So lately I’ve noticed that the website wikihow has been taking a fair amount of shit from other sites and browsers on the interwebs. Some of this is fair, of course. Lots of stereotypes like “wikihow is laughably terrible and as useful as Yahoo! Answers” or “jews are hook-nosed, greasy bastards who control all of the world’s money and want to mutilate our sons’ penises” start with a small kernel of truth. And in this case that small truth was the fact that wikihow, an internet website that started off as “How to make your own LHC in your room” or “how to launch a DDOS attack,” was starting to make articles like “How to Date” or “Figure out why you haven’t found your soulmate.” Which is a pretty big transition. So your friendly neighborhood hipster sociologist decided to investigate wikihow and find out if they knew anything about hipsters.
Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a page that was well put together, lucid, in depth, and actually managed to hit most everything relevant to being a hipster! Their page “How to be a hipster” was not at all what I was expecting. What was I expecting, you ask? To be honest I was expecting an article that relayed all the correct information but with a bitter and scathing attitude. Or maybe I was expecting no article at all, but instead a redirect to Vice or Pitchfork.
That being said, however, the usefulness of this article is still dubious, despite the surprising excellence it has. (Bonus points for using pulchritudinous, though. I like that.) Have you ever heard of someone who woke up one day and said “I’m going to be a hipster!” or “You know, those guys downtown with the silly clothes really seem like they have their shit together, I should be more like them.” I think hipsters are made accidentally, or as a side effect of liking certain things. For instance I know lots of people who are more into one aspect of the culture than others, like the music, or the vegan scene, or what have you. That person might become a full-fledged hipster, but they’ll always be more enthusiastic about the original part that they were into. It’s hard for me to care as much about DIY crafting when there are so many good bands out there recording new albums and playing shows. I’m sure the vegan disciple who grows their own veggies doesn’t care as much about music as I do. If they did, they’d run out of hours in the day. Yet other people around them do care about this music and they also can appreciate that person’s dedication to fresh produce, even if they get their stuff from Whole Foods. So the common interests bind you together and you all end up becoming hipsters.
All of you. Dirty, stinking hipsters.
No one I know that’s a hipster had to consult wikihow. Maybe that should be our new catchphrase. “I was a self-denying hipster before wikihow told the sheeple how to do it.”
