Nothing You Do is Exciting and New

We are a society made up of people who set the trends, people who follow the trends, and people who watch both those other groups with baffled amusement.

I fall in to the last group.

The last group understands that trends are ridiculous. No matter how edgy you think you’re being, no matter how fresh you think your idea is, it’s been done before.

Fashion is cyclical. We seem the same styles come back every 40 years or so, with very few updates to discern them from the last cycle, but like sheep, we all act like the idea is so modern and exciting.

Skinny jeans and boots? What a visionary combination! I wonder who thought of that?

Thanks for the fashion forward advice 1984.

I’m sick of trends and the people who follow them, thinking they’re somehow being edgy. The fact is, most of today’s trends are either straight up fucking stupid, or something that is fully recycled from something that has been done before.

#1. “Ironic” T-shirts

I recently got congratulated for wearing an ironic t-shit.  First of all, as a professional writer, I’m going to go ahead and promise all of you that a t-shirt cannot indeed, be ironic;

i·ro·ny – noun

the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

In short hipster, your shirt can’t be ironic because it is an inanimate object that is incapable of using sarcasm.

My ‘ironic’ shirt featured the phrase ‘task terminator’ in bold black letters on a blue background. I got it as part of some team building exercise when I was still a welcome and appreciated member of corporate America. I got fired from the job for being very bad at it, but I got to keep the shirt.

I considered it a win.

Anyway, on a massively hung-over Saturday morning (the kind of Saturday where you need to delete all your Facebook status updates and check your call history) I used this shirt to wipe a small amount of vomit off my bathroom floor.

Then, on account of the fact that it did not smell extremely bad, I elected to wear it. At which point, I became an incredibly cool hipster who wears ironic t-shirts.

I don’t spend 45 minutes every day making my hair messy and picking out the perfect ‘I don’t give a fuck t-shirt’ to show off how cool I am and how little I care to the world.

I dress this way because I am an alcoholic drug user with bad vision. And nothing about me is ironic.

#2. Twerking

I love how shaking your ass suddenly became the newest dance craze, like it’s never been done before. Look people, Miley Cyrus didn’t invent twerking. It’s been around for awhile;

The only thing that changed was the camera angle. In 1956, the camera focused on Elvis’ gyrating pelvis. In 2013, it flipped around and focused on Miley Cyrus’ chicken butt instead. A new angle does not a new dance craze make.

#3. Ombre Hair

This new fashion forward ‘trend’ makes it cool to be a lazy bitch who lets her roots grow out, while her ends remain four shades lighter.

There are actually hair dye kits that will allow you to create this ‘I’m a crazy recluse who no longer dyes her hair’ look. Weirdly, my hair is already doing this, because I’m actually a crazy recluse who no longer dyes her hair.

Between my six inch roots and my ‘ironic’ t-shirts, I might be the most unintentionally trendy person on the planet.

#4. ‘Cool’ People Who Like ‘Uncool’ Things

“I’m such a nerd!” has become the hippest new way to subtly tell everything that you’re not as shallow as a puddle. I see morons on Facebook loudly proclaiming “I fucking love science!” when they can’t even spell the word photosynthesis, let alone describe what it is. Ten years ago, Star Wars was for nerds like me. Now every poser who sports a pair of fake horn rimmed glasses is telling me how much they love Star Wars.

Listen posers, if you don’t have a fully built counterpoint, complete with family trees and timelines, as to why Chewbacca was clearly from Kashyyyk, as opposed as Endor, as alleged in the famous Johnny Cochran Chewbacca Defense,  you don’t “love Star Wars”. You’re just a poser.

Every now and then, I’ll make the mistake of assuming that humans are the most highly evolved of all creatures. Then, I remember trends. Nowhere else in the animal kingdom do you see animals doing things with the goal of being called the ‘coolest.’ Lions don’t stop hunting gazelles because gazelles are ‘so 1985’. Birds don’t fly west instead of south, because all the trendiest spots are in Santa Fe.

Only human beings are so desperate to stand out that they wind up conforming instead.