What separates Schoenberg from a toddler bashing on a piano

Dear Hipster:

I get how it’s cool and hipster to have obscure, preferably one-of-a-kind aesthetic sensibilities, but I don’t get why it’s important. This is kind of abstract, but how is there any value in being different purely for the sake of being different? I suppose you could make a random series of movements and noises, set in a random location, and the odds are good that it would qualify as a unique gesture that had never before been attempted by any human being. Although it would arguably entitle the person doing it to claim he or she invented something new and unique, all I can say to that is, “S.F.W.”? That doesn’t seem to move the proverbial needle of humanity in any particular direction, because it’s ultimately nothing more than an empty gesture. Isn’t it better to be the best at something familiar because at least there’s some way to measure that?

— Anthony, Normal Heights

Can a human being ever truly hold a unique thought, speak a one-of-a-kind phrase, or accomplish a singular act? Or is it the case any individual human’s thoughts, words, and deeds can never be truly sui generis because they can only be understood in terms of what has already been done, and so they are, therefore, definitively not unique? I bet legitimate philosophers have wrestled mightily with these questions; and I further suspect these twin mysteries have gotten the better of one or two Ivy League Ph.D. candidates over the years. Comparing an actual philosopher to me is like comparing an actual doctor to somebody who has watched every episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. and House, M.D. But rather than be intimidated by my poor qualifications, I’m encouraged by the fact that, like a teenager permitted to drive Mom’s minivan aimlessly around an empty parking lot, there’s little chance I can do serious damage to the topic.

Some might say the greatest of all the hipster put-downs is to call something derivative. For example, you might say a band sounds “like early Pixies.” That appears to be a compliment, at least if you like Pixies. In reality, it’s a veiled putdown for the same reason you don’t want to draw attention to the obvious fakeness of that Louis Vuitton backpack you bought from the back of a van when you were on vacation in that small Eastern European country that one time.

The pointless “uniqueness” you’re talking about is pure randomness, and randomness isn’t the same as originality. There’s a line somewhere between the deliberately unique and the equally deliberate yet pointlessly random. It’s a super important line. It’s what separates Schoenberg from a toddler bashing on a piano; and it’s the difference between a Rothko and a wall where city workers have indiscriminately covered up graffiti with differently colored blocks of paint. The closer you get to that line, the harder it becomes to convince people you’re not just some goober standing in a field in Siberia shouting nonsense words into the wind because you can. It’s ultimately worth the difficulty to creep out on that particular ideological precipice, because the further you get from the mainstream, the less competition you face in the race to be yourself, and the less likely you are to accidentally end up being somebody else, which is among the least hipster, and therefore most boring, of the many fates a person might suffer.