DEPRESSED HIPSTER MAGAZINE

Fanmade music videos are the easiest emotional fodder available, apart from searching “cardboard robot before:2010-01-01” on Google Images. They speak to the lack present in the fan that made them, someone who has had an emotional response to a song that leads to the angry/jealous/assertive act of saying “why did I not make this! I want to have made it!” So then they try to make it. Ohh. The trying and half-failing is what makes it good? Interesting. Let’s explore this. This particular example contains footage from a Japanese animated short called Melody, about a sad bunny learning to play piano or something. Don’t Swallow the Cap is a song that makes me freak out, because it’s throbbing and insistent and desperate, like all music should be. I really wish The National’s albums up to Sleep Well Beast would be reconsidered by the general hipster population; people write them off as maudlin easy listening, but I think there’s something going on that is deeper and more violent, which I plan to explore in a further column. For now I will just say that every time I have ever taken MDMA, I have forced my friends to listen to them. I’m sober now. Anyway. One of the main things I’ve been struggling with lately is the heartbreaking fucking fact that what is deeply emotionally resonant to one person (me) will just not be emotionally resonant to another person (everyone else) in the exact same way, and that it is almost impossible to fully convey the depth of feeling you have about a song or movie or video because everybody has had different life trajectories. And even if something becomes pervasively culturally resonant, there is always that aching feeling that you are experiencing something fully alongside somebody who is experiencing it from a different angle (see: listening to NYC by Interpol while closing the restaurant you work at, with your coworker who is also aware of the cultural context of that song but is having an emotional reaction to it for different reasons. And you both cry, but also for different reasons). 

I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. We’ve all lived life. It’s beautiful to see other people live it too. But maybe it’s also mean. To like this stuff as a novelty. It’s haughty. There’s an American Dad episode that I am having a really hard time finding the name of in which Stan and Roger become obsessed with the life of a random woman who they follow on Instagram. They’re fascinated by the mundanity of her life, and they consume her Instagram like reality TV. I think a lot of people have something like this, a blog or YouTube channel that represents “normalcy” that’s packaged really nicely and tells a story over time. I found this blog because I was looking for pictures of Disney cruise ships and this family had gone on one. It’s written by the mom (Andrea); she takes hundreds of photos of her family and the activities they do together. They go to trampoline parks, zoos, restaurants, recitals. They give each other Christmas presents. They do everything normal people do! I can feel myself start to be condescending about their life in an “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again” way. People tend to balk at stuff like that these days. That being said, Depressed Hipster Magazine is all about bringing back that snarky, Chuck Klosterman vibe back! Probably. It’s really fun to read Normal Latter Day Saint Family (f.k.a. Normal Mormon Family, I guess the church discourages the use of the word Mormon… because of wokeness). One time their son dressed up as a Soundcloud rapper for Halloween, they do puzzles and get frozen yogurt. And Andrea never shares her internal struggles or feelings of ennui so I imagine she doesn’t have any. One has to seriously inquire within themselves whether or not they are looking down on these people. Whether they are applying a fucked up noble savage identity onto people they view as “regular.” Romanticizing the ordinary automatically positions the one doing the romanticizing as extraordinary. That’s the negative perspective. The positive perspective is that in a sea of performativity, it’s cool to keep up with people who perform mundanity instead of spectacularity. I believe that God speaks to us through prophets.

All that stuff I just said but about this thing. Her name is Emily and her favorite word is “euphoria.” And she makes me want to be a better person.

Admittedly I have not really been keeping up on this Australian guy’s snarky blog. When I was in middle school, I bought a printed and bound collection (one might even call it a book 🤓) of sarcastic email exchanges between him and his coworkers/employers/friends/family/strangers called The Internet Is A Playground. Flipping through it in my childhood bedroom earlier this year, the patina of time had made almost every exchange read as unnecessarily antagonistic. Gone are the days of House M.D., Tucker Max, etc. David Thorne’s most viral moment comes in the form of a spider email, in which he tries to pay an overdue medical bill with a (honestly pretty chic and well-designed) drawing of a spider. Even back in the day, some people found his tone to be hostile. The troll by nature is a controversial figure, either lauded as a folk hero or picked apart by the ethics committee. Thorne, a graphic designer, has continued to sleekly package his exchanges, in print and on his website, adding a refreshingly palpable aesthetic sheen to a pretty annoying and geeky art form (Depressed Hipster Magazine, anyone?). When I was a kid, I pretty much only bought books from the “Humorists” section (Mostly comprised of books by B and C-list actors, comedians, or faceless bloggers. Most often titled “Adverbly Adjective”). Reading this out loud at Thanksgiving brought me closer to my family.

I reserve the right to continue to talk about this guy. There is so much to be mined here, so expect this to be a recurring topic of discussion. Briefly, Never Got Famous is a YouTube channel consisting primarily of comedic rants, monologues and sketches in which actor/director Tristan Newcomb portrays a character named Albert Snodoloberm, a penniless failed comedian and director who works delivering food and deeply resents his station in life. It would be hard for me not to classify this as surreal autofiction, but I pay for his Patreon (and I encourage you all to do so as well) so I have been able to communicate with him and he rocks. He’s the friendliest guy ever and his commitment to this universe he’s created is respectable. As lucid as he seems, his work has this incredible outsidery tint to it; I appreciate its lack of aesthetic palpability or cohesion. There is a breathtaking amount of content scattered across his YouTube channel(s), blog and Bandcamp page. Maybe hundreds of hours of loosely plotted and rambling audiobooks about his monomaniacal obsession with recapturing the magic of the early Muppets projects (he loves The Muppets, and puppets in general. But hates the way that Disney’s acquisition of Henson Studios has turned them into ghostly advertisement versions of their old selves). Some of his projects have a real sinister energy to them that feels honest past the point of being within the confines of the project. There’s some darkness here. My favorite thing Newcomb has ever made is an audiobook called Chompies 89. It tells the story of a young Snodoloberm, hustling in late 1980’s Hollywood, desperately and delusionally trying to get his Gremlins knockoff made. If I had a wish machine I would wish for Paul Thomas Anderson adapt it into a movie. If I had a shittier wish machine, maybe Damien Chazelle. If you promise to listen to the whole thing and to get back to me with your thoughts, I will buy this seven dollar audiobook for you. Seriously. Send me your name and email to [email protected] and I will use Bandcamp’s “gift” function to “gift” it to you.