In the Hipster article I wrote for Thought Catalog I wrote a bunch of shit about races and hipsters going to the military.
I don't know if this makes any sense.
I always liked how Norman Mailer said that masturbation was like evil and how you shouldn't do it, and all kinds of crazy things about women and black people.
I have never really believed that he even believed those things.
It just seemed like he was saying insane shit for fun.
I believe to be fun to say insane shit.
Saying that hipsters should go to the military is insane and has no real purpose.
Saying that black people don't become hipsters isn't really important but I knew it would get a reaction.
You see
this is where the fun is:
If you say something insane like, "Hipsters should go to the military"
You will bring out reactions that might tell the truth about certain people.
Like someone commented, "You think it is bad that young creative people are choosing not to kill people in the name of a country.... "
"There's always option Z) which is "don't invade other countries for domestic political/monetary reasons just because you fucking can". You make it sound as though it's inevitable or even right that American troops will be driving tanks up and down the side streets of sad little villages around the Middle East anyway, so, wouldn't it be cooler if Hipsters were driving those tanks, blaring Grizzly Bear and The Dirty Projectors over the PA and also sort of asking permission before raping and shooting the hot chicks at the village well?"
This is where the fun is:
They showed for me many common hipster beliefs. they proved my point that hipsters were against the military even more than I could.
Even though without the military oil wouldn't be so cheap, the shipping lanes in the ocean wouldn't be protected, no Japanese cell phones and video game systems and computers, no chinese crap for you to buy. Without the U.S. military North Korea would have taken South Korea. Endless amounts of shit.
Talking complete shit about the military just shows how ass backward your brain is.
It is one thing to say, "The United States Government have deployed the U.S. Military to do some shitty things."
But at the same time the military protects our borders and the ships that travel the oceans and the air so commercial planes can fly.
7 comments:
I appreciate you saying controversial things for the purpose of making people expose their ignorance.
Public service isn't for everyone, and it shouldn't be immune to criticism (especially when the people doing it are trying to do something coercive as individuals or part of a larger group), but criticism from experience or good information is much better than criticism informed by movies.
I'd much rather listen to my ex-Army intel friend of mine's criticisms based on her lousy experiences (her job was redundant, there were pointless rules for everything, and the Army didn't give a shit about helping people deal with culture shock) than hipsters whose most significant experience with the military was watching Full Metal Jacket.
Unfortunately, this is the Internet. People will be stupid. But thank you again for trying to fix that.
As an attendee of the recent n + 1 lecture, "What was the hipster" I found myself drawn to your post, Noah.
Funny that Adam makes reference to "Full Metal Jacket" in the comment above; I thought of it while reading the original article. The character with the peace symbol on his war helmet was the only thing that came to me when I cross referenced "hipster" and "military".
The contradiction of symbols seems quintessentially hipsterrian.
Perhaps there are no hipsters in the military.
Or, perhaps, middle or upper middle class "seeker" types who have joined the military can be viewed as expressing the same urges (defiance, independence, a desire to test themselves against a larger world, to learn and experience things beyond what their parents'____) as their Brooklyn brethren;)
Joker's not a hipster. He's a pretty straightforward Bildungsroman/realist sort of protagonist; a young man of unusual sensitivity to justify the realist writing perspective, trying to figure out what his place in society is, and at the end accepting it. The thing that is not "hipsterrian" about him is that, at the end, after mercy-killing the NVA sniper, he understands and accepts the implications of being a killer when he was, when asked previously about who he was and why he was in Vietnam, as glib as... well, people on the Internet commenting on a post about hipsters.
I don't see that acceptance of a role or its implications, much less that *particular* role, among hipsters. I think Noah's on to something when he says that most hipsters base their opinions on Beat philosophy. The thing that bothers me about hipsters is that they rarely go beyond the Beats to try to see alternate perspectives on things. And as revolutionary as they were, the Beats didn't address things like how to be helpful to other people, so hipsters, to me, wind up being generally useless.
Music is a means to deal with war anyway. Hipsters find comfort in music whether or not it is about war. The truth is, it means nothing to go to war. Really.
Hipsters love meaning. There is meaning in to revolt. They find meaning in revolution so.
I joined the army looking for money to go to college
But they didn't pay me a quarter of what they fucking promised
Extended my tour, treated me like a sucker
That's the reason offices get fragged, motherfucker
Don't give me speeches on how you respect and you love me,
But no body armor in a lightly armored Humvee?
My family's lonely, and you want me to re-enlist for thirty grand homie?
No.
Immortal Technique said that. Maybe it is relevant. Maybe not.
i feel like none of this makes any sense...oh yeah thats in the title
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