This one is a lot of fun at Christian universities.

That 1st pic is absolutely brilliant!

I agree, Spinning! Love it. Though the last pic, well…isn’t that too much product to be hip?

Good post. This is one thing I feel very strongly about, and that’s not just because I’m cripplingly uncool. Jesus was never one of the cool kids, never one of the gang, yet now, as you say, Christians try to have it both ways – Christian and cool. Just doesn’t sit right for me.
This is also one of my worries with the emergent movement/church/conversation, of which I am generally a huge fan for the critique they offer. However, if they simply become the next “Christian cool” then they will have failed in all they set out to do. I pray they do not!

I love that this is on a Christian blog that copies a secular blog.
The irony is awesome.

well at least they dont have to were pastel polos and pleated kakis to get into heaven anymore.
who are you anyhow?, so great you exist.

I thought this is a secular blog that rips off a secular blog. I could be wrong, though.

Hold the phone! You write an article about Hopster Douchebags but have no mention of their favorite brew, PBR?!? Tisk tisk.
Seriously tho, this is one of the funnier of your blogs. Good job.

After reading this entry, I somehow clicked across Relevant magazine’s website. Here I thought it was a photoshop joke. Boy is it not .

thanks for this blog, these are funny, LOL jokes, love it
for all the serious stuff that’s happening in the world, a little laughter is a nice break.
now, here are “tips” to make the christian Catholic church more hip,
but not cool.
click to Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/deaconsbench/2010/09/thanks-for-the-tips.html#ixzz0zNgRnsFJ

I hate to sound judgy but both of those guys in the bottom picture look ridiculous.
Anyway, I decided to check out the Relevant magazine website too and there is a lot going on. Apparently the current issue has an article called “The Gospel According to Hipsters”, but I’m too lazy to actually read it.

I love Joe Mande and I love Look at This Fucking Hipster. I hate Brett McCracken and I hate Hipster Christianity. And I fucking loathe Relevant.
This douche hits on two of my least favorite things: the derivativeness of Christian shit and the exhausting, incessant need to justify every damn thing. Relevant exists for the sole purpose of the latter, and early teen years spent under the influence of Christian metal bands (“If you like AC/DC, you’ll love X-Sinner!” [true story]) have left me with with more than a mild distaste for the blantantly banal: “Hipster Christianity: It’s like LATFH without the dirty words and with a neat little parable at the end.” Fuck.

I went to the Relevant website, too, and read partway through the Driscoll interview. How irrelevant.
Captcha: indonts VII
Was that a king somewhere?

Remember the song “What is hip?” by Tower of Power, from the Seventies? Here are the lyrics.
So you wanna jump out yo trick bag,
Ease on into a hip bag.
But you ain’t just exactly sure what’s hip.
So you start to let your hair grow.
Spent big bucks on your wardrobe.
But somehow you know there’s much more to the trip.
What is hip? Tell me tell me, if you think ya know.
What is hip? And if you’re really hip, the passing years will show,
You into a hip trip, maybe hipper than hip.
But what is hip?
So you became part of the new breed.
Been smoking only the best weed.
Hanging out with so-called hippest set.
Been seen in all the right places,
Seen with just the right faces.
You should be satisfied,
But still it ain’t quite right.
What is hip? Tell me tell me if you think you know.
What is hip? And if you’re really hip.
The passing years would show,
You into a hip trip, maybe hipper than hip.
What is hip?
Hipness is
what it is!
Hipness is
what it is!
Hipness is
what it is!
Sometimes hipness is what it ain’t!
You done went and found you a guru,
In an effort to find you a new you.
And maybe even managed to raise your conscience level.
As you’re striving to find the right road,
There’s one thing you should know:
What’s hip today might become passe’.
What is hip? Tell me tell me if you think you know.
What is hip? And if you’re really hip, the passing years would show
That you into a hip trip. Maybe hipper than hip.
WHAT IS HIP?
Think about it y’all!

Alastair, describing yourself as “cripplingly uncool” is super cool. You go, boy. But careful of all that emergent stuff. I know I sound cripplingly uncool when I say it’s just warmed over evangelicalism (read: CC), or evangelicalism that has metamorphed into another annoying version of itself. But it’s true, and I like to think saying so makes me super cool.

Steve presciently reminds us that the whole idea of “hip” and “hipsterness” began with white culture appropriating black culture. Perhaps that’s why the whole hipster epidemic (hipsterdemic?) leaves a bad taste in our mouths

Hip and cool developed in subversive response to the dominant W.A.S.P. hegemony of America’s none too distant past. Thus, I find the whole discussion of Christianity and Hip to be oxymoronic and downright hilarious! Read John Leland’s “Hip: The History” and tell me how Christians have, or ever will be, hip? For example, in Leland’s own words:
“The word “hip” is commonly used in approval, but this glosses its many limitations. Though it likes a revolutionary pose, hip is ill equipped to organize for a cause. No one will ever reform campaign finance laws under hip’s banner, nor save the environment. A hipper foreign policy will not get us out of this fix. Hip steps back…Hip is not genius, though it is often mistaken for such by people who ought to know better…Hip rationalizes poor life choices; it squanders money, love, talent. This is not a book about devoted fathers, good husbands or community pillars. Hip is a convenient excuse for f***ups. It can also be corrosive and small-minded.”

Hipsters are just grown up “freaks.” The grown up factor is what makes it incomprehensible. They’ll grow out of it… in their forties… or fifties…
Xian hipsters will grow into something else. If we’re lucky, they’ll grow into backsliders. Real ones. And they’ll find us here. Hopefully they’ll have grown out of their awkward glasses by then.

My understanding of hipsterism is that it’s all about affecting a posture of disengagement and disinterest; cool by virtue of rejecting what’s “cool.” Not only is it impossible to achieve this status by trying, then, but it seems a little impossible to be a Christian and be proactively loving and still maintain the hipster ideal of being tuned out.

Don’t you feel trendy with having a blog posting about things you don’t know about? Seems you just like to assume. We had those when we were young…I believe they were called xangas.

Oh how I wish all of these things Stephanie points out WERE just assumption! The unfortunate part is that it isn’t. Many of us (Stephanie included) have experienced these ridiculous phases/inconsistencies in person. The idea of this blog is not to be trendy or simply to poke fun/score points, what have you. It is more a making fun in order to point out what has gone awry. Though we make fun and laugh at all these things, in truth, it is very sad that the focus of those proporting to follow Christ has become so skewwed. The worst part of it all is that many in the middle of all the cultural inconsistencies don’t even realize that they are. I know that I didn’t for a very long time. It is easy to get on here and get angry at one side of the arguement or other, but I think that is part of the problem. If we stop and choose to see one another (and our fellow humans) as people and not someone who “has it wrong,” or who is “out to hurt me,” we might begin as a whole to become real community that heals instead of tears down. And in doing that, we may, in fact, become more like Christ after all. But if the glory of “having it right” is our focus, we won’t ever get there. Certainly not trying to say that all of this applies to you, Jayne. Only trying to help explain where many of us are coming from. Or some of us anyway. I can really only speak for myself, in acutality, but this is how I understand the point of the blog, so I thought it would be worth sharing.

I appreciate you Eli, but I’m feeling trendy about my assumptions right now so could you please keep it down? Jesus thanks you.

Hahahahahahaha!

I’d have a hard time taking some missionary in a deep-cut V-neck and BCG’s seriously.

This is fucking hilarious!

There, one of those tags ought to close the italics.

Nope, I guess I don’t know html after all…

Stephy, I’m curious as to why you described the blog as secular – or I guess to put it more specifically, what exactly you mean when you say that. If Eli’s summary of the blog’s purpose is accurate, then what makes the site secular? If it’s not “Christian” in some sense (i.e. poking fun as a means of pointing people toward relationship with Christ/others), then isn’t it just kind of… mean-spirited and destructive?

Hi Blake,
this blog doesn’t claim to have a Christian perspective. Maybe it’s confusing because Beliefnet put in that banner up there (that I didn’t endorse) that this is a Christian humor blog, but this blog isn’t either Christian or humorous, or at least it isn’t supposed to be. This blog points out where Christian culture gets away from what Jesus actually taught. There are giant discrepancies that make for endless blogging material.

rick wins the thread.

Well, rick won the thread with his comment about the irony of a copycat of another hipster blog smugly putting down copycat hipsters. But now I can’t get the earliest comments to appear, possibly because of my terrible Internet connection.

Rick is the clear winner, but how come you think this is a smug copycat hipster blog? I thought it was just a smug copycat blog. Does it seem hipster because I’m so megatronically awesome?

Ha! Well, maybe I was just confused by Stuff White People Like, thinking it was hipster when it’s really post-hipster. Or post-racial.
Or maybe it’s just the root of bitterness in my heart talking.

Or maybe it’s just the root of bitterness in my heart talking.
It’s just a bad case of Hipster Fail.

I think Rick’s comment would have been acceptable FTW oh, about 189 blog entries ago. Now it just reveals how late he is coming to the party.
Of course, I realize I’m White Knighting again, which is something Good Christian Boys LOVE to do in order to protect, rescue and/or win the ransomed hearts of Good Christian Girls. The underlying sexism of my complementarian upbringing still creeps in and I feel I must now vomit and/or bloody my own nose. Then again, if I could find a Good Christian Girl to do it for me, it might help tear down this insidious paradigm in my brain, and it would be kinda sexy too.
Love your blog, Steph. Even though I’m a latecomer and have some catching up to do.
–Sean

I went to a Christian University and this is SO true. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. Thanks for this Stephanie.
This goes along with another thing Christian Culture likes. Metalcore *shudders*. Every Christian teenager and young adult with a bit of an “edge” listens to that crap. While I was in the dorms it wasn’t uncommon to have a few hipster/scene chicks on your hall blaring their Norma Jean or As I Lay Dying CD’s. Ugh.
Your Scene Sucks has it pegged.
http://www.dobi.nu/yourscenesucks/christcore/index.htm