Mongo Nation

A Helpful Guide To Self-Identification

By Moses Amadeus

You may have noticed, while perusing the interwebs of late, that much is being made of this whole “hipster” fad that is sweeping the nation…

To some, this is a shocking revelation. To others, it’s old news. But for young people on either side of that fence, one glaring question rears it’s stylishly keffiyah’d head:

Am I a hipster?

Fact: To a hipster, the actual word “hipster” is as offensive as the “N-word” is to a black person (though like black people, they are allowed to use the word as a reference to one another). This makes it difficult to identify hipsters, as they are about as likely to self-identify as they are to wear a Members Only jacket without the requisite irony that comes along with it. So in order to know whether or not you are a hipster, you must first try and understand what a hipster actually is.

Are any of these guys hipsters? Not if you ask them they’re not. And yet…

In a recent article in AdBusters, Douglas Haddow (who I suspect is himself a closet hipster; he writes on anti-consumerist blog after all. Hipsters love to pretend to hate corporations!) described hipsters as:

“An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.”

Essentially, what Doug is saying is that hipsters are the cancer that is killing “Cool”… That they are cannibals of fashion and culture with no discernible socio-political agenda, and that they are incapable or giving birth to anything new or original. But how did they get this way, and how does this help us to identify them?

Hipster fashion is quite broad, and yet you still know one when you see one.

Haddow goes on to say:

“Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.”

Ok. So basically, a hipster is an agent of the man, an unwitting accomplice of a runaway capitalist system that sells them the very things that they believe make them a part of the “counterculture”, an enemy of the “faceless corporate empires” that are enslaving the rest of humanity (Like Apple, a hipster favorite). This would explain how they are duped into buying Pabst Blue Ribbon and V-neck shirts, longtime symbols of the working class. The working class enjoys these things because a 6-pack of Pabst generally costs around five dollars, and V-neck shirts, the less popular cousin to the crew-neck shirt, are sold in packs of 4 or 5 for around 13-25 dollars. This fact will be used for our first litmus test: Read the rest of this entry →

WTF? No, no seriously, WTF?!

By Moses Amadeus

Goddamnit, I can’t believe that half of these mongoloids actually pay someone to make them look like this. I understand that it must be difficult to dress for an award show honoring music videos on a network that doesn’t show music videos…

…Not everyone can pull off the “ironically soulless commercialism” look with a matching fake smile and vapid political statement. Plus, there’s a certain morbidity to celebrating the death of something, violating it’s corpse and then pissing on the memory of it amirite?

Well, attempts were made, most of which ended up in abject failure. To help lighten things up, I’ve gone to the trouble of helping some of these losers make better decisions at their next award show/telethon/coke party or whatever by suggesting a place in which their various terrible outfits might have been more appropriate. Enjoy!

Ludacris is looking kinda like a valet in that get-up. Did Luda “MC Hammer” all his money away already or what?

Pink looks like the top of a goddamn circus tent, no joke.

I’m pretty sure I saw Lindsay Lohan wearing that outfit whilst working the bar at the Hard Rock in Vegas. Read the rest of this entry →

The spawning pool of the nation’s hipster population!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Last week we examined some of the various characters that make up the landscape of art school, a magical place where people go for four to six years to escape reality and fritter away their parents’ money so that they can tell their fellow mortgage brokers that they “used to be a really talented artist” years later when their family cuts them off and they’re forced to get a real job.

Now you might ask yourself: “Gee whiz, is everyone that goes to art school an egocentric idiot with a funny haircut that exists in a fantasy world of their own making, oblivious to the fact that people don’t actually get paid to paint pictures of their nuts, and even if they did, they sure wouldn’t have learned how to do it in a school that charges double what a regular school would charge to learn something that’s actually useful?” The short answer is an emphatic “yes”, but since that was a very long question, the long answer lies withing the following profiles:

The Emotional Wreck

Way, way, waaaaay too much information. Every time.

The Emotional Wreck thinks that art school is like their therapy or something. Science is unable to explain why it is that The Emotional Wreck doesn’t just go see an actual therapist, which would not only be much cheaper, but also much more effective. The Emotional Wreck will always make the rest of the class uncomfortable with her film about being raped by her father, or her interior design project that reflects her uterus experiencing a third trimester miscarriage.

The Narcissist

I would have shooped my ears a little smaller, had it been me…

At least one person in every class in art school is a Narcissist. Every project by The Narcissist will be a self-portrait of some sort. The Narcissist is in art school to “take a swim in lake me” or some such bullshit. Not surprisingly, The Narcissist is also a chronic masturbator.

Read the rest of this entry →

50 Cent is out and George Lucas is in.

Tired hip-hop fashion designer Marc Ecko is hoping to reinvigorate interest among the audiences he’s alienated with his corny G-Unit lines by tapping into a universal theme that very cool and very nerdy consumers can both stand proudly behind: Star Wars.

Where Leatherface would shop if he had internet access

Fur is so passé. This season, Serial Killer Chic is in, thanks to Skinbag!

Hipster Buffalo Bill: “Would you f**k me? I’d f**k me. I’d f**k me hard. Right after I finish my latte.”

Skinbag makes a range of products for the discerning maniac from a synthetic human skin that looks disgustingly real. (Seriously, it has wrinkles and veins and everything.) Look just like “Buffalo Bill” in stylish jackets and skirts that appear to have been carved right off of a freshly butchered transient!

Skinbag also makes camera bags and even courier laptop bags for the tech-savy whackjob with lots of money and disproportionately less common sense. Get yours today, and shame your family by dressing like a freak even though it’s not even Halloween time!

Made from leftovers of fat people after plastic surgery! Just kidding! (I think)

You can’t fault Skinbag for being original. But I think it’s safe to say that it is pretty gross.