The lust for what feels real is irrepressible

Dear Hipster:

I went out on a pretty horrible date the other day with some Tinder hipster who seemed totally cool, at least till I actually met him in person. No big surprise there, right? Anyway, that’s not actually the point. We go out for sushi, and he was eating it with his bare hands while he tells me about how “Japanese often eat sushi barehanded, not with chopsticks.” Turns out he was right, but still, he was kind of smug about it, and it got me thinking, what is it with this hipster obsession with stuff being more “authentic”? As if it somehow proves anything!

— Gwen

The love affair with “authenticity” is hardly a hipster-only phenomenon, but it has hipster roots. Reasonable minds could differ over whether or not we live in a society trending ever closer to all-consuming, shallow, infantilized materialism — call it the birth of the fidget-spinner generation, if you will. If that’s the case, then I see no harm in lusting after something that at least feels real.