Fun facts:
Post 9/11 college educated kids who moved to New York and other large cities for work were quite the force to be reckoned with. If you remember this was the time that giant “Flash Mobs” were created. These pranks were initiated by creatives but quickly grew through the internet to include anyone with a device. Now imagine what the hippies could have accomplished in the 70s with global interconnectivity.
Like the hippies before them this loosely affiliated movement (which was by modern definition a splinter group) of do-gooders were denounced in big media by painting all of them as unwashed drug addicts, poking fun at their destitute but inventive fashion and off-brand listening. It is important to note that in both instances criticism of these subcultures rose from giant conglomerates. Both while the largest anti-war protests we’d ever seen were happening in America and around the world. Both eras saw a rise in College educated kids questioning their government’s motives and military actions overseas. The enormous difference between hippies and hipsters was the latter’s ability to not only form masses on cue but to successfully act out orchestrated tasks. Each act spawned another, larger and more lavish “happening”. These movements were dangerous to big war during times of protest so the same corporations that (still) make bombs and network news shat on the hipsters in the exact same way they did the hippies. Through their elite publishing houses and television networks.
As your post implies they were successful in their effort to label and demean people who question war as directionless fashion victims. So if you’ve broken that wall and accepted your inner hipster, CONGRATS! ride proud! You’ll have to get some skinny wheels if you wanna keep up though. Otherwise you’re just a bike messenger and thats a whole other realm of unshowered.
That bike IS amazing!
