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Hipsters, Dot rats not meant to interact
By adamg on Sat, 12/29/2012 - 4:31pm
If you're one of those people who thinks Starbucks would be much improved if all the hipsters disappeared, you'll love this karmic post.
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Comments
Starbucks in Dorchester? Where?
When I look for one in either Google Maps or Starbucks' own Store Locator, the only one I find is inside Target at South Bay Center. I don't consider that to be a 'real' Starbucks and I'm not even sure that's really Dorchester.
Anyway, hipsters don't go to Starbucks, they go to indie coffee shops: Diesel, Bloc 11, True Grounds, Sherman, Thinking Cup, etc. etc.
"Dot Rat" must work elsewhere
"Dot Rat" must work elsewhere (downtown? Back Bay?), but, you're right. No Starbucks in Dorchester. Not even in Lower Mills.
Funny shit!
Ain't it grand how the flood of personal communication devices and apps make us so connected now that we don't need to talk to each other anymore, whether alone in mom's basement (or cycling or driving), while other people are in conversation, or people are together not talking! We don't need to listen either at meetings, lectures, or classes. More billion$ in this technology and millions more apps will get us to a greater next level where people might even stop talking to themselves, literally, or figuratively via unread blog and Facebook posts.
Oh, cyclists talk to each other
When do you think we plot our nefarious takeover of the transportation infrastructure? Over tea? ;-)
Please do.
One of the best things that could happen to Boston today is for the majority of folks who enjoy the civilized pleasures of bicycling to takeover transportation. But please make my tea lapsang souchong.
'Hipsters'
kinda fascinate me; more often than not, they come across as though suffering some kind of social deficit, and for people who think they're so happening, are usually very tight assed. Anyway, hasn't this trend used up it's 15 minutes by now?
Just saying.
Same as it ever was
<music cue>
"Hipsters" are just the latest form of roughly 20-something urbanites overly concerned with the fashions of the day. Sometimes that takes the form of being deliriously glam (70s), or pseudo-sullenly detached (90s), or ironically nostalgic (now).
From everything I've ever read, heard, or personally witnessed, that subcategory of human culture is pretty much ubiquitous and omnipresent. Just wait till manic neo-steam-punk becomes the next big thing and it seems like everyone under 30 is wearing top hats adorned with gears and riding motorized penny-farthings - you'll be begging for the simple, good old days of pork pie hats and fixies. (Apologies to the already afflicted people of Watertown.)
Sincerely,
not yet a grandpa, but waaaaay past 20-something-dom, and never fashionable
Summary word
Basically, they are the Self Esteem generation and there are a lot of them because they are the peak of the secondary baby boom. The whole clothing thing is just age-related style more than anything - nothing different than big hair and parachute pants, etc. Or calling it "macaroni" ...
Many of them are quite nice young people, and no more self-absorbed than anybody their age has ever been or ever will be. Funny how that tends to track with how hard they have had to work for what they have ... either through non-affluent parents or parents who give them limits and budgets, etc.
These young adults in Starbucks sound like they are the "handed to me on a silver platter" types whose sheltering upbringing hasn't permitted the mean old world to teach them some important lessons just yet. I feel sad for them, actually. This is gonna leave a mark, eventually.
Perfecting being alone in a group?
I doubt if any of the young adults in Starbucks that day will do well when it comes to professions requiring working with other people. In professions where who you know - high or low - really is what is most important, sequestering the self behind MP3s, email, Facebook and all the other tools of pretend relationship, perfects the inability to be in live, productive relationships.
Barriers such as email, Facebook, etc. create illusions and false impressions of secure social environments (which is especially ironic when the "Facebooking" is done in a social environment). When negotiating, or working through a conflict, and there is not a person across the table looking the speaker in the eye, it is easy to drop the usual social filters that otherwise temper the temper tantrums. The phenomena of internet bullying, and it corollary of flaming are, I think, good examples of what happens when too much time spent in front of a computer instead of in front of a person. Without realizing the possibility of repercussions, or by operating under an assumption of princess mentality (young men and women), I've witnessed adults get into hot water because they thought focused on their thoughts in a nastygram more than on focusing on the receiving end of that nastrgram.
Hopefully the new year will bring to as many as possible less time in pseudo-relationship and more time in real, satisfying, frustrating, moving, exciting, saddening, but real, in person, in the flesh relationships. Best possible to everyone in the new year.