Althouse: "Hipster littering."

March 23, 2014

"Hipster littering."

It's a trend, I'm telling you. See it. Record it. Know it.

26 comments:

David said...: Let us know when Camels start to reappear.; 3/23/14, 7:47 PM
Rob said...: It's an ironic homage to "Mad Men."; 3/23/14, 7:58 PM
Bayoneteer said...: I doubt it professor. Hipsters smoke American Spirit or hand-rolled cigs.; 3/23/14, 8:10 PM
gadfly said...: I didn't know that the Marlboro man was a hipster - and I didn't know that we used that terminology anymore.; 3/23/14, 8:16 PM
Ron said...: It's a promo for Mad Men! "Draper was here"; 3/23/14, 8:41 PM
Iconochasm said...: No, KenK. Some of them smoke Marlboros. But only cowboy killers.; 3/23/14, 8:47 PM
glenn said...: Just be glad it's not dog shit. That's what the hipsters leave laying around where I live.; 3/23/14, 9:21 PM
Titus said...: I chaturbated with a guy from Greenland tonight.

My focus for my next chaturebath is Bhutan-they are fucking happy.; 3/23/14, 9:39 PM
madAsHell said...: It's viral advertising.

My daughter encountered local models promoting MiniCoopers on the street outside of a theater. The models were posing as MiniCooper owners, and allowing anyone to sit in the driver's seat. This was back when BMW was trying to re-establish the MiniCooper line.; 3/23/14, 9:54 PM
RazorSharpSundries said...: Just another asshole who thinks the world is his ashtray.; 3/23/14, 10:10 PM
Quaestor said...: Does the "hipster littering" topic include the Hyundai-driving jackanape's unsolicited-screed-mobile? Hipster's pretty much own bumper sticker culture, which in my mind amounts to thought-littering on our nation's scenic highways, not too different from the loonie who stands on street corners shouting at passing traffic, an ill mannered distraction.

I must admit the "Obama is not a foreign-born blah, blah..." sticker is clever in a puerile sort of way. I wonder if the Hyundai guy realizes only one of those attributes needs to be false for the statement to be accurate. Is it not foreign-born, or not a socialist, or is it that Obamacare isn't free?; 3/23/14, 11:23 PM
Will Cate said...: I think that actually might be normcore littering.; 3/24/14, 5:46 AM
Bob R said...: No PBR cans?; 3/24/14, 5:55 AM
George M. Spencer said...: Article below says "This American Life" was NPR's most "hipster beloved" show.

What defines today's hipsters?

Love of coffee and coffee shops?; 3/24/14, 6:21 AM
Mark said...: Wrong brand, also lacks PBR so unlikely hipster trash.

No hipster would be seen glomming onto the Marlboro man. Too boomer.; 3/24/14, 6:47 AM
Nichevo said...: Why hipster? And Don Draper's brand was Lucky Strike.

Mmm, Luckies. LSMFT! But Pall Malls are better.; 3/24/14, 7:14 AM
RecChief said...: where is that Italian guy dressed in buckskin when you need him; 3/24/14, 7:15 AM
Tarrou said...: I don't know about Hipsters, but that's my old brand (before I quit). And I never littered. I always had a pocket full of field stripped filters and empty packs.

Tear the filter off pre-smoke if you're in a hurry!; 3/24/14, 7:46 AM
Unknown said...: It's a trend, but not a new trend. Smokers are some of the most inconsiderate jerks I've witnessed, and most of them universally use the ground as their personal trash can.
Many smokers flick butts (litter that's on fire) out the car window. Grass fires are not altogether uncommon on the sides of highways during dry periods. Smokers can't be bothered with their own trash. No no.
I've watched smokers pull up to gas pumps, open the car door and dump a load of ashtray on the cement. Often they unload other garbage from the car onto the ground as well. All while a trash can sits conveniently within a few feet.
Smokers unwrap the pack and throw the plastic in the wind. They throw the pack on the ground, they hurl the whole carton down on the ground.
Many years ago an older guy driving in a convertible threw the whole empty cigarette carton onto the pavement in front of a grocery store. I happened to walk past, and I picked it up and threw the carton back into his car. I shouted "Stop littering, lady."; 3/24/14, 8:57 AM
Freder Frederson said...: American Spirit and a PBR can, most likely. Marlboro (box no less), hardly.; 3/24/14, 9:00 AM
Unknown said...: Sat at a red light with a friend and watched a hipster unwrap his fresh pack of cigarettes. Friend and I looked at each other, then back out at the hipster. "Want to bet he throws the plastic on the ground", he said to me? Yeah. 1...2....3...There it goes.; 3/24/14, 9:02 AM
Stephen A. Meigs said...: I don't think hipsters originally had anything to do with littering. My impression from looking at tumblr and youtube is that hipsterism basically started a while ago (at least in girl years) in Western Australia. Nowadays the originators probably would be somewhat embarrassed to be associated with something so much later that is called that, especially if it be associated with littering (something I hadn't heard of).

To further my point, from the Western Australia wiki:

The bulk of Western Australia consists of the extremely old Yilgarn craton and Pilbara craton which merged with the Deccan Plateau of India, Madagascar and the Karoo and Zimbabwe cratons of Southern Africa, in the Archean Eon to form Ur, one of the oldest supercontinents on Earth (3 – 3.2 billion years ago)....

....The extreme age of the landscape has meant that the soils are remarkably infertile.... Even soils derived from granitic bedrock contain an order of magnitude less available phosphorus and only half as much nitrogen as soils in comparable climates in other continents.

That struck me as funny, and it occurs to me that yes, this new information, which I had not considered before, could actually indicate that the hipster movement is not only older than readers might think, but traces its origins to these ancient events.

In places with low phosphorus, present especially in DNA, phosphorus conservation is quite important. Especially to early Western Australian settlers, conservation of phosphorus probably encouraged conservation of sperm, leading to sex fantasies more geared to tantric sex and fantasies involving smaller ejaculations and less ejaculatory masturbation--sperm wastage is phosphorus wastage! Of course (at least to those familiar with my theories), tantric, drippy sex is the sort of sex girls everywhere tend to want in the rare cases (young) girls want sex, even in phosphorus-rich lands. So anyway, when pictures and videos of a group of very pretty affectionate-looking cool girls from Western Australia hit the tumblr and youtube spheres a few years ago, girls all over the world saw there were some especial insights there and you got the start or takeoff of the hipster movement. Nowadays, I suppose Austrayans use modern fertilizers to produce food which they get mainly at grocery stores, so I don't know whether it's the modern Western Australians having tendencies and lore inherited from their ancestors from the Swan River Colony, etc., or whether it's because they get to think about all the kangaroos, etc., who have had so much time to adapt to the nutrient content of the local herbage. Or maybe they have been influenced by Aboriginees.

An interesting thing about marsupials is that in females the X-chromosome inherited from the mother is activated everywhere, as opposed to eutherian females, where it varies from place to place (this is why calico cats are spotted--in some parts of the cat her paternal X-chromosome is activated, while in others her maternal X-chromosome is activated).; 3/24/14, 9:46 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I don't think hipsters originally had anything to do with littering."

Who are the original hipsters?

If Arlo Guthrie counts, he was all about littering.; 3/24/14, 10:29 AM
LordSomber said...: It's an in situ art installation curated by Caden the barista. Don't get him wrong — he's very environmentally conscious. It's just that this particular piece is "ironic."; 3/24/14, 11:33 AM
ken in tx said...: In Australia, the red and white cigarette packs that look like Marlboros are actually a local brand called Winchester.; 3/24/14, 12:47 PM
Thomas said...: ugh; 3/24/14, 8:37 PM