Burning cool

Dear Hipster:

Why the hell do hipsters feel compelled to gather so much useless knowledge to themselves? What’s the point in memorizing the characters and actors from a questionable 1990s sitcom?

— Amy, North Park

Within every hipster burns a small furnace of coolness, a furnace that must constantly be fed with the eco-friendly biofuel of pop-culture trivia. Knowing the names of every character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer can sustain the average hipster’s coolness for weeks, providing up to one MegaFonzie — to use the SI unit derived by Futurama’s Professor Farnsworth — of coolness per character name memorized.

All that sustainably harvested coolness has to get burned off somehow, which is why we have bar trivia night, for which we owe the cheeky Brits a debt of gratitude. They call it “pub quiz,” in keeping with their endearing habit of terming takeout food “takeaway” and parking lots “car parks,” but the invention is theirs, and I give credit where it’s due.

Kicking ass at trivia night is the hipster equivalent of dominating a fantasy football league. It’ll make you feel good, but nobody really cares. The metaphor remains apt since bar trivia is one of the rare occasions where hipsters and frat bros come together. The fact that one group liked Melrose Place without a touch of irony is forgotten as everyone strives to remember which character drowned in season four.