The MIT Technology Review recently published a story titled, “The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same.” The photo accompanying the article pissed off a hipster, and hilarity ensued.



The article was a summary of a research paper that found that in trying to make a “counter-cultural statement,” hipsters often end up looking like each other. And at the top of the article was a photo illustration of a hipster with copies of him:

The Register reports that the magazine soon received an angry email from a man who wasn’t happy when he saw himself being used as the lead illustration for the article. He accused the Technology Review of “slandering him.”

Here’s the story told in a series of Tweets by MIT Technology Review editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield:

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



Lichfield then looked into whether the magazine had the proper model releases to use the man’s likeness.

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



It turns out the photo illustration was based on a Getty Images stock photo titled, “Styled for the street: Shot of a handsome young man in trendy winter attire against a wooden background.”

The photo had a restriction stating that any use in an unflattering way must be accompanied by a note stating that the subject is a model.

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



And here’s where things get hilarious: the furious hipster who emailed wasn’t even the hipster in the photo.

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



“He’d misidentified himself,” Lichfield writes. “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.”