ByAdin Mondamin, 4LS
As someone who gets mislabeled a scene kid regularly, I've come to understand the plight of the common hipster. The skinny jeans, flannel shirts, fixy bikes and messenger bags create a supple atmosphere for ridicule.
On more than one occasion, I have been verbally intimidated by SUVs full of pastel shirts, usually ending with a quick heckling and acceleration through a late yellow light. Like I said, I understand the plight of the common hipster.
We non-pastel-shirt-wearing students feel similarly about the atmosphere and attitude of fraternities.
Although outnumbered, the hipsters set aside one weekend a year (when all the pastel shirts are in Jacksonville) to celebrate their interesting style of music and art.
Why is it that members of a subculture so entrenched in their disgust at the modern fraternity feel obligated during their time of glory to act in a way so consistent with their enemies?
As an observer of The Fest, I've witnessed fight after fight, loud scream after drunken loud scream, stumbling upon stumbling, bad screaming music after more bad screaming music until the early hours of the morning for three long, arduous days.
From my vantage point, The Fest appears more like a prolonged fraternity formal with bad body odor and less camouflage than a celebration of a legitimate, progressive subculture.
Shame on you, hipsters, for once again falling to the vices of your fraternal nemeses.
