“Being a Dickhead is Cool”: the video, and the fallout
by Petit Fours
So, at the weekend, this happened.
It made some of us adjust our perspex-lensed faux RayBans and reassess. Perhaps it made us take them off altogether and decide not to wear them again. It’s a video, jaunty in tone and satirical in import that dissects the behaviours, tastes and clothing styles popularly termed as “hipster” that are prevalent in East London nightlife.
Though “Being a Dickhead is Cool” is aimed at nerdy straight boys, pretty much every single word of it except “I’m writing a magazine about my balls” could also apply to that branch of the UK lesbian community that tends to socialise in Hackney, Shoreditch and Dalston. In fact, a lot of those boys in the pictures look like lesbians. Or maybe lesbians look them? Who knows any more.
Anyone who has ever got out of the tube at Old Street will probably find something to wince at in this video – whether it’s the use of the words “vintage” or “lol” or the bit about iPhone photo apps and blogs *cough cough cough*.
What to say? Well a lot of that shit that we do and our friends do in the E-postcodes is pretentious and a bit stupid. IT’S TRUE. Much of East London is largely ridiculous. Does this kill Shoreditch/Dalston/synthpop/street fashion blogs/coloured leggings (or “everything” as my friend put it)? well…, it sure makes you think about why you’re going there, listening to this or suffering that uncomfortable feeling that you’re being given a wedgie by a plastic bag and that you look slightly foolish, but I don’t think it’s going to kill anything. Except perhaps non-prescription glasses..
empty empty frames
This sort of parody often only increases the mythology of the original. I mean, Nathan Barley did this about five years ago and did it stop Hoxton? No! It only revved it up even more till it grew to engulf Dalston as well. And last time I looked, Vice Magazine was still going strong. Monty Python had a crack at the English upper classes back in 1970s and goodness knows they’re still around.
So yes hipsters are vapid, consumerist and irritating as this Time Out article Why The Hipster Must Die laid out back in 2007, but at least they’re trying to be interesting.. and whether it’s the snobby upper classes, or money-obsessed bankers, or thuggish lad culture or bitchy straight women – all scenes have their bad habits.
And a little voice in my head says hey we’re gay, this is our culture. For the next few decades at least, the average gay is just not going to have a straightforward semi-detached 2.4 children lifestyle. There’s a reason why so many of us are in London, not in small rural villages tilling the soil and wearing fleeces or whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing, and there’s a reason why lots of us hang out in the areas in London where it’s alright to kiss your girfriend and wear gay clothes. And if you can also get a macchiato and wifi access, well all the frigging better. There’s a reason counter-culture and the gay scene are often closely associated. And it’s not just because we’re all twats.
Though I am chucking out my non-prescription glasses.
—–
BTW: The video is by a Youtube user called TheGrandSpectacular – anyone know who they are? They’ve just released one video, this one, on 9th September and they tweet here – @thegrandspec. Any tips?
Thanks petit fours.
silly tune/video. no doubt produced on their apple laptop?!
there’s an excess of these parodies. true, nathan barley along with the do’s and don’t section of Vice kind of paved the way for the piss-taking and stereotyping. And now we have many many many many amateur blogs, amateur illustrations, amateur youtube videos and amatuer songs that are all diluted versions previously covered ‘lets make a parody’ ground.
how many times do we need to hear this similar message? see it? retweet the link to this momentary gag?
In fact, perhaps there is room now for a parody of the parodies? Isn’t doing a ‘parody blog’ as much a part of the urban ‘to-do’ list as the neon leggings they laugh at?
seriously though, how many times do you see people like that walking around on the street, and think to yourself ‘what a wanker’. i mean, there’s being interesting, and there’s being so up yourself you brush your teeth from behind. anyway, this video is seven kinds of hilarious. ‘i organise a vegan crunk night’? bahhaahahaha.
I think the thing about hipsters that arouses so much ire is that they don’t really stand for anything. Sure, we can vaaaaaguely point to the kind of Guardian-reading, iPhone-obsessed, Tweeting, ‘new media and/or journalism and/or fashion’ industry job-having that hipsters share. But hipsters don’t really have an ideology beyond some vaguely fluffy liberal atheist dogma (and I say this as a fluffy liberal atheist). We don’t have any kind of political convictions beyond a ill-formed hatred of David Cameron, a fondness for Obama and a general apathy towards UK politics.
There is no ‘hipster movement’, no ‘hipster rebellion’. Just a bunch of pretty young things trying to get into all the right clubs and making sure they’re wearing the right clothes. Even the New York club kids of the 90s were rebelling against bourgeois, uptight Manhattan. In London, the hipsters are what everybody want to be. Hence Topman rolling out skinny jeans with the trousers rolled up. Hence Mel B getting an undercut. Hence the tourists now flooding Brick Lane. Subcultures lose all their bite and their relevance if they’ve got nothing to push back against. The hipster lifestyle, the hipster subculture are things entirely based on consumerism – not on ideology, like the hippies, not the production of artistic work, like the Beatniks or the original hipsters (the jazz musicians in the early 20th century who first coined the term) – hipsters are defined by what we wear, buy and consume. There’s something pretty loathsome in that.
And I say all that as a hipster. (Even though I really do need my reading glasses.)
I can’t understand what people see in this video. It doesn’t count as “satire” just to make a list of things that people do and wear! I think their envy is palpable.
Whatever happened to proof reading?
Envy! Indeed. Everyone’s just jealous.
Totally agree with green tea cupcake. Hipsters are all style and no substance. I have a certain dislike of the current East London aesthetic. In fact, I think it’s pretty dull and repetitive. Fair enough if you haven’t got an imagination, and you really do think that a pair of lenseless frames and a vintage cardi is the best look for you, but so many of the hipsters in London seem to be convinced they’re doing something enviable and unique, when, basically, they all look the same. I’m not just talking vintage culture, which is actually great for lots of reasons, but this really narrow stylistic direction the whole scene seems to be lapping up. It’s crazy that a video could list a series of unrelated trends/styles/items that so many people subscribe to.
What is most loathsome though, is the unfounded hostility and unshakeable apathy that many hipsters seem to synonymise with ‘cool’. Being a non-hispter working near Brick Lane, I spend my lunch breaks wandering around experiencing all that shit. It’s not nice.
okay. one thing about the clothes people wear.
in your stereotypical london bus you can have a woman in burqa, some hipster in a perforated sweater with a videogame theme, a goth teenager in a leather trenchcoat, a nun and a woman wearing a dress she spent £1000 on. Each would perfectly entitled to think the other ones’ clothes were ridiculous.
but – really it doesn’t mean that anyone is any more ridiculous than anyone else. it just depends what angle you are looking at it from. obviously the great thing about London is that you can wear whatever you want. in the small village i grew up in, you got looks if you went any more experimental than a beret.
some really interesting looks have come out of hipster fashionland and if you don’t like looking at them, well, just look at someone else.
not to go on about this. but I was just thinking about the cultural contribution of hipsters, and however consumerist they may be, I think hipsterdom has made being gay more socially acceptable.
one thing the Time Out writer mentions is that hipster culture has pillaged subcultures for its references: black culture and especially gay culture. Hence the vests, buzz cuts and androgyny..
While being gay became legally acceptable in the 70s, it hasn’t been considered cool or even beautiful until quite recently, largely thanks to being picked up by the mainstream through hipsterdom, through people like Agness Deyn or Alexa Chung.
Now an average straight 16 year old thinks it’s cool to dress like a lesbian. Rewind 20 years and lesbians were considered to be ugly and iredeemably unfashionable.
Through a fashion change comes a social change too, one that has been noticeable in recent years. In that sense hipsters do have a radical social impact, even though they may not intend it when picking up their latest pair of AmApp leggings.
i’m not sure that any of it is recognized as being part of lesbian culture – the same way when i see someone walking around wearing a sari, i don’t see it as being representative of the indian community. it’s great that people think that ‘dressing like lesbians’ is cool now, but i doubt they see it as ‘dressing like lesbians’ as much as they see it as part of a whole “new” fad – in much the same way hipster whatever is au fait right now, it could be just as cool in a minute to dress like colonel saunders – and i’m not sure that would represent a wider acceptance of fried chicken.
anyway, you can dress however you want and not be a wanker. but the minute you start walking around saying shit like ‘oh yes, i’m a hipster, a HIPSTER you hear’ you lose all street cred. and become a dickhead.
one time when i was trying to explain some idea about cultural capital and what made “cool” cool to my friend, she said to me “babes, cool people don’t talk about being cool”
Shoulda listened..
I can’t quite understand why Petit Fours keeps referring to a certain type of style as distinctly ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’? The fact of the matter is that all over London and most notably the east end, young people of ALL sexual preferences are ascribing to what they consider to be an ‘alternative’ and ‘against the grain’ subculture.
No, the DIckhead video is not necessarily trying to prove anything new and no, it doesn’t aim to change the world with its stance on hipsters but quite frankly, I don’t think it has promised otherwise. Yet it is exactly this kind of empty doctrine ‘progression’ that hipster’s seem to think they are purporting when they conform (and yes by looking like a carbon copy of a Topshop model you are conforming to a capitalist market) to these kinds of trends.
Just like Green Tea cupcake explains, there is no real ‘hispter rebellion’ at all. Just a vacuous and rather tiresome version of style that has now been imitated across the nation due to high street franchises and their awareness of just how easy it is to make a quick buck out of all the fools that think their doing something ‘totally sick’.
And one final point in response to Petit Fours; I am a native East Londoner but I’ve travelled a fair bit in rural areas of England and have hung out on granted smaller but a less pretentious gay scene. And I’m pretty sure I saw a few of them sipping on the odd cafe Lattes too; they just didn’t look like wankers doing it!
^ ‘Just a vacuous and rather tiresome version of style…’
Surely it’s just some of the people sporting ‘this style’ that are vacuous, not style itself- there is no style absolute.
What, is your turtle neck, cords and clarkes like really profound styling…..me thinks not…. and i’m not sure why you think these people look like wankers, that’s like them thinking you look like a dullard…which obviously would be equally wrong.
‘Av a word with yourself.
I think the main thing to note about this video is the fact the song is……awesome!
you lot need to stop taking yourself so seriously.
its a video and funny. just like every other parody taking a dig at everyones clothes. this is funny cos its true and we can all laugh at ourselves as most of us living in east london notice this shit alll the time.
ergh its ment to be a joke.
@Affluent. Yes whatever happened?
@affluent, @avec well – our highly paid team of crack subeditors were off the other day so i just had to do my own spellings
@PF,AFF – Not a bad job. Not at all. I bet your team of subeditors were recovering from serious work adiction spending loads of dosh on cookery books, yachts and dictionaries. I think I saw them in Iona.
You can all add the d.
x
As a slight tangent from the actual video; Devil’s Food Cake makes a good point about hipster ‘lesbian’ style not actually promoting the lesbian image or their visibility.
If anything, the fact that they’ve taken the ‘typical lesbian androgynous’ style and made it part of the hipster aesthetic has made us *more* invisible. Now when I’m walking down the street I don’t know if that cute girl wearing the skinny jeans and faux hawk is going to be interested in me or just another topshop fashion victim.
There is no real ‘lesbian style’, but in a time when it was difficult to come out and say you were gay, dressing a certain way was a good method of indicating to other potential partners that you were ‘part of the group’.
It was a way of us itentifying ourselves to each other and feeling like we were part of something bigger. Now that style’s been hijacked by the larger commercial media, what do we have left? Should we go back to coloured bandanas?
Incidentally, I do own a pair of non-prescription glasses, drink macchiatos and wear skinny jeans ;). The video itself is hilarious and we should all stop taking it so seriously…but until the hipsters stop taking *themselves* so seriously who knows. It’s interesting to note that this article has brought far more commenters out of the woodwork than more meaningful or important articles.
petit fours mentions the idea of cultural capital – and i guess the video is basically providing an inventory of the stylistic traits of a particular type of ‘habitus’, and is funny cos its pretty accurate. but the conditions for the type are maybe more whats interesting from some kind of class basis. why is the hipster look so coherent and so concentrated in this little chunk of east london, (and brooklyn?). defining ones arty creative self as distinct from the other established inhabitants? maybe thats why it seems a bit vulgar and ridiculous – the conspicuousness of the separation between the occupants of broadway market on a saturday and other hackneyites – especially if previously oppressed subcultures have been ‘pillaged’ for their style.
its always funny that wearing alt-fashionable clothes is the definition of cool, when actually it just makes you a nerd about clothes.
starbucks isnt accurate though – it would be an independent coffee place with leaf patterns poured on the top of the milk
I’m in love with myself. Yes, I might have to brake my heart and get a life.
oh yeah this was exactly the same thing as i wrote here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/21/hipsters-gay-people
Wait a minute. In the 90′s – which I presume is the 20 years ago referred to above – being a lesbian was cool. It was called ‘lesbian chic’ in those days… and was in the mainstream fashion press and so on. God, at the time my mum blamed the media making lesbianism look cool for making me gay… !
Hipsters haven’t somehow created lesbian acceptability or visibility.
Remember Cindy shaving KD? Rhona Cameron presenting Gaytime TV. Hufty on The Word?