Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Protection

CDC: on-point hipster pathology

Stop the presses! Pump the brakes! No diving straight into questions this week, people. I don’t know if you heard, but there is this thing called a “coronavirus,” which is apparently a super big deal. It’s such a big deal that people are spreading fake news about it left and right. You may have seen some clickbait on your Facebook and Twitter feeds about how the Center for Disease Control is supposedly trying to protect hipsters from infection by urging them to shave their beards (on account of how certain beard and mustache styles interfere with the seal a respirator forms to the human face). I have been tapped as a representative of the hipster community to set the record straight about these stories, which make for scintillating reading, but are in reality false and malicious rumors!

It’s not as if the CDC’s brochure is in any way inaccurate. Its colorful depiction of every hipster facial hair combination you have ever heard of — from the “Verdi” to the “Walrus” to the Hitler-esque “Toothbrush” mustache — is frankly spot-on. However, this kind of propaganda can easily mislead the public into dangerous thoughts and behaviors, like blaming hipsters for the coronavirus.

Let me be perfectly clear with you: hipsters did not invent the coronavirus. Next time you see a hipster riding public transit, don’t go off on any meanspirited rants. It’s still perfectly safe to eat at hipster restaurants, too. Keep it together, people. Hipster PSA over. Time for at least a short Q/A session here.

Dear Hipster:

This isn’t really a hipster thing, but I thought maybe you would have the answer, because you seem to understand absurdities. You were writing about “comebacks” a while ago, and I have been thinking about the anti-comeback lately. Why do some things refuse to end? For example, I just learned the other day that American Idol is still a thing. I thought that went away sometime in the middle aughts! Apparently not. I also heard there will be another Pirates of the Caribbean movie. If you asked me about either of those things, or any number of other equally “Oh wow, that’s still a thing” things, I would not be able to explain how they keep going and going and going.

— Casey G.

Only one thing exceeds the ability of the American people to mercilessly bash a franchise for squeezing that last, most pitiful dollar out of a fanbase that has long since stopped caring in any meaningful way: it’s the ability of an emotionally saddlesore fanbase to cough up one more pitiful dollar in the name of a tired franchise that’s further gone than the Reagan-era canned goods lurking in the cobwebby shadows of your great-grandma’s pantry.

That said, some things are truly eternal, and we’re weirdly glad of it. South Park may never go off the air; the Rolling Stones may never stop touring; and the McRib will never cease to make waves when it annually bestows its ersatz porky blessing on select communities nationwide.

Nobody really knows how or why some things have the staying power of Betty White crossed with that frog from Night on Earth that freezes solid every night and then miraculously thaws out every morning like some kind of science fiction creature. It’s one of those things you take at face value and don’t think too hard about or it’s crazymaking.