ยป Hipsters Is People!
I believe that Adbusters consistently opts for shallow analysis and low-blows. For example, the “journal of the mental environment” looks at our society’s heavy usage of psychiatric medications and concludes that the pharmaceutical companies are inventing disorders. But shouldn’t the corporate activities screwing up our culture create real psychiatric problems? Shouldn’t Adbusters be a champion of people whose mental environments are polluted to the point of developing stress-related disorders?
The Tyee’s insightful consideration of the Adbusters hipster article includes this quote:
The hipster malaise — riding a bike, making arts and crafts, feeling superior for thinking you haven’t sold out — stems from the frustration of genuine-identitylessness.
In other words, hipsterism is simply a response to our screwed-up culture. More specifically, brand marketing that encourages you to define yourself by your consumption, whether it’s luxury goods or ironic beer. The goal of Adbusters should be to help hipsters find more “authentic” identities, not just rage at them.
If people had authentic identities Adbusters wouldn’t sell. Adbusters creates hipster-ennui so that annoyed hipsters will buy Adbusters. The things we eat make us hungry.
Jack
26 Aug 08 at 10:38 pm
Great quote about identitylessness. I’ll have to read those links at some point. They feel directly on-point wrt my thinking about authenticity.
Jack
26 Aug 08 at 10:43 pm
Oh, and selling out is something to be ashamed of. But I think it’s like that quote about porn — you can’t define selling out, but you know it when you see it. I’ve changed my opinion of myself: accounting was selling out. What I do now is slightly more authentic, despite its problems with hyperreality.
On Saturday, for a hyperreal example, I was sitting in an office building making a simulation of skateboarding contests. I got into a fight with my boss and went outside, where an actual skateboarding contest was occurring. The terrain ripped through the map so quickly that I needed a vodka tonic to steady myself.
Jack
26 Aug 08 at 10:46 pm
For me the medication conversation went like this:
Doctor: Do you eat right?
Alex: No.
Doctor: Exercise?
Alex: No.
Doctor: Are you in therapy?
Alex: No.
Doctor: Well, until you fix those things you won’t fix the root of your problem. Here’s a prescription to treat the symptoms.
I had a good Catholic Guiltdoctor though. I imagine others are less concerned with causes than effects.
Jack
26 Aug 08 at 10:49 pm
So is Big Pharma to blame for overprescription? Or are doctors just trying to deal with a flood of genuinely sick people? Did pollution in your mental environment make you an accountant in the first place, or did pollution make you feel trapped in the job?
What’s wrong with selling out? What if you do it ironically?
Jared
27 Aug 08 at 7:38 am
I think mental pollution in my childhood made me an accountant and made me feel trapped there. Whether that’s societal is up for discussion.
The same pollution almost made me quit on Saturday. I’m just learning to recognize it, I still don’t have a clue what to do about it.
I’m not going to tip my hand, because I want to post about mental illness soon, but I think we have an epidemic. The trick is one of philosophy though — what kinds of thoughts are sick?
Jack
27 Aug 08 at 7:40 pm
When you say “mental pollution”, do you think you mean the same thing that Adbusters does?
Jared
27 Aug 08 at 7:44 pm
No, probably not. I don’t care about Adbusters.
Revised: I think my use of the term includes theirs though.
Revised again: My use includes anything that’ll eventually break your mind. [Edit: Toxic attitudes from r]eligion, family, school, television, advertising. Looking at that list, maybe I’m just anti-social
Jack
27 Aug 08 at 8:58 pm