Hipster Runoff is one of the most consistently brilliant things on the Internet. Carles’s faux-naive narrative about AltBros, bloghouse, and tugjobs is a mirror held up to the face of everyone who’s ever gotten blasted at a Sparks open bar, let his new-rave phase get a little out of hand, or had that dirty little superior feeling when Pitchfork blows up a band he’s been into forever. HRO does a better job critiquing hipster culture than any fun-hating Adbusters cover story ever could, while never descending into pure snark.
The HRO post “Animal Collective is a Band Created By/For/On the Internet” might be Carles’s masterpiece. It’s an epic teardown of Animal Collective, the cult of fans who follow them, and what it means when an artist or group of artists is given a platinum-level free pass by the critical establishment, or what passes for the critical establishment these days.
It’s also extremely hilarious. If you only read one article during the press cycle for the current AnCo album–one article is about my limit–make it this one.