The radio
is a success story of ruining songs after repeated use: “Blurred Lines” by
Robin Thicke being the prime example. My eardrums have been trained to repel
the unfortunately catchy tune, making it painful when I hear the first strains
wafting from my car stereo for the 700th time.
Overplayed
songs make me seriously consider taking the hipster-y “radio no-go” approach to
music. According to my own observation as well as commonly held stereotypical beliefs,
someone who labels themself as a “hipster” carries a vintage safety pin in the
pocket of their plaid, flannel shirt to “pop” culture, letting the media buried
under the Billboard charts and box office rankings ooze awesomeness into their
earthenware mugs of black coffee.
Maybe that’s why they seem so
chill, I
thought. Not listening to the radio eliminates
the rise in blood pressure from grossly overplayed songs.
Subcultures
(such as that of hipsterdom) are pervasive in the American macro-culture. The
human consciousness is attracted to building walls and drawing lines, assigning
people and things to categories based on similarities. Hipsters are just one example
of a subculture having its own uniform, language, and thought patterns.
Despite
subcultures like indie rockers, athletes, rednecks, swaggers, techies, youth pastors,
dead beats, preps, and emergent professionals holding their own unspoken
constitutions and pre-conceived notions by onlookers, no culture is sterilized and
boxed existing only in conjunction amongst others like eggs in a carton.
Every
person, within every subculture, beautifully bleeds across lines drawn in our
minds into a messy, amazing conglomeration of being. I’m sure I could find a
hipster that secretly jams out to Chris Brown, or a redneck that reads
Tennyson, or a football player that collects vintage photographs. People limit
themselves to cultural lines based on an idea of “normal” that only exists because
those it constrains have never thought to fight it.
While
Robin Thicke’s obnoxiously overplayed song is about lines in a different
context, I think every line dividing people is “blurred.” Every person on this
planet is “an exception to the rule;” a blend of character and interests and attitudes
that create a striking jumble of interesting imperfectness, unable to be clearly
defined or categorized. And this is why, not only hipsters, but every
subculture, is a joke. Because every dividing line between people with
perceived differences is blurred; common experience and shared perceptions
blending together to create uniqueness within every person.
