It’s obvious. For decades, I have been left to wonder what my life’s mission should be. Will I invent a lifesaving medicine? Develop a new, supremely aromatic soft cheese? Maybe unlock the mysteries of the human heart? It’s probably foolish to aim too high. There’s no need to try and explain the universe and the meaning for life when explaining the meaning Celebrity Splash would surely be achievement enough. For years, I have been waiting for the moment when all is revealed and I finally know what it is I am meant to do. I need wonder no more. For, at last, I have a purpose. It’s not to invent a medicine, develop a cheese or explain a horribly misguided television program that sank deeper and faster than any of its contestants. No sir. Instead, my job is to prevent people using the term ‘amazeballs’.
It’s obvious. For decades, I have been left to wonder what my life’s mission should be. Will I invent a lifesaving medicine? Develop a new, supremely aromatic soft cheese? Maybe unlock the mysteries of the human heart? It’s probably foolish to aim too high. There’s no need to try and explain the universe and the meaning for life when explaining the meaning Celebrity Splash would surely be achievement enough. For years, I have been waiting for the moment when all is revealed and I finally know what it is I am meant to do. I need wonder no more. For, at last, I have a purpose. It’s not to invent a medicine, develop a cheese or explain a horribly misguided television program that sank deeper and faster than any of its contestants. No sir. Instead, my job is to prevent people using the term ‘amazeballs’.
I was watching television when it happened. Two obnoxious looking twerps with novelty facial hair were plugging Internet shopping when one of them used the word in question. I could barely believe what I was hearing. It was uttered by a creature who – although ostensibly an adult – was dressed like a twelve-year-old girl. Given the circumstances, I should have steadfastly ignored everything that escaped his mealy mouth, but for some reason it was like a slap to the face with red cabbage. The very sound of the term offended me so deeply that it almost made me want to rip off my ears.
Suddenly, I felt as if I understood Vincent Van Gogh a whole lot better. Until then, I’d assumed he’d gone to town on his own jugs of beer because he’d been giving the absinthe a bit of a nudge. Turns out, he’d only done what any reasonable person would do after hearing some doofus suffering acute arrested development syndrome violate the English language.
But what if I’m too late? What if the term ‘amazeballs’ is here to stay, despite my best efforts? Most importantly, who is to blame for this linguistic abomination? In one sense, you could argue that no one is to blame. A case could also be made in favour of saying we are all to blame for this sad state of affairs. I, however, take a different view. I believe we should stop pretending that this wholesale perversion of language is something we have to live with and sheet the blame home to those who richly deserve it. Namely, hipsters.
For those of you who have lived either in a state of blissful ignorance or outside the inner city, a ‘hipster’ is someone who has tragically mistaken irony for meaning. Everything they do, say and wear has been designed to draw attention and yet, in a cruel twist of fate, the hipster is condemned to acting as though their outlandish attire, try-hard turns of phrase and bleak outlook on life is entirely ordinary. Put another way, hipsters are what you get when you let everyone have access to the Internet. These poor, misguided souls believe ‘You Tube’ is important and that trending topics on Twitter should be given the same weight as the lesser of the Ten Commandments. Not only are they living in the inner city – they’re living in an absolute state of delusion.
When I was at school, hipsters didn’t exist. It was before the Internet and back when Huey Lewis insisted it was hip to be square. But like hipsters of today, we too wore outlandish clothes and said stupid things, fully expecting that older people would find this charming and thank us for it. We reveled in the fact that those older than us struggled with the new technology we took for granted. We loaded games onto the Commodore 64 and set the timer on the VCR as if second nature.
During those halcyon years, I wore acid wash jeans and multi-coloured shirts, dazzling to the eye. My mullet was groomed into a glorious bouffant and it’s blonde tips sparkled in the sunlight. Even better, I wore a pair of ludicrous glasses that I had mistakenly thought would make me look a little like John Lennon on the front of the White Album but, instead, made me look like someone who’d come to check the accounts. That wasn’t the worst of it. For an entire year I wore a single glove in the mistaken belief that this was the epitome of being cool instead of a recipe for one-handed frostbite.
I wasn’t the only one who looked like a complete dill back then. The truth is, we all looked ridiculous. In fact (dare I say it), we looked a lot like hipsters. The only difference between us then and hipsters now is that we meant it. There was no ironic detachment or knowing sense of mockery. We were, put simply, horrendously, irredeemably daggy in the most unsalvageable sense. But therein lies the beauty. You don’t have to make fun of something to enjoy it. Sometimes you’ve got to go with things as they are and embrace the horrible unfashionable nature of life. Detachment, after all, will only get you so far. For the longest time, when I looked back at photos of my teenage self I could only cringe. From now on I will go a little easier on myself. How amazeballs is that?