The Hipster is dead! Long live the Crapster!

By PATRICK MAY

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Though the death of the hipster has long been hypothesized, a recent Metro article may signal the consumer identity's complete demise. Entitled "Keep up with the skinny-jeans set," the article stressed the necessity of getting a library card to look smart, rolling your own cigarettes and not drinking Pabst because "it's cheesy now." Whether this was written subversively or in total earnest hardly matters. Getting half-assed coverage in a mass market, drone newspaper means the end of any trend. No self-respecting elitist would be caught dead next to an article about Bon Jovi.

Let me clear one thing up: I know there's no such thing as the hipster. Like the media always talks about The Media (those "other" biased talking heads), no one admits to being a hipster. To admit to being a hipster is tantamount to proclaiming oneself a "poseur," a term that's gone out of style but is synonymous, paradoxically, with "hipster." By definition, real hipsters leave themselves undefined. The Hipster only exists in capital H form, a vague, platonic idea that no one cops to embodying. With that in mind, let me state that I don't believe I'm a hipster (I hate music, I hate sunglasses, I'm fat).

Still, I'm curious: What new fad will usurp the hipster's domain?

The only option left is crap. Think about it: The hipster draws power from the ability to sift through crap at yard sales, vintage stores and the Salvation Army to find prestigious "hip" stuff. And what's left over? Crap. Stone Cold Steve Austin T-shirts, Aztec shorts and items adorned with Looney Tunes characters. These once-worthless artifacts of the worst common denominator will become the crapster's prized possessions. The crapster will listen solely to the music left over after the hipster's pillaged the tape box: Yaz, Bette Midler and the soundtrack to Vision Quest. The crapster will only read Lee Iacocca's autobiography, Perry Mason mysteries and The Complete Major Prose Plays of Henrik Ibsen (if they're lucky).

The crapster will immerse themselves in knockoff Disney movies and exercise videos. The crapster will wear only bland-colored pocket tees and stonewashed jeans and pleated pants with Taz and Tigger patches. Baggy white shirts with commemorative moon-landing postage stamps on them. Parrot dresses. Fichus-print skirts. You get the idea.

What's great about the crapster fad is there can be no elitism. Thrift stores may run out of cool stuff, but there will always be more crap. And I'm not talking about the stylized ugliness of the DIY subculture, or the meticulous dirtiness of a crust punk, or the banal tackiness of the science student uniform. I'm talking about real crap.

To prepare yourself for this new wave of fashion, watch Slacker and Go Fish. Everybody dresses like crap in both films. The crapster is a throwback to the slacker in many ways, but now the common consumer has the upper hand, as there's simply so much more crap to buy! Plus, if you're like me, you won't even have to buy new clothes.