Something strange has been happening to my friends, both online and off. It goes something like this:
OK, so that might not seem so strange to you, but I know Justin. Justin is a killer photographer who loves
track bikes and drinking
Lone Star and going to see shows. Justin isn’t the type of person to be Twittering about the Fiesta Bowl. Justin, I would wager, has never worn
burnt orange.
But there it is, clear as day. And you have noticed it too…the indie friends and D&D gamers that you know, the ones who eschewed sports and jockiness as a general defining characteristic, have suddenly started debating Teixiera going to the Yankees and Matt Cassel’s free agency situation. They have become informed, engaged, well…fans.
I can’t claim to be any different. Anyone who knew me in college would be aghast at my fandom these days. I follow the Red Sox like I have money on the games. I got up at 6am last spring to watch the exhibition games in Tokyo. I even follow the Globe Sports section on Twitter so I can be the first to know when Varitek re-signs (please re-sign!).
Why has this happened? I think it has to do with the quest for meaning. The quest, that is, for Authenticity.
My favorite blog in the entire internet,
Hipster Runoff, has made it a central mission to define this desire for authenticism, the science of explaining what it means for something to be authentic, and why things that are authentic appeal so strongly to those of us who are constantly searching for what’s next. And it goes something like this:
In an increasingly scripted, focus grouped and branded existence, the true things, the authentic experiences, are becoming harder and harder to find. We feel starved for something familiar and worthwhile. Sports provides this, not only because it’s the only thing left on television that is almost always unpredictable in its outcome, but because it is a classic thing to participate in. It is a pastime.
It’s trite to say we’re all searching for something true, but I’ll say it anyway: We are all searching for something true. We want to be connected participants of things that are genuine, that aren’t trying to trick us. It’s why we constantly hunt for
vintage Belstaff Trialmaster jackets on eBay, why we listen to Merle Haggard on vinyl rcords played on
vintage turntables and
tube amps.
You know this to be true. It’s why we got into Lone Star and track bikes to begin with, isn’t it? Both, in their way, connect us to something that has its roots in our collective culture. Lone Star becomes a vessel for us to connect a simple, more honest (and nostaglic) time, and track bikes allow us to be part of a niche, specialized and purely functional sport. Jack Daniels, despite its being featured at TGI Friday’s, is still the de facto whisky. Polaroid, despite becoming a watered down brand for second tier TVs, is still equated with precious, poorly-exposed topless photos.
These things are all genuine, even if the way we experience them is not.
And it’s not just sports and beer. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of my friends, including fellow Barbarians, are genuinely
getting into guns (or, for those of us in
NYC, the idea of guns). In fact, I called that as the breakout trend for 2009
on my Twitter. It would seem that as our cultural history gets more and more strip-mined of authentic totems, we have to dig deeper. We have to go to the most honest, the most pure, the most authentic. And in doing so, we have to betray the old definitions on what it meant to be alt.
Mainstream is the new alt.
The Internet may not have begun this race to authenticity, but it certainly sped it up. Suddenly, anyone with a decent internet connection can be as alt as anyone else. Trends used to be born geograhically- cities were the epicenter of cool, and eventually it trickled along the highways to middle America. Now hipness is a science, one that can be learned, studied, and challenged. The Internet allows trends to be born, thoroughly researched, surface, and die at an alarming rate, effectively speeding up the evolution of the culture. Alt culture has up til now been a self-referential snake eating its own tail, and suddenly it finds itself gnawing at the back of its head.
Of course, there is one deeper, more authentic and traditional trend that has yet to be embraced: Religion. If that happens; if you start seeing alt-beards at Sunday Mass…well, you heard it here first.
