Portlandia has won accolades for its wonderful deconstructions of hipsters, thereby making irrelevant a huge swathe of the internet which thrives on being superior to hipsters while being hipsters themselves. And it deserves it, because it is really that good, and really that funny. But I’m not here to talk about how great Portlandia is. I’m here to talk about this video:
This video started getting tossed around just before their new season happened. Immediately, all my latecomer hipster friends on Facebook started posting it. “So true!” they said. And yeah, it is true. That’s what watching Battlestar Galactica was like, if you’re a hipster.
But the geeks, oh the poor geeks. Do you know how long the poor geeks toiled away watching these shows so pretentious hipsters could talk about how great they were? Like five or six years. I forget. But we were there, man! Watching it for free on Hulu. And for those years, we didn’t have anyone to talk to. There’s a quiet desperation in trying to get people to take a look at something you think is brilliant. You want to talk it up, but you can’t build up the expectations. Hipsters who watched BSG in like 2010 or 2011 can’t really get that. You’ve always had a community to talk it up, to share an appreciation of the show. You never had to attempt to describe Baltar trying to get with the Six inside his head to a bunch of people who really just wanted to move away from this odd weirdo.
You missed out man. But I guarantee you, there’s some hipster somewhere who’s pretending he or she first saw the show on DVD, when in reality, they saw the miniseries on the Sci-Fi Network when it premiered way back in 2003. They watched it religiously, seeing things like Razr. They spent six years of their life believing that BSG was the greatest show ever, and even the lackluster last two seasons didn’t put them off. I hope you buy that person a fine craft beer, and give them a pat on the back. Because geeks are the hipsters of hipsters.
