Some might think I’m a hipster. Or at least I would be if I were ten years younger. That version of me would have been a total hipster.

I have the right glasses for it. I have an obnoxious view of music and love both niche music from bands like mewithoutyou and Sun Kil Moon and catchy pop makers like Chumbawamba. I’m a dude who cooks and does the dishes. I plan on learning how to sew. I’m earnest and ironic. 

I have one deep disqualification among the tastemakers and labelers, however. I kind of want to be a hipster.

Among the deep cynicism and ironic cool that is a fundamental component of the postmodern era, wanting to be something is negative. And hipsters aren’t supposed to want to be hipsters. That isn’t ironic enough. So wanting to be a hipster means you can’t be one.

If I am disqualified by the irony of wanting it, then what is the sense of a label that can’t ever be applied?

The true nature of the hipster isn’t the irony, because that comes from culture. We’re all deeply ironic now. What makes a hipster is the sense of discovery. Discovering things that are missed by the masses. Things to love that you aren’t supposed to because they aren’t “cool”. Constantly seeking the new and the old.  This outcast, radical approach to liking the odd actually begins to make it cool.

Jesus was a total hipster. He didn’t need the irony and the cult of cool. He defined cool through rebellion and radical discovery. As I wrote earlier, I like labels. I like the idea of finding things and learning things. I want to want things and I long to feel things are important.

That’s why I say screw the tastemakers, I’m a hipster. And that actually makes me one.