A Hipster Is Upset When Someone Uses His Photo to Show That Hipsters All Look Alike . . . Then Finds Out It’s Not Him in the Photo
The irony of hipsters is they want to be different. But they end up looking like every other person who shops at American Apparel . . .
Last Thursday, a team of researchers at M.I.T. posted a study on the “hipster effect,” about how hipsters tend to gravitate toward similar fashion trends, and all look the same. (It’s interesting . . . you should check it out.)
Then after they posted it, someone complained about a stock photo they used of a hipster with a beard, wearing a knit hat.
The guy who complained said he was the model in the photo. And he was upset at them for implying he’s a generic hipster. But here’s the fun part . . .
It turns out it was actually a DIFFERENT model in the photo who just looks like him.
To repeat that: The guy was angry at them for implying he’s a generic hipster who looks like every other hipster. And it turned out he’s SUCH a generic hipster, he couldn’t even tell himself apart from a random dude with a beard.
The researchers joked that it essentially proved the whole point of the study . . . that hipsters do look alike.
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
