Fun With Hipsters: The Digital Internet Jukebox
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Living in Brooklyn, it’s hard not to find yourself drinking in hipster-infested bars from time to time. It often comes with the territory. Now I hate to give hipsters credit on anything, but even I have to admit, they do sometimes have some decent taste in music, at least as far as older music goes. (Newer hipster-approved music acts tend to be too whiny/warbly/nerdy for me, but I digress).
The jukeboxes in most hipster bars are conspicuously hip and filled with indie cred. The music selection is so well-designed that it is almost impossible to pick a song that is not hipster approved. All the major categories of hipster music bliss are well-represented and the jukebox is virtually philistine-proof:
- country, but only from the three country music artists that hipsters respect: Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams (sometimes Patsy Cline)
- Old School East Coast hip-hop
- Backpack hip-hop dedicated to rapping about 1988 and molecules or some other dumb shit
- Punk and hardcore’s sacred cows
- Any Beastie Boys song not from Licensed to Ill
- Any band that is or sounds like Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, The Go! Team or CSS
- A couple of bad, mainstream songs deliberately included for the occasional dose of irony
- Anything featured in an Ipod commercial
Even though much of the music is good, hipsters tend to be so self-congratulatory and smug about their jukebox choices that they almost make jack Black’s music snob character from High Fidelity seem tolerable. Almost. (Nothing by Jack Black is ever actually tolerable) Time after time I’d watch a bespectacled, messy-haired zero muscle tone hipster painstakingly peruse the selection for 20 minutes, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, maybe with a girl they hope to impress with their superior music snob acumen. Then you have to watch the self-satisfied smug smirk that comes across their faces as their selections come on and the nerdgasms come over their group.
Drinking with these music nazis used to make hipster bars unbearable until the introduction of one of the greatest inventions to hit the bar scene since the Megatouch machine…..the Digital Internet Jukebox.
Gift from the Heavens
This beauty was introduced almost three years ago and has been slowly gaining ground in even dive bars and hipster haunts. And oh the joy it provides, thanks to a game I invented called Hipster Hell.
For the uninformed, the internet jukebox allows you to no longer be limited by the music preselected by the drinking establishment. You have the choice of going online and downloading any of two million plus songs out there; just about anything you can think of is available. And even better, for an extra charge you can make your selections jump to the front of the queue, allowing you to bypass the first-come-first-serve method of traditional jukeboxes.
Here’s how Hipster Hell works. You go to the digital jukebox and proceed to pick songs designed to drive hipsters insane. Remember, anything liked by a lot of people can’t possibly be good in the mind of a hipster, so go for songs as popular as possible. For example here’s my top 20 Hipster Hell playlist:
- “Crazy” by Britney Spears
- “Native New Yorker” by Odyssey
- “Knockin’ Boots” by Candyman
- “Vibe” by R. Kelly and Public Announcement
- “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel
- “Idioteque” by Radiohead (to give them a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel if you will)
- “We Built This City” by Starship (to cruelly yank them back into the 7th circle of Hell)
- “Vogue” by Madonna
- Any song by a Disney Channel alumnus, take your pick (for example Raven Symone, Lindsey Lohan, Jonas Brothers or Hillary Duff)
- “Addams Groove” by MC Hammer
- “Rush Rush” by Paula Abdul
- “Hanging Tough” by New Kids on the Block
- “MMMBop” by Hanson
- “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic
- “Now That We Found Love” by Heavy D. and the Boys
- “Mambo No. 5″ by Lou Bega
- “Physical” by Olivia Newton-John
- “Barbie Girl” by Aqua
- “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston
- “Zombie Nation” by Kernkraft 400
Bonus tracks:
- “I Write the Songs” by Barry Manilow
- Anything by The Strokes
Pay the extra money to get all these songs bumped to the front of the queue. The beauty of this selection is that for the first song or two, the hipsters will actually be into it and enjoy it, thinking that the songs are being played for the sake of irony. By the third or fourth song, they start figuring out that something’s wrong. By the fifth, they start becoming vocally upset. Critical mass tends to hit “MMMBop.” It gets really ugly by the time the first note of Whitney Houston hits. People even start accusing each other like McCarthyites and I’ve seen some really vicious arguments erupt. Ask a random person “Did you choose this?” just to deflect suspicion.
The key to this is to appear as openly upset as the other hipsters at the shit music that’s playing. Find someone 35+ to blame it on. Really play it up. A few hipsters will sacrifice their Pabst money and even do a collection for wrinkled dollars in an effort to regain control of the jukebox and move some Pitchfork Media approved jams to the front of the queue. Encourage this, and for added effect stand over the hipster hero’s shoulder and offer suggestions like “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads and “Mongoloid” by Devo. This is necessary to deflect any suspicion and keep the ruse going.
After the hipster leaves, congratulate him on his choices and act like you’re about to add some more indie goodness. As soon as the coast is clear, it’s time for the final phase of hipster hell: BILLY JOEL POWER HOUR. Choose every single Billy Joel song you can think of and move them to the front of the queue. This is endgame, show no mercy in selecting your barrage. You’re taking no prisoners.
At this point, you don’t give a fuck, the jig is up. As the Joelly goodness hits the speakers, start punching your fists in the air, singing along, dancing with your friends, yelling at the top of your lungs, jumping up and down. Hipsters don’t fight, even when drunk, because they’re too passive-aggressive, so the worst you’ll get is some serious glares and really loud sighs. If they’re really badass it may escalate into a sarcastic comment or backhanded compliment. Nothing to really worry about.
The most fun you can have with hipsters without actually punching them.
(12 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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hating on hipsters is great and everything, but the activity described here, while amusing in theory, is terrible because you have to sit through the bad music too. sitting in a bar with terrible music is not fun, especially if you are in an environment you dont like anyway — which of course begs the question, why the fuck would you be there anyway if they whole scene is such a problem for you? going out of your way to demonstrate your distaste for a group of people make you look pathetic. if you happen to be there and want to mess around, thats great, but stick to music you can enjoy as well.
yeah, that’s cool and all but we want to hear about Stockholm.
Yo, I distinctly remember one of those from when they came out in 2005. I haven’t seen nearly enough of them since then.
dcheros last blog post..Women Are Replaceable: Sarah Palin
Rick – you’ll never convince me that annoying a hipster is a bad thing. Sorry.
Steve – It’ll be up by Monday.
DCHero – yeah, I thought they wouldn’t catch on here. I imagined hipsters would insist on sticking to the old style jukeboxes out of some sense of tradition, but luckily I was wrong.
this is great. this is smashncrash at its finest.
halarious…this is the same technique you would use when you’d drop knowledge
these jukeboxes were around a long time ago. i went to the university of iowa, a very white, very liberal school. there are some scary black people from chicago but by and large they dont hang out with what was then (i graduated in 98) pre-hipsters. i visited back in 2001 and hung out at some pre-hipster dives which were equipped with innerweb jukeboxes. i used to love loading up the queue with songs from TRU, UNLV, UGK, anything from cashmoney records, etc, and watching the reactions of people. it was a cross between “who farted?!” and panic. it’d get about 2 songs in before either the owner or the bartender pulled the plug, and we could continue listening to whatever.
recommend the next time you load it up with dirty souf rap. obscure shit that isn’t very good, with copious n-bombs and references to bitches. heavy snare, as is characteristic. you could top it off with “sucka nigga” by tribe, and revel in the irony (lost on them of course) of an obama supporter becoming offended or pulling the plug on it.
not living in the states is nice for many reasons, not least of which that i dont have to drink with hipsters.
2 Live Crew. That’s all you need to know.
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T, by all means, annoy away – that’s not what I was criticizing. It’s more that I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so at the expense of my own enjoyment.
It’s like, nobody likes neocons, but if i happened to find myself at like a bags tournament or nascar event, i wouldnt bring a boombox blasting Animal Collective or something because as much as that would annoy them, it would be just as painful for me. I agree with some of the song choices, but shit like mmbop, barbie girl wouldnt be worth it.
Point being, unless you can enjoy the music reasonably, whatever fun you get from pissing them off is canceled out.
This could not be more balls on accurate. Did this about three weeks ago but only played Metallica, old Metallica. The entire Kill ‘em All and Ride the Lightning albums. They thought how cool it was until the 2nd song. The best thing about it was they didn’t realize the songs on those albums are like 10 mins long.
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Carl Neville, a 36-year-old English teacher from London, coined the term “Wyatting” because sticking on Dondestan, the 1991 avant-garde jazz-rock LP by ex-Soft Machine singer Robert Wyatt, is the perfect way to disrupt a busy Friday night in a high street pub.
i was told that listening to sufjan stevens is faggy. where is the crib sheet for this stuff?
i cleansed my soul immediately with ‘battery’ — ah, old style metallica.
“nerdgasms”. haha.
roissys last blog post..Flip-Flop Game
but, seriously, goddamn dude… whitney houston??? your hipster hate knows no bounds. well done.
roissys last blog post..Flip-Flop Game
Re: the Wyatting. Damn, that post is almost exactly like mine…except from 3 years ago!
fuck it, this post is still awesome. It’s got Youtube links.
Ah, yeah! Addams Family – Hammer style! Thanks for the memories!
I like to go to redneck pool halls/ bars and play such tunes. However, unlike the hipster places, you ARE in serious danger in such joints.
(BTW, 2blowhards were my enlightenment to this post)
Cowtown Patties last blog post..My Man, Browne
the fun is not hearing bad music, but tolerating bad music and knowing that it is INSANELY bothering music snobs. i’ve never seen a crowd so willing to be a part of a scene so full of pretentious girls AND not fuck/get laid. there is something SERIOUSLY homoerotic about the hipster scene.
good post.
Thanks Benedict.
And Patty, that is seriously gangster. Pissing off hipsters is as low-risk behavior as it gets, but going into redneck pool halls and doing it? You’re a ballsy chick.
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Hmmm. . .let’s recap. You live in Brooklyn. You’re on Twitter. You go to hipster bars. You make slightly skewed observations of everyday life. Your idea of hipster hell is 70s-90s pop/rock hits that have high kitsch appeal. Looks like you’re a hipster. I’m sorry I was the one to break it to you.
I can tell you’re pretty proud of your insight there, but it’s really flawed.
So do guidos, ghetto blacks, mobsters, bohemian blacks, rich Brooklyn Law School professors, West Indians, Greenpoint Polish and Brighton Beach and Coney Island Russians. And like of us have lived here in Brooklyn BEFORE it became overrun with hipsters. Hipsters not from Brooklyn or people who’ve only visited Williamsburg always seem to think that Brooklyn is only about hipsters and that hipsters founded the borough or something, but that’s not at all the case. I’ve been here before they overran the borough, and even then they’ve only overrun certain parts of the borough. Hipsters are like Christopher Columbus, they’re convinced no place existed until they “discovered” it and populated it.
So are Shaquille O’Neal, DJ Clue and Newt Gingich. Are they hipsters too? Once again, the fact that hipsters discover and use something doesn’t automatically make it about them.
But not regularly. Reread the first paragraph of this post for the reasons why.
So wait, hipsters now have invented and have a monopoly on slightly skewed observations of everyday life!? Are you serious? The only people who can have offbeat observations are hipsters? So are Camille Paglia, Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder hipsters, because they are the biggest influences on me when it comes to having offbeat observations. Unless you consider anti-Obama, anti-feminist, anti-liberal, pro-free market, anti-Colbert and anti-Daily Show observations to be the kind a hipster would make.
The point was deliberately to take something hipsters LIKE, which is the music you describe above, and push it to the point where their sense of irony was overloaded, to reach their irony threshold and blow past it. So pointing out that the music I picked was the kind hipsters like is not any grand coup on your part because THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF CHOOSING IT. To make them enjoy it at first because they thought it was the type of ironic kitsch they liked, and then make it go on so long that they start to think maybe it’s not kitsch after all but sincere enjoyment of the music. And the thought of sincere enjoyment of anything corny and kitschy drives them crazy.
Looks like your didn’t think your observation through fully, buddy. Sorry to break it to you.
Good reply Ricky. I wasn’t exactly expecting this, especially since this post was so old. But I was like–what the hell–I’ll check back anyway.
I randomly found your blog but this entry was definitley funny beyond the norm, so I might keep reading your postings.
I still think you missed part of what I was saying. Sure, I know there are non-hipsters in Brooklyn or on Twitter or whatever. The point was that all the attributes I listed taken together sound a lot like a hipster. Which amuses me at least since you hate hipsters so much. But don’t worry–if you’re anti-Daily Show, you’re probably not actually a hipster.
I do stand corrected on the 70s through 90s kitsch songs. I guess I didn’t understand it on first read. I figured you were just trying to play something that hipsters would hate, like two hours of John Philip Sousa marches. I see now it was more about hoisting them on their own petard. . .”OK, you like corny retro pop songs? How about 30 of them in a row!” So that actually makes it funnier than I thought (and I thought it was funny initially).
Well done.
Your friend,
A recovering hipster
You’re a very good sport Ben. Cheers to you!
Funniest thing I’ve read all month. And true, to boot. Nice work.
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