If you read Hipster Runoff regularly, this will make perfect sense to you. If you don’t, we suggest setting aside an afternoon and familiarizing yourself with the satirical/all too real genius that is “Carles.”
Last night, we learned (through HRO’s Twitter, natch) that Hipster Runoff had been “hacked” by someone telling readers that they’re “idiot lemmings”:
“every one who has a blog is stupid. just a bunch of failed journalists trying to let their opinion be known. but charles is a psychopath. he doesn’t care about the goodness in anything. he is just tearing down everything and making excuses for everyone, developing a terrible, terrible world view for people to think is ‘cool.’ i don’t give a shit if you call it ART or if you call it social terrorism. it has to be stopped.”
We love that Carles is taking his stuff to new heights — we all know it’s just another one of his “gimmicks,” right? — because there are only so many altbros you can make fun of and only so many times he can make us all cringe whenever he asks us if something is “authentic” or “meaningful.” Carles has made a name for himself by pointing out that our fascination with making sense of our own cultural obsessions and hatreds is a bunch of circular nonsense, doing so through a “No, I’m serious” blogger persona that personifies “meta-satire.” The best part is that half his audience doesn’t even realize it, and the other half is all too aware. It’s kind of hard to explain — it’s mostly a “you had to be there reading it” kind of thing.
The “hacker” seems to be upset about everyone buying into Carles — either ironically or otherwise — and as bloggers at La Cinta point out, “Either said hacker is super lame, or Carles is doing a good impersonation of a super lame hacker.” Carles has impersonated the collective youth psyche quite well so far, so we don’t think there’s anything he can’t do — including absolutely elevated cultural commentary as seen in his infamous Animal Collective post.
This latest move, the “hack,” is fascinating because it attempts to capture the perception of those who don’t “get” HRO, achieving both a mockery of the people on that end as well as of the reader who “gets” it and feels superior for doing so.
Bravo on this one yet again, Carles. <3u