#28: Be condescending

It's a good thing that hipster behaviour is only for hipsters. It wouldn't get you far as you climb the corporate ladder, or win you friends in the McDonalds lineup. Hipsters can be impulsive, grumpy, condescending and boring. To adult eyes, they are sometimes impossible.

But from a hipster's point of view, he's just learning to make his way in a complicated world. He feels misunderstood. He has lots of ideas (not good ones) but often no way of carrying them out. He sees big people doing all sorts of interesting things that he either can't manage, or they won't let him enjoy. What's a hipster to do then but become an eclectic mirage of counter culture - and fall into a heap of outrage if you disagree?

Such is my life right now. On Saturday I had supper with some friends, and my dear hipster friend was there. This is a person who, on December 29th, shut down just about every conversation I tried to start up. They were moody, sullen, distracted. I was back in Junior High. I tried not to take it personally, but when they got up and walked away from me when I was mid-sentence, I had had enough. I decided to take a "don't speak until spoken to" approach.

Saturday was the first time she spoke directly to me in 3 months.

"{Name} told me your musical went really well, that the accents were really good. Did they have a vocal coach?"
"Yes, ..."
"Who?"
"Me!"

Silly me for thinking she might actually think I could be good at something.

To be honest, part of my motivation for doing this project is to walk a mile in her shoes. Why does she act the way she does? Perhaps I can understand her boredom and displeasure with me if I have some more insight into what her life might actually be like. It sucks. I'm actually getting really sick of being a hipster.

For the rest of the evening I acted bored, elitest, self absorbed and condescending, all in the name of parody of course. It wasn't hard considering I'd had about 3 hours of sleep, and the wine was getting to me, but during coffee I began to perk up and act more like real me. It's hard to keep the hipster act up for too long. And my hipster glasses broke! So I didn't even wear them for them to know I was acting.

The night ended with my dear hipster friend (who has no idea about my blog, what a shame) insisting that if I go to Rome next year it would be, and I quote "Odd not to go to the Colosseum." This is the same person who acts like she's from Europe because her dad is an immigrant to Canada. No amount of Persian rugs and samovars are going to change tha fact that she was born and raised in Winnipeg. And always will be.

How's that for condescending?

Quote for today:

"The marks that humans leave are too often scars." - John Green, The Fault in our Stars