The Trendiest Guy in New York City

November 18, 2012 10:07 AM

Living The New York Times trend piece.

And previously, The Most Emailed New York Times Article Ever.

posted by latkes (28 comments total)

Pot meet kettle
posted by The Whelk at 10:09 AM on November 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

They experience ‘pain and suffering’ and ‘face ridicule’ from their bearded friends

I have been sitting here for 10 minutes wondering whether this means that there is ridicule that they face or that this is ridicule about their faces. Prolly both I guess.
posted by elizardbits at 10:23 AM on November 18, 2012 [9 favorites]

"I don't know how to answer your weird question!" she wailed.

A generalized summary of all my human interaction to date.
posted by elizardbits at 10:24 AM on November 18, 2012 [15 favorites]

"I don't know how to answer your weird question!" she wailed.

A generalized summary of all my human interaction to date.

I love that I'm pretty sure you're on both sides of this, too. Well, at least, I am.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 10:44 AM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Meta-clickbait! Ironic critique used as a distancing tactic so we can participate in mass culture while congratulating ourselves on being smarter than it! It's like the '90s all over again!
posted by RogerB at 10:45 AM on November 18, 2012

Someone made a joke during the hurri cane that the NYT would run an article on putting on weight due to blackouts AND THEN THAT FUCKING HAPPENED
posted by The Whelk at 10:56 AM on November 18, 2012 [12 favorites]

Metahipster.
posted by meinvt at 10:58 AM on November 18, 2012

Meanwhile, this just ran in the New York Times today: How to Live Without Irony. (Apologies if this was already the subject of an FPP; I know these things are popular here.)
posted by compartment at 11:14 AM on November 18, 2012

I've been living without irony for years, I just throw my clothes in the dryer for 20 minutes and they come out wrinkle free.
posted by hellojed at 11:42 AM on November 18, 2012 [12 favorites]

I have spent time in Brooklyn over the years and I know it's a diverse place but if my only exposure was the NYT I would think it was a weird island consumed by the cult of Gwyneth Paltrow.
posted by fshgrl at 11:51 AM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Someone made a joke during the hurricane that the NYT would run an article on putting on weight due to blackouts AND THEN THAT FUCKING HAPPENED

I was like "...really?" over in MeFiChat and then vkxmai linked it in the channel and I was OVERTAKEN WITH ALL THE STABBY, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK because so, so manipulative - I mean, the NYT has to be trolling with this.

So the piece is about the shock-and-horror! of gaining "the Sandy five" - as in FIVE POUNDS - let me link it here:

“I can’t even talk about it — my jeans do not button,” said Emily Marnell, 31, a publicist who cited both boredom and anxiety as a reason she fell victim to odd, middle-school-kid cravings for junk food after her Gramercy Park apartment went dark. “I went through Duane Reade and was grabbing Double Stuf Oreos, whole milk, Twix, Twizzlers, Sour Patch Kids,” she recalled in horror.

But wait! What's the very next sentence after this bit of rage-bait?

A tightening of the waistband hardly counts as a crisis in a region where so many have endured actual devastation. Indeed, few people who lived in the part of the city that some were calling “SoPo” (south of power) would have dared complain about tilting the scales after surviving the fury of a Category 1 hurricane that buffeted a large swath of the eastern United States.

So, wait up a second, NYT, you're going to report on a bullshit thing, but then you're going to piously chastise those you're quoting for this bullshit thing?

Oh, but here's the closer:

Suddenly, the svelte editor was gorging like Falstaff, whipping up (on her gas range) five-egg omelet breakfasts or roast-chicken-with-every-vegetable-in-the-crisper dinners. “It was kind of like the movies,” Ms. Lavinthal said, sheepishly. “What you eat in the dark doesn’t count.”

“I’ve never been so grateful for my jeggings,” she added.

Gorging?? On omelets? Roast chicken and lots of veg? What the -

JEGGINGS.
C'mon, NYT, that's just too calculated.
posted by flex at 12:10 PM on November 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

Omelettes and roast chicken are my go tos when trying to eat better. I understand that my Funion eating self is pretty far removed from the New York Times Style section, but I'm not that far from them.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:20 PM on November 18, 2012

As a longtime Internet commenter, I have plenty of experience viciously criticizing people who are different from me.

Heh.
posted by medusa at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

the cult of Gwyneth Paltrow.

NO FOOD FOR HER THRONE.
posted by The Whelk at 12:27 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Just to be safe, I scrounged up about 30 pillows of all shapes and sizes, and threw them on my bed until you couldn't see my bed. When night fell, I realized that there is no good way to sleep on a bed containing 30 pillows. . . . I eventually arranged them so my body was touching the mattress while being walled in by pillows on all sides, like the victim in some lesser-known Edgar Allan Poe story.

Ok, this is pretty funny.
posted by medusa at 12:33 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Also, attractively sculpted crotch hedging.
posted by medusa at 12:35 PM on November 18, 2012

he lost me at 'hideous breakfasts'
posted by parmanparman at 12:57 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

I bet I could work "I've just had my pubes waxed" into conversations, but I'd like to forego the actual waxing if posible.
posted by arcticseal at 12:58 PM on November 18, 2012

I did not want to like this, but "'That’s exactly the sort of thing a numpty would say,' I snapped" KILLED ME.
posted by naoko at 1:17 PM on November 18, 2012

When did Slate start running Dave Barry columns?
posted by notme at 1:21 PM on November 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

I don't know, I thought the Jemaine Clement look was so five pounds ago.
posted by psoas at 2:08 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Everybody join me in welcoming new MeFite pejazzling in 3...2...1...
posted by univac at 2:11 PM on November 18, 2012

The trouble with hipsterhate is that you only make them stronger.
posted by LogicalDash at 3:55 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, this just ran in the New York Times today: How to Live Without Irony.

It points out the trouble with projecting your experience on everyone else. She saw the late 80’s and early 90’s as serious and heartfelt. The people I hung out with in the late 80’s loved funny trucker and hunting caps and Debbie Gibson t-shirts. Irony and sarcasm was the main form of communication.

From the article;

Born in 1977, at the tail end of Generation X, I came of age in the 1990s, a decade that... now seems relatively irony-free. The grunge movement was serious in its aesthetics and its attitude, with a combative stance against authority, which the punk movement had also embraced. In my perhaps over-nostalgic memory, feminism reached an unprecedented peak, environmentalist concerns gained widespread attention, questions of race were more openly addressed:

I’m slightly older than her, we saw the the same things as amusing bullshit or completely irrelevant to our lives, like it was happening on another planet (mostly because we were assholes that consumed too many toxic substances).

How did this happen? It stems in part from the belief that this generation has little to offer in terms of culture, that everything has already been done, or that serious commitment to any belief will eventually be subsumed by an opposing belief, rendering the first laughable at best and contemptible at worst. This kind of defensive living works as a pre-emptive surrender and takes the form of reaction rather than action.

I think this is not a bad description of how many I know felt in the late 80’s. She says the people she is talking about were born then. Coincidence?

The interesting and surprising thing to me is how much many old friends have changed. I lost touch with nearly all of my friends from my early 20’s soon afterwards. When I run into them now they seen to taken a 180 degree turn. They are surprisingly heartfelt and honest in their communication, saying things with no hesitation that would have mortified their younger selves (surprising just because I didn’t witness the change as it happened). Many the people who were the most walled off when they were younger are the most straightforward now. Or dead.

Getting old is not all bad, or as they say, it’s better than the alternative.
posted by bongo_x at 5:21 PM on November 18, 2012

I've seen enough photos of my dad in the 1960s to know that the beard thing is a trap.

I'm not falling for it.
posted by schmod at 5:40 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Born in 1977, at the tail end of Generation X, I came of age in the 1990s, a decade that... now seems relatively irony-free. The grunge movement was serious in its aesthetics and its attitude,

Anyone who thinks the kids in the 90s were less ironic or self aware than the present should watch a random Fringe episode. Then watch a random XFiles episode. I suggest Season 5 or 6.
posted by fshgrl at 12:17 AM on November 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

What's his beef with British Breakfasts? It's not like we eat them every day - as one of my Italian colleagues thought - but once a month or so they're great, for example this from The Ginger Pig for about £7.

Yum yum!
posted by DanCall at 12:56 AM on November 19, 2012

The NYTOnIt account is hilarious. Shame the Times can't take a joke

The Times is ON IT!
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:31 AM on November 23, 2012