If I Dress Like A Hipster, Will I Like PBR?

I don’t know what’s more disturbing: the fact that I accidentally got drunk on beer before the afternoon was even over (ewww gross – beer!); or, the fact that it was so easy for me to find clothing and accessories in my house that fit the hipster milieu.

In any event, for some reason I got this crazy idea that if I surrounded myself with hipster accessories, and even went as far as to dress like one, that I would somehow magically begin to like PBR as well. I thought this would be the best way to test my hypothesis that it is being a hipster that makes you actually enjoy Pabst Blue Ribbon. The only other possibility is that being a hillbilly will influence your actual enjoyment of PBR, and since we have already established that hipsters are just hillbillies in vintage, it seems pointless to test both. (Not to mention, I would have to dress in overalls and take serial photographs of myself sitting on the toilet: the former I am unable to do for I own no overalls; the latter I am sure you all do not really want to see…)

Here are the results (you will note I have added the typical, hipster photo effects to get the true feeling that – for this day only – I really became a hipster):

I decided to only sample four beers, because really I hate beer. PBR was to be included as one of the four; my photographer and beer sampling administer (thanks dad!) chose these: Tecate, Corona Extra, Coors Light, and PBR

As I said, I surrounded myself with everything-hipster. That was to test my hypothesis that it is being a hipster that makes you actually enjoy Pabst Blue Ribbon. Included in my surroundings, I had: an unreasonable amount of Apple products, a pile of scarves (ready for wear if needed, despite the fact that it was 90 degrees out), colored sunglasses, a ridiculous hat (the only thing that would have been worse would be a vintage fedora … but the hipsters do love their retarded beanies), and an oversized and unmatched outfit … disturbingly put together from my very own closet. The drinks were hidden behind a black box and a wall of the extra cans of PBR.

It was rough for me to choke down that beer, but I’ve had enough in my hey day to guess at 75% correctness. This blogger hasn’t had beer in a long time, though, so obviously I felt a little rusty drinking it.

I got Tecate right! I’ve had Tecate a lot in my life – and I still do enjoy the taste.

Coors Light was wrong. I didn’t like it and never have, so it is no wonder I guessed it was Rolling Rock. I’m not the biggest fan of American beers on the rare occasions that I do drink them, so it is no surprise that I had no clue (really) what I was drinking on the second round.

Obviously a little tipsy at this point, I got Corona Extra correct! And I’m still a fan …

I was given a few different samples of the Tecate and the Coors Light before we moved on to the PBR, just for the sake of making sure I didn’t figure out what I was drinking. Obviously the level of hatred I have towards hipsters would have skewed the results; nonetheless, when PBR came up I did guess it correctly and I still hated it.

This leaves us to a few possibilities:

My hypothesis that it is being a hipster that makes you actually enjoy Pabst Blue Ribbon was just proved wrong. This is quite obvious.
You could further hypothesize that just surrounding yourself with hipster-esque things does not actually make you be a hipster. This is a pretty big possibility and is an entire blog altogether, for that would mean that being a hipster is not about the material manifestations of it, but rather an inner state of being. (I shudder to think that is the case.)
What I really believe this proves is the idea that hipsters will do whatever to conform to the social standards of being a hipster. It has been cited before on a number of different blogs, websites, and even news articles on Time and various weekly papers. Hipsters want so badly to be against the grain of social norms that they conform to their own … social norm of (ironic) nonconformity.

Back to my normal self …

… I am reminded that my real obsession with the hipsters is not that they like certain things or act in a certain way, but that they are complete hypocrites. They will spend hundreds of dollars on things that look vintage. They claim a nonconformist attitude by going at great lengths to conform. They argue for individual rights and respect, while letting their parents pay for everything well into middle age. They will even go as far as to drink a drink that really does taste like it came from a toilet bowl, merely for the sake of saying “we like cheap.” But the Pabst Blue Ribbon wasn’t even really that cheap – it was comparable in price to all of the other beers I sampled. A friend from Chicago even told me yesterday that at bars out there a pint of it will cost you about $6.50 – more than I have ever seen a person pay for a pint of beer. Hipsters are one of my biggest pet peeves merely because in hoards they are creating even more stupidity and hypocrisy in American society, something I really think we already have enough of.

Special thanks to my dad, Raymond Schmidt, for setting up the beer tasting and taking the photographs. He’s a writer too … you can find him on Amazon by clicking here.

Responses

Get a Little Cray Cray « Heather Christena Schmidt

November 2, 2011 at 11:13 pm

[…] after seeing that Facebook post, as well as getting a taste of the wild side when I did my Dress Like a Hipster post a few weeks ago, I developed a longing deep within to get a little cray cray myself. […]

Psilomelane

October 14, 2011 at 11:43 pm

If I had to guess, I imagine many people drink beer to be social; they can slowly suck down can after can (or bottle) over the course of a few hours while yukking it up with friends, and members of the opposite sex they want to fuck at the end of the night. I don’t go to bars, and I drink to feel drunk, and often as a legal means of feeling restless enough to get started tackling a portion of all the mundane crap that awaits my attention and efforts — not as a “social lubricant.”

Once I send this reply I’m going to take another swig straight from the 1.75L bottle of Skyy — not to “impress,” but because I don’t feel quite intoxicated enough yet to complete my loose plans for the night…

1. Heather Christena Schmidt
  
  October 16, 2011 at 7:16 pm
  
  I would be interested to see a study of some sort that shows what percent of people drink for social lubrication, or for just adding a nice lucid glow to daily life. I am sure that a lot of the people that do so are on the social lubrication side, otherwise I have no idea why anyone would drink some of the shit they do haha!
  
Psilomelane

October 14, 2011 at 11:16 pm

At some point back in the 1980s when I mentioned to an acquaintance that my (then living) father drank only Pabst Blue Ribbon he exclaimed, “DAMN — PBR is an old man’s beer!” And he was right; before about 2000 I had never heard of anyone under 50 drinking piss like Pabst.

I’ve never had any use for beer; I can’t see the point of drinking an entire six-pack of the stuff just to get close to the same effect obtained by half a tumbler of my usual drink, Skyy vodka.

1. Heather Christena Schmidt
  
  October 14, 2011 at 11:28 pm
  
  Think of how many calories and carbohydrates an entire six pack is … I stopped drinking beer years ago after like three Coronas made me feel full and crappy, rather than drunk and happy. I’m a wine girl, myself though. I’m not entirely sure why anyone would drink PBR, except to be cool or cheap. Today was the first day I really drank more than a little sip of it; and it really did taste like I was drinking urine.

Heather Christena Schmidt