don’t call yourself a punk if you don’t listen to punk music. it’s a music-based subculture. it’d be like calling yourself a metalhead if you’ve never had gay sex for loose cigs
girls with blunt bangs trying to talk to guys in hipster runoff genre tees at house parties where everyone either got a massive rush when they heard ‘my girls’ by animal collective come on the stereo or started to roll their eyes at the conformity of college kids that will go home to publish some posts on their blogs about ‘buzz bands’ and hopping into skype calls to argue about the latest hipinion threads on the topic of pitchfork panning an album you thought was good, but now think is bad. rushing home to write on livejournal about the way a girl looked at you and how it made you feel. carrying around a copy of ‘bed’ by tao lin in hopes that ~someone who gets you~ will notice and comment on it and you develop an intimate relationship no one could understand except the people who read your inevitable net-memoir about it. saying you were ironically wearing those skin-tight american apparel pants that you shoplifted to feel cool after your roommate made fun of you. graduating from bush-bashing on myspace to writing quips about the aesthetics of the french films and how they relate to your neuroses on twitter. feeling both offended and validated when called a hipster. explaining alt-lit to your teacher. feeling recognized but terrified upon hearing the new phoenix single play in whole foods. starting a dance-punk duo with your best friend using his minikorg until he loses interest in the project because he’s been spending all his time with a ukulele girl. competing for the most artists in your library on last fm and flirting in the shoutbox of anyone vaguely twee enough for you, playfully negging them through arguments about the semantics of emo. wondering if chillwave is going to be the next ‘big thing’ and listening to washed out on your bed while waiting for your friend to come online and talk to you on gchat.
