asked, so many times. Why? Why? Why? Why $10 candy bars? Why typing on a typewriter on a park bench in 2012? Why Glow Necklace Kidult Kickball? Embracing the age-old axiom that the pen is mightier than the sword, Die Hipster heard our cries.
Still, not everyone approved of Die Hipster. Jen G of the blog Greenpointers.com (I know, shocking, right?) expresses her relief that Die Hipster threw in the proverbial towel:
Finally, the putrid and venomous, toxic and true waste of a blog –Diehipster.com is throwing in the towel. The best part is that he is the king of hipster irony, because he focused more on hipsters than anyone else cared – thus perpetuating the spread of the culture he despised. The only thing I will miss is all the traffic he brings to the website when he makes fun of us here. Good riddance! Finally the loser, who spent so much of his life caring about people who don’t care about him – lost. I wonder what he will do now? Grow a beard? Eat a $10 candy bar? Change his name to Brent? Join a kickball league? Brew his own sustainable local Kombucha? Make a terrarium? The hipster world is his for the taking! Buh-bye.
That’s fine. Opinions are like a-holes, but unless your last name is Yastrzemski, Kosinski, Bukowski, or some variation thereof, I doubt that the majority of Flyoverlandia-born inhabitants of Greenpoint are capable of postulating impartially about the rilly, rilly kewl nabe they live and make their art in.
But now we are on our own. We are Southern Brooklyn’s contemporary answer to the stiff-necked Israelites waving a sad farewell to Moses, whose quick temper forbade him from entering into the Promised Land. And while he will “still be commenting/bashing here and there on hipster run sites and on other media (that don’t ban me or erase my comments),” Die Hipster, our esteemed prognosticator of pedestrian life, has left us to fight the good fight, with these parting words: “Stay strong [real]Brooklyn!”
Don’t worry. We will. Just as long as they stay above the line.
The above was submitted anonymously by a reader who wants to “celebrate the long Die Hipster tradition of publicly shitting on hipster douches without losing employment or permitting personal response.” It’s also a work of humor, so don’t get your kidult-sized Spiderman onesie in a bunch, hipster.
