I HATE CLUBBING

also, why do people move to inner city areas if they get upset by people coming to give their patronage to the entertainment areas? not like they weren't there before they moved in....

I love New Yorkers. They spice up the place. They talk loudly on cell phones about humorous uptight problems. They lack self-consciousness. They dress better than most of the people here. They look out of place.

This whole thread is about snobbery, fitting in or not. To club at a snobbish club, you gotta dress to fit in. If you're snobbish about the snobs, you're gonna have a lousy time and wonder why you're there. Turning your nose up at the velvet rope - ironic, really.

I reckon it's worth patrolling the line between dandyism and hipsterism, 'cos Gareth's arguments seem kinda closer to a celebration of the former, more and more, and I think dandyism is actually precisely the same drive as hating from the other direction. Y'know, making yourself an outsider and posing it as a quest for some pure self or something. I reckon Mark and Kate could sit with Dickon and pour venom on 'vacous hipster cokeheads' all day...

Warning, this question may be outrageously stupid. but, is it possible to read the new answers to a thread without actually loading the entire thread?

We're Night-Clubbing.

Bah x-post.

I think you've got that quite wrong. At least, that hasn't been my experience. It's not fear of being "dumped" or shunned, it's the awful sickening realisation that your newfound friends within the subculture are as conformist, cliqueish and narrow-minded as the oxo-culture you rejected in the first place. It's not fear of being shunned, it's "Holy, shit, we really don't have the same values at all, just the same haircuts."

it's that anybody can look good, attractive, sharp, in the "right" clothes and haircut;

Now that's just not true. It's a bit Rikki Lake of you to assume that anyone can look good with a makeover. But it just doesn't work that way.

or, why are people suspicious of 'image'?

I wrote several long paragraphs on that back there, and I can only assume that you didn't read them from the fact that you didn't comment on anything I said.

Hipsterism is about setting or being close to the crest of a trend. Dandyism is a flagrant and willful denial that trends even exist.

x-post...

My friends are a subset of Set B. Some used to be A. Some are B on Tuesday.

This is completely, totally, absolutely OTM and goes back to my point about "Fuck the cover; read what's actually in the book."

Somebody please photoshop dog latin's face into this picture.

So in the hipster-hating world view, if you try to anticipate the crest of a trend, you're suspicious. But if you give it up and just go "oxo-culture", you're narrow-minded. But if you go Dandy, you're flamboyant (read: gay) - so what choices are left?

When I was younger, my friends and I dressed the same and I chose friends based more or less on whether they looked cool to me. I'm glad I grew up. This gets too confining. There are such great conversationalists with poor fashion sense. You miss out on too much if you're concerned about whether you and your friends look "right".

Some days I dress like a hipster, some days I don't. I suppose if a hipster-hater saw me one day, they'd make assumptions about who I am that they wouldn't make if they saw me the next day. Really it just has to do with which of my clothes are in the laundry.

(Thanks for calling me Greg btw! I am hoping that people will magically catch on to this without me having to aid the process in any way).

Of course a Dandy can be a woman, don't be so narrow minded and sexist! Words mean what we say they mean, not what the Victorians who dreamed them up thought they meant!

Different people dress provocatively or flamboyantly or as Display for many different reasons. I'm interested in the reasons, not in what they wear.

The problem with a truly egalitarian world view is that everyone you want to insult is perfectly justified in insulting you back. I may have to become a fascist; then I can verbally crush people underneath my bootheels without being a hypocrite. (Yes, I'm rambling now.)

But this makes no sense! It's just some theoretical situation whereby one hipster hangs out with only those similar to himself/herself, or something. Like hipsterism begats empty hipsterism or something.

Also this "Fuck the cover; read what's actually in the book." stuff just is further cliché in this sort of argument. What if one is interested in the cover? Where does the human cover end and the person begin? There is no exact science.

I just hate this sense of GROUNDING about the "fuck the cover" attitude. The sense of attempting to pull some people back to a certain level.

I was just asking! Trying to catch up on your lingo. I've not heard it used this way until now.

This is IT. I didn't think I liked dancing or dance music at all until I went to a rave. Obviously drugs had a help in that, but I feel that going to raves in the UK is a much nicer experience than going to a club. This is basically down to the fact there's a lot less surface and a lot more feeling. People wear their shitest gear to go raving and yet their best clobber to go clubbing. I feel uncomfortable in clubs because I'm constantly worried about the image I'm giving off. I get that thing where you think everyone's looking at you and judging you by your clothes and the way you walk and how much gel is in your hair. You certainly don't get this at a rave because no-one gives a flying fuckslash what you're wearing. Just so long as you're a decent, friendly person. I tried to explain this to a girlfriend who had never been raving before and was pretty much anti drugs. The only argument she came up with was "but the music's shit and it's full of hippies". That's about the time I realised we weren't meant to be.

Yeah, you're totally spot-on. It's like the drugs power these scenes of acceptance that would be totally amazing even if you weren't on drugs. Universal impotence = no cockwaving, maybe? (The squatter scene is my favourite version of this, actually, 'cos it's got this brilliant dynamic between people who squat because their father is a Tory MP and doesn't understand them, maaan, and people who squat because they don't have houses). I love how you can tell what subcultures people were into before rave from the dancing style they bring to it, all these 120bpm versions of metal, indie, pop, jarvis-cocker-does-cruel-imitation-of-rachel-stevens-pastiche (may just be me).

Hahahahahah! YEh, all my metal friends do weird punching-circle dances when they go to raves, like a friendly but more ballistic style of moshing.

What's happening in Brighton? I'd really like to go but I'm not very rich and I want to lay off getting rat-arsed again until Glastonbury. Tell me next time something's on and I'll definitely turn up.

Brighton is this big outdoor party, it sounds awesome, I'm pretty excited about it. I only know one person who's going, so I'll get the details off them tomorrow or something...