It’s been quiet here, because my word press account got hacked, so I’ve been archiving, researching and upgrading. Cross your fingers, folks. Update: It just hosed my theme. I’m super depressed…

While you are waiting, check out Facebook Lexicon, which lets you search the popularity of words that appear in Facebook Walls. Here is a graph of Clinton and Obama. Many of you will know how about my feelings towards the awesomeness of word frequencies.

Image source: lunchstudio

Where to begin, let’s just clarify, that I’m a hipster. Just look at the picture of me above the text (perhaps the first one of me on this blog.) Shaved head + cardigan sweater + having lunch with friends at their Soho architecture studio + said friends whose lunch blog I appear in and just got linked to from Andrew Sullivan and Kottke = hipster. Identifying with this label may or may not actually be the sort of thing a hipster would do, although I may be getting ahead myself.

So, in order to reinstill my hipster cred, I’ll state that I don’t actively identify myself as hipsters to others (particularly strangers) unless I’m trying to demonstrate a point, as I am here. It should come to no surprise then, to hear me say that I’ve been thinking a lot about hipsters recently, maybe too much. I’ve be delaying the writing of this post, because I want to get it just right. However, I realized that it would take too long, so I decided to write it up in chunks, give up on getting it just right, and fix and adjust any conceptual mistakes as I go, (the typos are a given.)

A few weeks ago, I attended the PFSK NY conference and the “Does New York Matter” got fascinating when it reached the topic of the Hipster. The room got a little fidgety because, well, the room was full of hipsters. The discomfort was palpable, which made the situation highly amusing. The concept of the hipster and the whole conversation around it was great, because it combined identity, culture and taste. All the subjects I am going to try to write about in more depth here. I’m not going to dedicate a whole new blog to the idea, like Stuff White People Like, but I will go a little Jeff Foxworthy on you.

Posit #1: “If you say ‘I am not a hipster,’ you probably are.” (See reference to “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”)

Basically, denying that you are a hipster outs yourself as being one. In its most basic definition, a hipster is someone who consciously curates his cultural identity, from the media he consumes to how he outwardly presents himself, with an crucial notion of being outside (read: above) the mainstream.

Hipster and being “hip” is a relative designation. There will always been someone more or less interested in trendy fashion. This “hipster continuum” allows for the never failing escape of self denial of the hipster label. Someone will always be more trendy, more obsessed with a certain length and cut of denim jeans, wears a peculiar hat, and lives in the current trendy neighborhood of Brooklyn. These people are the Hipsters. “Me? I just wear what I like,” which more often than not, align with what my friends like to wear.

The need to rationalize not being a hipster is rooted in the notion that being cool needs to be effortless (or at least appear that way.) Saying that you are a hipster is being earnest, and is not effortless nor cool. The hipster ratifies her belief of being outside the mainstream, in most likelihood is true. However she, all to often, fails to recognize that she is merely rejecting one set of social and cultural (and mainstream) norms with other set of hipster norms, wherever those norms may fall on the continuum.

For all you hipster deniers that don’t believe me, go to any suburb and visit an average shopping mall or big box retailer, and who will see how much of a hipster you really are.

On a rainy Friday, here are some follow up tidbits to some previous posts that have been collecting in my mental Inbox. I think it’s a good practice to follow up on posts. In both blogging, even more importantly traditional journalism, the story after the story is too often neglected.

1. A few kind readers have asked me about the other youtube famed video, D.A.N.C.E., by French techno duo Justice. While it is a great track and video, I still like DVNO better. Superimposing motion graphics on a shirts is a brilliant idea, however the visual effects prowess of the creators overtakes the visual imagery. The viewers spends a lot of time thinking, how did they do that? and what a cool effect. DVNO required a similar level of design skill (with albeit less rotoscoping.) As stated before, in the case of DVNO, the technology is invisible and the viewer can focus on the imagery.

2. The game designer who created Passages, which I alluded to as work of interactive fiction, has created a new work called, Gravitation.

3. From March 1 to March 31, Google blog search reveals: 16,526 results for awesomenessand 706,055 results for awesome, which is lower than the results from my original post:February-2008: Awesomeness: 17,182 ; Awesome: 736,783 ; Are: 61,531,049
January-2008: Awesomeness: 9,627 ; Awesome: 429,769; Are: 57,214,958

Is the use of “awesomeness” leveling of?
I’m not sure. The results that Google is now giving me is different results for previous months when I first collected data, which is a little troubling.

However, if I really want to understand how search engines work, I may have to try to read this suggestion from Wojciech, Introduction to Information Retrieval, by Standford profressors, Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schütze.

Image source: Barron’s Online

One more note on subscription content. Last week I had the fortune of hearing some editors at Barron’s magazine speak, including managing editor, Richard Rescigno.

He noted that Barron’s main selling point is that they provide evaluations of (mostly) equities which they feel are either overvalued or undervalued. Unlike, many of their competitors, their company profiles offer an opinion to respectively sell or buy these stocks. They also publish reports cards to show readers how they are doing. Not surprisingly, their circulation is stable, and at near high levels.

Like the Economist which has been covered here, Barron’s has a subscription based business model, which is supplemented by advertising. They means they they are not as beholden to the companies who advertise on their pages, or the shifts in the media buying landscape. Paying readers get this weekly paper on Saturday. On Monday noon, they also publish their articles on the web for free, as not to take away too much on paying readers who may want to buy or sell when the markets open on Monday morning.

As newspapers and news weeklies continues to see their revenue, stock prices and staffing levels drop, my conclusion would be to aim for in depth reporting that gives an clear opinion and point of view. People will pay you for them.