Gork,
I'm way behind the hipster doofus curve. I only just now got into gourmet coffee activities and I still haven't even ordered my Lucite glasses frames! I'm sick of being stuck in a lifestyle timezone flop. I don't intend to spend my 40's chasing trends like I did in my 30's. How can I catch up fast, and once I do, is there anything I can do to see what's hip before it's hip? Thanks.
Gladys Jane Horkshaft, Zubb, MO
Gladys Jane,
Don't panic and don't bother trying to catch up; as you already know, by the time you get there, you're too late. You're not alone though. Most of us are Beta Doinks rather than Alpha Hipsters, but there are ways to turn that around. I'd like to introduce a theory I've been working on that might illustrate the problem. I call it "hipsteresis".
Hipsteresis is a term I coined after observing similarities to the actual scientific phenomenon of hysteresis - a property that relates the current state of something to its past states (usually manifesting as a lag or delay considered to be "error") and it can actually be measured, and therefore, predicted. In other words, your hipsteresis error is pretty large and you need to minimize it.
I know it's not easy to visualize so I'll use your coffee activities example to illustrate the concept. Take a look at the plot below. Coffee activities hit a hipster index max around Y2K as shown on the red hipster curve below. It took a nosedive when hipsters realized that stale coffee made in drip machines tastes like liquid farts. Hipsters pounced on the opportunity and started grinding/roasting their own gourmet beans, caring about water quality, ditching the machines in favor of manual pour-over carafes and presses, etc. The coffee hipster index soared. While that revolution was happening in the Pacific Northwest, you were back in Zubb still driving through fast food joints ordering fart water because you were still operating on the blue curve. The area between the curves is hipsteresis error and you have to minimize it to be near the leading edge of anything. You may also have noticed that just when the hipster index bottomed out at around 5, the doink index was hitting its max at around 25--that's quite a difference! I've got my grad students plotting data for other foods and fashions. If you have interest, I'll send you some (skinny jeans curves are especially interesting to analyze).
Anyways, this answer got away from me a little bit. For putting up with me, I'll give you a hot tip. I have it on good authority that a new fashion trend is about to explode onto the scene...It's called "Underwear on the Outside". Feel free to run with it. You might just end up "setting the curve" as it were. Good Luck.
-gvd
