Stuff Hipsters Hate

iPod Earbuds

When we come upon the average hipster in his or natural habitat — sitting on a park bench contemplating his shiftless life, ruminating about Rumi on a train car, skulking over a cup on half-cold coffee, trying to compose the perfect blase comment to throw up on his lady love’s Facebook wall — it is very likely, nay certain, that said hipster will be adorned with a rather impressive set of headphones. Said headphones will be brightly colored, and engulf his gauged ears (a remnent from his foolish pre-teenage years) like the comforting arms of a rather hefty housewife — one who smells faintly of freshly baked bread.

Yes, safe within the warm embrace of his Electric Animal Skullcandy ‘phones, the hipster floats — carried away by the dulcet tones of Total Slacker as they monotonously drone about “creepos” — wondering, probably rightly so — whether said lyrics apply to him as well. (He has been hitting up that chick’s FB wall like a stalker on a sugar high lately.)

What you will never see, gentle reader, anywhere near the inquisitive ears of that Facebooking fiend is a set of in-ear, cheap-ass earbuds (You know, the kind that come with your iPod). No. Death.  first. The hipster will likely give you a litany of excuses as to why he has chosen not to mingle wax with buds in order to blast the latest Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti jam into his craven cranium, blathering on about sound quality and how he would totally snag some of those Ultrasone Edition 10’s if only he had the capital (or was down with selling his body for sound).

Still, despite his protestations, there is one simple, crystal-cut reason why he abstains from Apple’s audio offering: So every fucking person in the room will know he’s listening to jams, and every fucking person in the room will assume — given the quality of the goods — that those jams are good… even if he’s actually listening to that one Justin Timberlake jam on loop.