Sinister: Why we hate indie kids

[Peter Carter]

> 1) They like indie music. Obviously.

Clearly.

> 2) Their regulation thick-frame black glasses. No more breakable item of
> nosewear has ever been invented: on slow afternoons I could happily cruise
> the streets for hours walking up to indie kids, lifting these ridiculous
> excuses for spectacles from their filthy-pored noses and breaking them at
> the bridge.

Hours of fun there then, you funny guy you.

> How the indie kid would howl! Perhaps they would threaten to
> "kick my ass".

You are thinking of either 'Trendies' or 'Sk8r Goths' an indie kid would
probably just stand there looking intimidated then start to cry.

> Needless to say all indie kids have adequate eyesight:

The reknown indie/good eyesight gene.

> any
> slight impairment of vision is due entirely to their regime of perpetual
> masturbation.

And what, may I ask, is wrong with perpetual masturbation?

> 3) Indie kids are at it like rabbits. Or want to be. Scratch any
'community'
> or 'scene' of indie kids and you will find a seething cauldron of sexual
> frustration and backstabbing. Most indie kids are vile to look upon: I
think
> this because I am enslaved by societal standards of beauty.

Isn't this more prevelant in the 'Trendy' or 'Lib-Dem Sk8r Goth' (Korn
boys/girls) community? I'd say that,
since these two communities are by-and-large the only other ones widely
embraced by teens, that this
is a teenage phenomenon.

> 5) On the rare occasions when an indie kid does get it on it at least
> distracts them from listening to indie music.

I thought indie kids did it all the time, see point 3.

> Or making it. All indie kids
> are in indie bands.

Which is bad because...

> 6) Indie is short for independent, because indie kids are not mainstream.
No
> sir. They are individuals. A quick look at an indie kid website will
> reassure you of that.

URL please.

> 7) All indie kids are unique. They are however looking for other indie
kids
> who are unique in exactly the same way as them - cool, huh?

Would the fact that they have to dress exactly that way to be classed indie
kids have anything to do with that?
There is usually only one vaguely stereotype indie kid in any 'indie' group.

> 8) Among the unique things about indie kids are their haircuts. The square
> mainstream observer might mistake the uniform dyed bobs and crops of
> indieland as the sinister hairstyles of a clone army hell-bent on taking
> over teenage america and making it listen to At The Drive-In. But such an
> observer would be a fool. There are crucial differences in the haircuts.
> Some are, like, really expensive.

And some are, in fact, either long or short, and tend to look different and
be different colours.

> 9) Some records are really expensive, too. You must really love the music
to
> spend $200 on eBay on a one-sided seven-inch, right? It shows your
> dedication to music is for real and unique, like your taste.

Really!? I think you're thinking about moneyed morons.

> 10) Indie fashions are individual and unique too, and are marked by the
> indie kid's strong sense of irony. For example, a lot of indie kids like
> wearing overalls and workshirts as worn by real live working class people.
> As the indie kid finishes a two-hour shift at Border's they feel
solidarity
> with their working-class brothers and sisters in the bakeries and pizza
> delivery companies all across the nation.

Most of my indie friends are too lazy to get jobs...

> 11) They don't feel solidarity with the suits working in offices, though.
> Those people are a plastic fake herd of manufactured, soulless brainwashed
> lemming robot drone sheep enslaved to mass culture pap. (This is true,
> obviously. But sorry, indie kids are worse.)

Are they worse? Explain.

> 12) Not all mass culture is pap, though. Hey! What about those cool
> Powerpuff Girls?

Huh? Are they an American band or something?

> 13) Infantilism is endemic to the indie kids. When was the last time you
> heard one of them use the word 'man' or 'woman'. Nope, it's always 'boys'
> and 'girls'. Some girls are 'cute'. Some boys are 'cute' too. The more
> incurable indie kids use the words 'grrrl' and - shudder - 'boi', for all
> the world as if they were living in a Disneyworld 1994 Experience ride or
> fell into a copy of Sassy once and never escaped.

Maybe they call each other boy and girl because they are teenagers and
'man' or 'woman' would be biologically incorrect. Oh, and I've only ever
seen
grrrl used as in 'Riot Grrrl' and never seen boi anyway...  if I did see it
I'm
sure it'd be met with screams of derision from most indies.

> 14) When indie kids pair off with a cute grrrl or boi (all indie kids are
in
> theory bisexual, of course. Just don't ask them to do anything about it.)

I think you're getting confused with 'Sk8r Goths' again.

> they tend to treat each other like shit and then write it up on their web
> pages ("I am SUCH the geek"). This is because they are very sensitive, not
> as the casual observer might have guessed because they are emotional
dwarves
> with no concept of human interaction outside a fanzine problem page. You
> become sensitive by listening to Belle And Sebastian a lot.

AT LAST, a good point. This is true (apart from the writing it up on
websites bit),
but Radiohead probably makes indie kids more sensitive...

> 15) All their records sound the same, due to influence inbreeding. The
gene
> pool of influences on indie rock has been shrinking steadily since 1977,
> thanks to paranoid scenester tastemaking. The constant slathering praise
> directed at the likes of the Get Up Kids and Sleater-Kinney is the
critical
> equivalent of a one-eyed chinless inbred mutant winning a beauty contest.

Sleater-Kinney sound like Belle and Sebastian? Katheryn Williams
sounds like Godspeed You Black Emperor!? The Eels sound like Looper?
Richie era Manics sound like They Might Be Giants? Red Hot Chill Peppers
sound like Radiohead?

Do you have ears? Which other genre has more variety?

> 16) Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation.
> They like extremity, but not too much extremity.

Subtlety? Restraint? Limp Bizkit are extreme for christ sake and
they sound aweful.

> They like songs, but they like
> them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish.

Point taken.. wow... doing well here.

> Best of
> all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they
> already know are cool.

Point destroyed in previous section.

> 17) Of course they listen to other stuff too, carefully weighing it up for
> its purity of motive and general indie-ness. Other genres are assessed
with
> a practised eye, and only the records which have the most spiritual
kinship
> to indie are acceptable -

Are you talking about quality here?

> no attempt is made to take these musics on their
> own terms, since indie is in any case superior. Eventually a fashionably
> anti-PC stance allows the indie kid to reject even bothering with hip-hop
or
> dance records - that would after all be 'tokenism'.

A LOT of indie kids like Hip Hop, see Jurrassic Five. As for dance... well,
most of it's shit but...

'Massive Attack', 'Idioteque' by Radiohead, 'Portishead', 'Dj Shadow',
'Unkle'. Is Trip Hop not dance?
Would you not class 'Geometrid' as at least partially a dance album?

> 18) The worst thing about indie kids is how apalling they are at even
being
> indie kids. After idling their college years going to 'shows' every other
> day and then spending two years in retail working on a screenplay or
writing
> a novel about following a band or recording a thousand tinny songs on a
> hundred cheap cassettes and giving them to people they fancy in the hope
> that a rare Braid EP track might get them a quick fuck on some other indie
> kid's sofa and pretending to like the Spice Girls and pretending to like
the
> Magnetic Fields and pretending to like each other - after all that they
> suddenly get a job and start listening to Moby and Aimee Mann. What I ask
> you is the fucking point?

It's called being disillusioned. Since when did indie kids like the Spice
Girls (shouldn't that be Grrrls?).

Nevertheless, despite glaring errors, I found this quite funny. Steven
Wells, is that you?

"You better think twice or life will kick you in the ass" - Albert Camus

The Happy Reaper
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