An Apology To All Hipsters

Listen. I’m going to be completely honest here.

The truth of the matter is, I hate hipsters. I really do.

They clothe themselves in daisy crowns, oversized jumpers, galaxy print apparel and Uggs, drifting around in a waif-like state. Oh, and the music. Have I mentioned the music? They listen to obscure bands that no sane person has ever heard of, with strange band names like Dark Side Of The Eclipse or Incandescent Bones. I don’t even know. (Alright, so I’m obviously exaggerating here.)

Also, if you ever, ever follow a hipster on Instagram, you’d know that they exclusively use the T1 filter on VSCO cam on every single photo. To make matters worse, the most meaningless photos would be captioned with a deep and pretentious phrase. Say, a photo of a chair in a room. And I quote, “bring me back to the past/where life was less complicated/and my soul was whole and not broken into fragile pieces/ like stained glass windows shattered with too much pressure”.

I mean, come on! It’s just a chair. It’s a perfectly normal chair in a perfectly normal room. Take your poetry elsewhere. Maybe to Starbucks, where you can sip on your fat-free chai tea latte while sitting in a corner crafting out your long-suffering thoughts like a pained writer.

I hate hipsters and their overbearing, tiresome ways.

Or at least, I really used to.

Let me explain. The day things changed went like this:
It’s 9pm on a Sunday, and I am stuck at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf trying to bang out as many slides as I can for my final marketing presentation. At this point, I have already consumed an amount of caffeine my coffee dependent aunt would be ashamed of. I feel so awake and jittery that I could burst out of the door and charge into oncoming traffic. My hands are shaking, and if you were to disturb me, I would throw my concrete slab of a textbook at your head and burst into tears.

Oh and of course, right then, sailing into Coffee Bean comes a girl that is the epitome of hipster. She’s hit the motherload of hipsterness. Messy bunned hair, oversized jumper, the works. The absolute bane of my existence. Till this day, I cannot pinpoint why a rage so fiery blossomed up in me at the sight of her. Maybe it was the caffeine. Maybe it was my unrivaled prejudice. Maybe it was the stress from my final project due the next day. Anyway, I look up and give the back of her the most fantastic eye-roll with all my disgust condensed into a single glance. (I am a terrible person, I know.)

She orders a green tea latte and sits down at the table opposite mine.

After one and a half hours of slogging through the pain of work, the caffeine has worn off and I decide to drag myself back home. The world is a little hazy and a headache is forming- the cons of a post-caffiene buzz. While in the process of stumbling towards the door, I hear a distinct splash behind me. I turn, and standing there is a teenage male with his drinks splashed over his nice red Supras and plastic cups on the floor. Everyone is just staring. They always do. I distinctly remember my first thought being, well; at least his Supras are red. They won’t stain that badly.

I’m torn between helping him clean up the mess or leaving, absolving myself from the crime of ignoring someone in need. I mean he’s old enough to take care of himself, right? It’s not my responsibility.

It’s then, when everyone is just staring at him, that Hipster Girl rushes up with a wad of napkins. She rolls up the sleeves of her oversized sweater, picks up the sticky cups on the floor and tosses them into the bin. The napkins are thrust into the boy’s hands. Now Teenage Boy and Hipster Girl are talking and smiling. I suppose he’s thanking her.

I turn and walk out of the coffee shop.

I feel awful. I felt awful. I feel awful when I think about this, and I felt awful on the train ride home that day. I couldn’t even bring myself to help someone, and neither could anyone else, except the hipster I so abhorred. I misjudged her so terribly, and assumed that she was pretentious, and elevated herself above everyone else. But she didn’t. I did. She helped, while I couldn’t care less.

So this is an apology to all hipsters: I’m sorry for being the pretentious one. I’m sorry for thinking that I could ever define how someone should act.

Sometimes romanticizing things is the only way to help you get through tough times. Maybe that’s why you caption your Instagram posts the way you do. Maybe wearing galaxy print tees and daisy chains make you feel beautiful. Maybe the music you listen to is the best thing you’ve ever heard. I don’t know, but I do know this- your kind of different is great. Stay great.