[๐] ipa sipping and arcteryx beanie wearing
i, like any other slightly self absorbed twenty-something year old, hate being reminded of the fact that i'm unoriginal in more than one aspects of my life; i'm not the first person to write garbage posts on bearblog (and i probably won't be the last). my sense/interest of fashion is derived from pinterest posts with keywords like "y2k" and "vintage". my taste in music is largely pop, which, if you didn't know, stands for "popular music". when i come to this realizations, i can't help but feel a bit demotivated by all of this, and even writing about it now, i know that this isn't necessarily a new or original experience to have.
my latest delve into being unoriginal has it's roots in my wish to buy a beanie. a few days before my birthday, my mom told me she wanted to take me shopping. in her words, i was allowed to pick out something, anything, so that i'd have a physical object as proof of her undying love for me. fast forward to a few days before the twenty-fifth, we go to the mall, and i see the little raptor logo and overpriced goretex store. i'll be honest, the jackets there are kind of fire, and i need an outer layer for winter activities as my old one had busted completely, but seeing the price tag, i felt ashamed of even contemplating buying them (even if i split the cost with my mom, it's still disgusting). whatever, i didn't get a new jacket this year, but i did notice a certain accessory making the rounds with the youth my age, the infamous arcteryx beanie... something about this fossilized raptor design on a shitty acrylic cap has had my pinterest in shambles. standing in that store, i really wanted to buy one. i wanted to fulfill my ultimate goal of being the guy who sits in jazz bars on ossington street and drinks ipa while wearing the famous beanie (irrespective of the conditions outside).
i wanted this stupid beanie so bad. i didn't buy it thankfully, but the fact that i felt so motivated to buy something because of it's social presence really struck an odd chord in my heart. of course, clothing items fall in and out of popularity for a reason, and i can't lie when i say the beanie genuinely looks cool, but i think as a whole, youth shopping habits have changed in the past few years. from where we've had brands like supreme, bape, etc, hold large stake in a youth social status as a way to show off wealth and success, the new mainstream is quiet, toned down, and displays a sense of "distinctness" from the rest of the crowd around you. the youth want this, and in a sense, i think that young people do have a problem with wanting to be perceived as "original" and "unique". it's the new parasite that i think has grown from our use of social media and the rampant need to buy in order to maintain social standing. i scroll through the instagram of any one person i know, and it feels like youth are so obsessed with coming off as bespoke that they are literally eating themselves alive; carefully crafted posts with song choices from artists with a thousand monthly listeners, obscure fit pics, oddly worded captions. it's simply too much.
as much as i'd like to offer some sort of personal view on all of this, i'm really not that different. i'm sitting here writing this post and in the back of my head, all i can think about is am i writing this because i really want to, or is it because when someone talks about this exact topic one day, i'll be able to say i wrote a post about it and come off as unique for having a blog. it's a parasite i fight with from time to time, and i find that the more i become aware of it, the more critical i've become of it's victims. is ipa sipping arcteryx beanie wearing guy a victim of his environment, or is he weak-willed and can't avoid the parasite? i don't know, and i have no clue how to answer this. is the beanie the symptom of some greater social sickness ? who knows...