I'm trying to be as hip and with it as possible. Sitting here at my computer in UGG slippers, an American Apparel t-shirt (not just any t-shirt, "The Summer Shirt"), Lucky Brand jeans (which I'm told aren't really that hip, anymore, but I prefer to stick with them rather than run out and buy the $175 jeans that are actually hip) and listening intently to a "SkypeCast" re-"PodCast" from TypePad (host of this blog) by Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail (the page is here). In minute 6 he's talking about blogs being the long tail of publishing (huge surprise, given the host of the broadcast) and beginning to lose my interest. But I'd prefer this for half an hour to reading his book, which is probably reminiscent of of the sound-byte style penmanship of Malcolm Gladwell.
And meanwhile my attention has moved on, to del.icio.us, which I haven't really spent the time to figure out yet (but have heard it competes directly with my favorite site, Kaboodle). And at del.icio.us I found a very interesting post on how to change your Southwest boarding pass from a "B" or "C" to the "A" boarding group (here). I'm not a lawyer, but I am willing to bet that forging an "A" boarding pass is, well, forgery - and probably illegal. So I won't be doing it. But, hey, if someone else does, as long as he or she isn't cutting me, whatever. Just never say you didn't learn anything useful from my blog.
The skypecast - or whatever you call it - has lost me, as TypePad's host has started in on Casey Casum and how he used to listen to him every weekend to find out what music he should be following. I hate Casey Casum, and the idea that someone tells you what music to like (isn't it top 40 based on radio plays, or music sales, anyway?) and think that music, by and large, doesn't matter (though it's nice to have on in the background at a dinner party). So what if U2 was "the" band of your generation. I like Bono and The Edge as much as anyone, but would my life be different if they had flown into a mountain after Joshua Tree? But I digress.
I heard an interesting NPR piece on lifestyles this morning on KQED (NPR is what older, better educated hip people listen to). The speaker argued that people now define themselves by what they consume - kind of a "you are what you eat" notion, but change "eat" to "buy". So I'm apparently a cool retro kind of a guy who cares about sweatshops and American jobs (remember my summer shirt?) while also being a true Californian (the jeans, or so they tell me, are hallmark Californian - nevermind that I was born in Berkeley). Because I have an IBM ThinkPad, I must be a corporate kind of a guy. I'm sure my Specialized mountain bike has some meaning, as does my off-brand surfboard, Trek road bike, Volkl skis, ...
I find this whole idea that "lifestyle" has replaced simply shopping as a raison-d'etre to be borderline obvious. Napoleon, a consumer of imperial proportions, outfitted himself and his court in court-like regalia so as to appear to be like a legitimate monarch and ruler. Egyptian pharoes perhaps gave the idea its great start, as they acted on the belief that there was a correlation between their rabid consumption of everything - goods, servants, slaves - and the afterlife; they stocked their pyramids and burial chambers with piles of riches, artwork, and freshly-killed servants and slaves so as to be well equiped for the next world.
In more modern times the robber barons spent lavishly on themselves and on philanthropic causes, particularly unversities. Today's equivalents - Bill Gates, Buffett, et al. - seem to have similar consumption habits.
So what in this line of discussion is supposed to be new or interesting? That yuppies prefer Audis and BMWs to Mercedes-Benz? That Lexus is probably the best luxury brand of automobile except for being painfully boring? That Lincoln may stop making Town Cars, leaving the lives of New York investment bankers slightly less vanilla? As they say in Thailand, "Same, same, but different". Sounds like semantics to me. Funny thing, that the speaker is a semantics professor. Wish I could remember his name.
All of this is leading towards two conclusions. First, I loathe hipness. Always have. Always well. Being presentably dressed, driving a decent car (reliable and bland, or otherwise) - all of it really doesn't matter. Better, I suppose, to be well dressed. But being hip for the sake of being hip is, well, shallow. I recall a Zagat restaurant review quoting a surveyor when commenting that the restaurant is "refreshingly hipster free" and I remembered that hipsters are a loathful phenomonon - as is anything obsessed with any shallow and self-serving pursuit (e.g., investment bankers, rats, real estate agents, telesales jockeys, etc.).
Second, it's time to broaden my search because all of this Web 2.0 software nonsense borders on hip for the sake of hipness. Yes, Kaboodle is a great service. And yes, thanks to whatever del.icio.us is, I now know how to forge a Southwest "A" boarding pass (I bet they'll have that loophole closed by Friday, at the latest). But how useful is this stuff, really? Will it change lives like the pill, quinine, penicillin, or orthoscopic surgery? Or will it change lives more like U2? There has to be something out there worth pursuing for a lifetime...
Maybe this rambling is a direct result of talking to the CEO and founder of a medical device firm today... Nah.
Note: U2 was probably a bad musical example, given Bono's activist style (and new firm).
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