WWotD - 7 March 2012

App developers, here is a great idea for a new app: "Hipster or Cool"? The app would allow me to take a picture and give me feedback as to whether something is hipster or cool. I am desperate for this tool, since I find the difference to be inscrutable. Living in Seattle, I am confronted everywhere by potentially hipster [or cool?] beings and goings-on. I am terrified that one day, I will end up liking something so über-hipster that I am ostracized from society.

I have to acknowledge it's possible that Seattle has already been thoroughly infiltrated by hipsters, in which case:



Developers, note a potential problem for the hipster algorithm: when something is so desperately hipster...and thus so completely uncool...that it is rendered totally cool. This is how I reconcile my adoration of Seventies' and Eighties' Schlock Rock.

so·lip·sism

 noun \ˈsō-ləp-ˌsi-zəm, ˈsä-\

Definition of SOLIPSISM

: a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing;also : extreme egocentrism

— so·lip·sist noun

— so·lip·sis·tic adjective

— so·lip·sis·ti·cal·ly adverb
from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solipsism