The McDonald's Coporation has created a new radio spot titled Confessions of an Ex-Hipster. In it a young man tells us that fancy coffee drinks turned him into a turtleneck-wearing, French-film-adoring, indie-rock-enjoying dirtball. Luckily, McDonald's came to his rescue with a new line of fancy coffee drinks, and now he is able to watch football, wear khaki pants, and give people high fives. Thanks, Mickey Ds! There is a television companion to this ad which features two "hipsters" in a coffee shop discussing McDonalds' new drink selection over, what else, fancy coffee drinks. In the end they throw off the shackles of hipsterdom to embrace a new life. One of them is wearing a scarf, by the way.These ads, particularly the radio version, irk me. Not because I considered myself a hipster, in fact, the hipsters I used to encounter before moving to the suburbs annoyed me just by existing, but because I'm not sure McDonalds knows what a hipster is exactly. First, let's look at Ronald McDonald's definition of hipster:
hipster: a young man who wears turtlenecks, hangs out in coffee shops, watches French films, listens to indie rock and does not regularly bathe.
Turtlenecks? I think you're confusing hipsters with beatniks. Not bathing? That seems more of a hippy thing to me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe hipsters are the new beatniks, the new hippies. Maybe they are, like, these scary mutant hybirds of the two. I don't know. Most of the hipsters I've observed or known though care too much about their appearance to not shower and wear turtlenecks exclusively. To help McDonalds out, I checked some other sources for a more accurate definition of hipster. First, I visited the Urban Dictionary and found this defnition from someone called Lexi:
hipster: Someone who thinks that they are being "special" and "unique" for liking some underground bullshit no one else cares about. And they pointlessly look down on people who don't know anything about indie culture, because that's the only thing they know anything about. They're quick to call the rest of the world conformists when in reality, they are the ones conforming by partaking in a "too cool for mainstream so i am going to reject it by looking and acting like a grungy asshole" way of life only to seem uber-fashionable. They just end up looking like idiots.
Obviously, Lexi has an axe to grind, so I went to a more reputable site, Dictionary.com:
hipster: hiphugger underpants for women or girls.
Listen, McDonalds, for better or worse, hipsters exist in our modern society. But why alienate them...I mean, even more than they already alienate themselves? You got that whole Dollar Menu-naire thing going, right? Who do you think those Menu-naires are? Hipsters...at least the one's without trust funds. Hipsters are poor, it's part of who the are, their badge of honor if you will. If you have them thinking it's the McDonald's Corporation's goal to eradicate their species, they will abandon you and take their money to another dollar menu, say one that serves square burgers or something that claims to be a burrito of some kind.
Plus, I like French films, indie rock, football, frilly coffee drinks, and wearing khaki pants. I feel I'm well rounded. High fiving, though, will NEVER be cool. So, McDonalds, lay off the hipsters, quit polluting the airwaves with your hate speech, and just
STOP ALREADY!
