PeopleImages via Getty Images The Getty stock photo that caused the conflict.

It seems that hipsters don’t always love irony. A man threatened to sue a technology publication for using his image in a story about how all hipsters look alike, only to find out that the picture was of a different person. Last week, MIT Technology Review posted an article titled “The Hipster Effect: Why Anti-conformists Always End Up Looking The Same,” which discussed a Brandeis University study about “the hipster effect,” or how nonconformists often end up conforming to counterculture conventions. The article featured an image created from a Getty stock photo of a bearded man in a flannel shirt and beanie. The Review used the image, duplicated it several times and added a purple and orange hue to it to illustrate the point of the article.

A few days ago we ran a piece in @techreview about some research purporting to explain the "hipster effect"—the fact that nonconformists often end up nonconforming in the same way. We used a stock Getty photo of a hipster-ish-looking man. https://t.co/8LB6qLSmgS — Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield) March 6, 2019

However, an unidentified man saw the image, thought it was a picture of him and sent the publication a pretty heated email, which, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., read: “Your lack of basic journalistic ethics in both the manner in which you ‘reported’ this uncredited nonsense, and the slanderous, unnecessary use of my picture without permission demands a response, and I am, of course, pursuing legal action.” Thing was, it wasn’t him. “He accused us of slandering him, presumably by implying he was a hipster, and of using the pic without his permission,” Gideon Lichfield, the Review’s editor-in-chief, explained Tuesday on Twitter.

We promptly got a furious email from a man who said he was the guy in the photo that ran with the story. He accused us of slandering him, presumably by implying he was a hipster, and of using the pic without his permission. (He wasn't too complimentary about the story, either.) — Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield) March 5, 2019

He also mentioned, “Calling someone a hipster isn’t slander, no matter how much they may hate it,” but admitted that his publication wouldn’t use an unlicensed image and looked into the matter, although they got the image from a reputable agency.

Now, as far as I know, calling someone a hipster isn’t slander, no matter how much they may hate it. Still, we would never use a picture without the proper license or model release. It was a stock photo from Getty Images. So we checked the license. https://t.co/uFPXXNlEid — Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield) March 5, 2019

“So I forwarded the email to our art department,” Lichfield told CBC. “… And their response was, ‘Yes, we have the right license. But, you know, we can take the picture down anyway if he’s annoyed.’ But our creative director said no, this was an image that we used with permission and perfectly in accordance with our rights. We shouldn’t take it down just because somebody doesn’t like it.”

The image does have restrictions—e.g., if you use it “in connection with a subject that would be unflattering or unduly controversial to a reasonable person (for example, sexually transmitted diseases)”, you should say that the person in it is a model. https://t.co/sYNmqJYZ2g — Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield) March 5, 2019

We weren’t implying that the model had an STD, only that he was a hipster. We didn't think this met the definition of “unflattering or unduly controversial.” Still, we recognized that others might disagree. So, just to be on the safe side, we contacted Getty. — Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield) March 5, 2019

So the publication got in touch with Getty. The agency checked the model release and gave the Review some pretty interesting information. “They have a team that deals with legal complaints and they went into their archive and checked the details and they came back to us and they said, ‘Actually the model in this photo does not have the same name as the person who wrote to you,’” Lichfield explained to CDC. He added: “They wrote to him and ... said, ‘We don’t think this is you.’ And he replied, ‘Oh, I guess you’re right, it’s not.’

Getty checked the model release, and gave us the news: The guy who complained wasn’t even the guy in the picture. He'd misidentified himself.



All of which just proves the story we ran: Hipsters look so much alike that they can’t even tell themselves apart from each other. /ENDS — Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield) March 5, 2019

Needless to say, people loved how Lichfield called the man out.

This is everything I had hoped for and more. Nice job you guys. pic.twitter.com/I7DtvtKTV9 — Snn (@Sinanm89) March 6, 2019

Some Twitter users had jokes of their own.

I think I might also have a claim... 😂 pic.twitter.com/CdaPUc65Rq — Spin (@adumbduck) March 6, 2019