Youngish pundits and frustrated coffeehouse denizens have now long bitched about hipsters and their seemingly unending stranglehold on the fading tatters of any decent American bohemian culture. Their reign has been surprisingly sturdy (for our normally faddish society) and rather unsurprisingly joyless. Very little quality art (IMHO) has been produced by this amorphous cult of cool. Quality mustaches, tight pants, and nice bicycles appear to be the primary output (and perhaps moving coffee and beer into more stratified echelons of taste).

But should we blame hipsters for simply desiring perpetual coolness? Or for their iconic traits of snobbishness and pretension (even when repeatedly reinforced by personal experience); or for their most culturally detrimental trait of all: being dilettantes? No. Instead the place for blame is the continuing domination of art and artistic culture by our rampaging corporate overlords. They are the true culprits, lest we forget: the serial appropriators and commodifiers, who remain largely undefeated.

For at least six decades now this rapacious modern form of consumer capitalism has been ceaselessly preying upon every new manifestation and movement in each of the artistic genres, and for what? Merely to move product. This beastly business hydra has grown more vicious and insidious every year (not unlike yes, cancer). To the point where we now toss around phrases like ‘viral marketing’ without irony or the profound sadness it should immediately evoke in any warm heart. In fact, it has become a common artistic goal. Just as: ‘personal branding’ — that voluntary creation of a corporate product out of one’s very self. The vivisection of personal identity. Quite disturbing. Yet it is now a commonplace antidote to honesty and genuineness, brought to you by the power of ubiquitous corporate marketing.

Because who can argue against the amazing accomplishments of advertising? In some ways it’s the most wealthy and successful artform of all time. At least, if you consider propaganda to be art. Certainly Goebbels did.

In the midst of this continual onslaught of inauthentic travesty, transplanted and mutated from its original enlightening purposes simply to be molded and corrupted into the darkness of tyrannical profit — prodded and abused, shamed before the throne of sales — how on earth can we expect an alternative culture to thrive… or even survive?

Perhaps the only way to maintain one’s sanity in this toxic atmosphere is to be perpetually on guard against its corruptive influence: to be always cynical and self-aware, just in case. To keep your most sensitive feelings hidden behind a veneer of contempt and cool-judgement lest the ravenous corporate gods repurpose your tender emotions into a hollow form of saleable branding (at least for any brands you don’t like). One must remain alert for the creeping inauthentic at every turn. Only then can your emotions remain beyond the reach of the system’s domination. Hence, society evolves the hipster: a person who appreciates art, but defensively. An attitude finely crafted for living in our post-sincerity culture.

And it is this protective stance that has ironically subsumed the possibility for any new healthy and beautiful alternative to be born apart from the corporate mainstream. It has created a pretentious wall of fear as a bulwark against inauthenticity. But fresh and wondrous creativity requires a loosening of mental control and an exposure to vulnerability. It needs to repeatedly reignite the cognitive fire of fun and exploration (which already becomes difficult after twenty-two-ish). And above all: it requires a release of self-consciousness.

How very un-hipster.

So in this harsh modern techno-wonderland of constant scrutiny, immediate criticism, angry identity politics, and ever-questionable moral authority — locked inside a desperate and crumbling consumption economy — with all the hazardous emotional amplification of perpetual recording and instantaneous communication which the internet can muster, how can a genuine artistic culture whimsically, happily, and wondrously emerge?

Short answer: it can’t. Because it is stunted by commercial annexation and malnourished by perpetual judgement. Such is the heartbreaking state of alternative art in the 21st century.