Jon: Well, this is a show about h-words—oh, screw it, it's not worth trying to beat around this ridiculous bush. "I Just Want My Pants Back" is the show about hipsters, and its relative accuracy is impressive yet unnerving. Feeling the latter often makes it difficult to acknowledge the former, especially since it’s airing on the "Teen Mom" network and has one of the greatest lead-ins of all time, "Jersey Shore."

In "Pants," Jason (aka Jay) and Tina are hip young post-grads who smoke pot in bar bathrooms and talk about their sex droughts and screwy relationships in a post-Juno repartee that doesn’t seem too impossible, but maybe that’s cause you like to think you and your friends rap like that. But maybe you kinda do!

Exaggeration is always somewhat necessary in television, but what’s really neat about the first two episodes of "Pants" is that everything holding it together seems somewhat real and familiar. Premise: Jay gets laid and his titular pants stolen—and obviously finding said pants (and mystery thief, Jane) becomes a metaphor for discovering oneself. Jay’s best friend Tina wasn’t given a whole lot to do in the pilot except spit out some solid one-liners, but she showed signs of inner turmoil in episode two as she grappled with waiting for a post-fight text from her chocolatier/poet squeeze, Brett, as well as deflowering her 19-year-old intern. After the pilot I got the sense that Jay and Tina’s friendship would eventually morph into your typical will they/won’t they relationship, but I’m not so sure now—which is actually a very good thing, sitcom conventions be damned. And straight up, I like that "Pants" hits so close to home on a level that goes beyond pop references and good location scouting (not that that’s not important), and lands somewhere much more personal.

For those who haven't yet indulged: to the preview clip!

RJ: When we first heard of this show, I was afraid. With stuff like "2 Broke Girls" and "The New Girl" lightly depicting youthful, hip, Williamsburg-inspired culture, I became almost defensive and territorial when you told me about this “more accurate” portrayal of hipster life. Not to mention the casual Wavves namedrop (and the non-casual score collaboration), some nug huffing, and a so-bored, yet positive-minded protagonist whose current life’s a chore. Holding down a shitty job as an assistant to a strangely perverted and outrageously cruel casting director (played by the always stellar Chris Parnell), Jay reaches out to hilarious, wackadoo magazine publisher Lench (who’s latest project, All Naturals, focuses on environmental sustainability and hot chicks—“think models with 70’s-era bush in hemp bikinis teaching you how to compost”), because he’s thinking of getting into “music journalism.” I’ll admit I was hating myself for not being an investment banker when they dropped that on my dome, but I ended up finding all of it endearing. Sure, it’s hard to see my lifestyle and career choices caricatured onscreen. But if it didn’t feel real, would I feel this exposed?

Now, hipsters vs. suits is an eternal struggle on par with cats vs. dogs, the Empire vs. the Rebel Alliance, and Lana Del Rey vs. the word “authentic.” Standing in stark contrast to Jay and Tina, their friends Eric and Stacey aren’t quite typical suits (that title goes to the sexually repressed lawyers that Jay and Tina seduce at the All Naturals launch party), but their chosen path of grad/med school over Jay and Tina’s free wheeling lifestyle represent some sort of “safer” route and perhaps even a minor case of “selling out.” Eric and Stacey aren’t culturally clueless; I’m pretty sure Eric fits Urban Dictionary’s definition of “blipster” while Stacey’s the one who initially name-drops Wavves, wanting to momentarily reclaim her punk past by celebrating her birthday at a super secret show. Instead of keeping up with an “alternative” lifestyle into early adulthood (like Jay and Tina), Eric and Stacey have chosen a domestic path with more structure and security. Tina digs the couple as they make out over the crock pot Eric gifts to Stacey, but beyond her snark lies an unsettling contrast. While Jay and Tina can act like their life choices make them too cool for adulthood, they can’t deny Eric and Stacey’s genuine happiness and fulfilment as they struggle to find their own, professional and personal. I’ll take it one step further: as a 23-year-old freelance writer living in Williamsburg who took a year off from undergrad, ditched Politics for a fresh English degree and a maybe-career in music writing, seeing just how happy Eric and Stacey are makes me wonder about my path myself.

Jon: "Pants" never makes Eric and Stacey seem lame—I mean, they make couples Wii tennis, buying a mattress and quizzing each other with flash cards of diseases seem pretty dope. Sure, Jay and Tina take some jabs at them (“They’re hip, they’re new, they’re loud,” says Jay after Stacey expresses interest in the Wavves show), but neither lifestyle is really glorified. Jay comes across looking pretty awful when he forgets to pick up the Wavves tickets from the Craigslist dude cause he was finger-banging the freaky-deaky lawyer chick instead. With that in mind, what I find odd and almost off-putting, but ultimately compelling, about this contrast is that most, if not all, attractive-young-people-finding-themselves-in-a-big-city sitcoms revolve around these relatively stable characters like Eric and Stacey, by now so familiar that you kinda know people like them in real life. So when the ostensibly directionless, “just wingin’ it” hipster is juxtaposed with these tried-and-true characters, and you can relate to him on a more personal level than you ever could with Ross or Monica or Ted Mosby, you suddenly see yourself as a trope. Ugh, and then his references are spot on, and his one-liners kill, and then you’re watching the pilot for the first time and he drops that music journalism bomb and all you can do is yell at your TV but then not turn it off. Because it’s funny, and as much as you want to believe it is, it's actually not pandering to anyone, and the "Pants" people know that Arcade Fire isn’t performing at Music Hall of Williamsburg these days.

So it’s easy to be taken aback by "Pants" because it’s about a lifestyle and culture that prides itself on individualism and rejection of certain norms... a lifestyle that's already become commodified, even standardized. On the surface "Pants" seems like a consequence of those latter issues, but maybe the show’s existence is proof that this cultural movement [Editor's Note: Williamsburg is a cultural movement now???] that’s been building over the past decade-plus hasn’t so much cheapened but simply become a kind of pop culture in its own right. And there really isn’t anything necessarily wrong with that.

RJ: Kinda know people like them in real life? Try the vast overwhelming majority of my childhood and college friends. While most of them never were any sort of former “authentic punk” like Stacey, almost all of them are now young professionals working in banking or consulting, or drowning in 2L or clinicals. Yet they’re pop-cultural aware and consume with relatively careful curation; that Wavves exchange between Stacey and Jay happened in my life a few times almost exactly verbatim because my friends found Nathan Williams’ music on their own. The cultural lines that used to separate stale adulthood and “safe” career choices from hip, cool youth and a risky pursuit of passions and dreams are now blurred (I’m aware of “cool dads” but think of “superrad gnarbone dads” who take their kids to the skatepark with no helmets, let them eat cookies for breakfast, and bump Superchunk at Gymboree). I think you’re right, this is proof of a cultural movement that’s been building. [Editor's Note: Oh my God.] Many young adults take a path with “safe” career while intelligently and actively consuming culture. They’re not hipsters but they’re not exactly suits, and they’re certainly not suits just pretending to be hip. They’re something new and perhaps they’re the result of this movement that you point out.

So the question is: will "Pants" continue this blurred line? Or will it attempt to redefine those cultural boundaries between “hip” and “safe”? On one hand, seeing Jay and Tina’s successes may inspire Eric and Stacey to reject their “safer” paths, find their “true selves,” and relapse into freewheeling hipsterdom. But if Jay and Tina realize there’s a way to enter adulthood and domesticity without sacrificing their gnarly youth and authentic art tastes, wouldn’t that be more indicative of today’s culture, which has blurred the line where Stacey, Eric, and my friends exist between hipster and suit?

Jon: I want to see where they go with this dichotomy too, but based on the endearing portrayals of both sides (I suppose props should go here to creator David Rosen, who also wrote the book the show’s based on), I can’t imagine "Pants" singling out one as more “authentic” than the other. If "Pants" went the path of glorifying the indie-artistic-doobie-blowin’ lifestyle as a means of achieving self-actualization as opposed to the aspiring-doctor/yuppie weekend warrior, well I’d be out. Luckily, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here at all.

Though I dug the pilot, episode two wasn’t as solid: Eric and Stacey’s mattress plot allowed for some good jokes, but ultimately went nowhere; and while Jay and Tina’s sexcapades were pretty funny (i.e. the bartender Tibetan throat singing her ex’s name while boinking Jay), only the “Tina & The Intern” storyline was that compelling, albeit completely unrealistic—there’s no way a virgin could ever gaff so hard and still spit such courageous game like that to his boss. And get laid. Twice. I mean "Pants" is kind of absurd, enjoyably. No one’s boss would deliver a chop-licking monologue about nailing a pregnant woman, like Parnell does—but then we’ve all had fucked-up bosses.

But that leaves me with one last obnoxiously hyper-conscious question: Do I like "Pants" more because it’s written, acted and shot quite well and tells an engaging story? Or more because I get a narcissistic kick out of seeing an sensationalized version of the culture I live in—and maybe even parts my life—on-screen depicted with enough accuracy (the devil’s in the details, bro) that I feel like my life is important and legitimate and could totally be a sitcom? I dunno, probably a lot of both. Stoked for next week.

RJ: I’d tune out immediately if "Pants" became some self-righteous arms race of authenticity or fulfillment, but I don’t think it’ll come to that either. I’m a little afraid that the show might devolve into a hookup Chronicles of Gnarnia, but Jay’s “music journalism” plot looks to be the real force here, or so we (egotistically) hope. And of course, he still needs those pants back. Let’s be real, that narcissistic joy manifests so well because of the writing: it feels dangerously close to our real lives and cultural interests, adds heavy spice (because everyone knows music writers are really huge dweebs who would be terrified to fridge fuck), and drives us to consider our own journeys (which, really, have just begun). We’ll see if our lives and this culture are television worthy in the long run, but at least right now "Pants" shows they’re entertaining and substantial enough to warrant closer examination by both hipsters and non-hipsters alike. As two obnoxious, former-suburban, Willburg-livin’ altbros, we’ll take that iota of validation.

Jon Blistein and RJ Cubarrubia spend their afternoons at Billboard and have also written at places like RollingStone.com, The L Magazine, Impose and Nerve.com.

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"It took me a little while to understand how much nastiness people generally intended when they used the word hipster. It just sounds sort of attractive to me, a hipster. I thought yeah, I guess that is sort of my culture. Those are my people and I was just about able to go on thinking that it was a perfectly nice thing to be until someone pointed out to me or it finally sank in that it was meant contemptuously and I really I'm not sure I accept the premise that I think it's a self-loathing term and I've come to be very alert to this self-loathing propensity that surrounds certain kinds of cultures of what are essentially connoisseurship, generational affiliation."
—Jonathan Lethem, in answer to the question "Are hipsters ruining Brooklyn?"

The things that hipsters such as Jonathan Lethem value and embody are worthy things—surprisingly so, in view of all the mockery the hipsters come in for. I agree with him that a hipster is "a perfectly nice thing to be." It is a pity that anyone should be made to suffer so much, and so needlessly.

If it were really such a contemptible thing to be a hipster, you'd think that nobody would want to live in Echo Park or Williamsburg or Shoreditch or the Haut Marais; you'd think nobody would want to be caught dead wearing skinny trousers or the colored Ray-Bans or listening to WHY?. And yet people in search of the like-minded flock to those places, to those things. So why this "self-loathing propensity," the doubtless real and widespread thing of which Lethem speaks?

It isn't really self-loathing at all. People don't hate hipsters, and hipsters don't hate themselves. What people hate so much is the faux-hipsters: they hate poseurs. And because it's such an irritating thing to be having to tell the real from the fake (exactly as in the matter of overpriced European handbags), the easiest way out is simply to deny any involvement in the whole business. That is why nobody, not even someone who fervently embraces hipster culture, wants to call himself a hipster.

But there are good reasons to validate the legitimate aspect of hipster culture, the aspect that is fun and has real charm and elegance to it; that tries, the way every social group tries, to form bonds between the like-minded using all these signals like haircuts and cardigans and bicycles and magazines.

It's easy to tell the difference between a hipster and a poseur, because while the former are mainly enjoying, the latter are mainly judging. The poseur is an aesthetic snob without aesthetic discernment; he sneers but has no understanding of standards. So instead of having fun sharing their arcane things together, the poseurs are having zero fun pretending to not like anything. As Nietzsche put it most memorably: The man who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as one who despises. These two kinds of people really are just worlds apart, even though they may find themselves living in the same neighborhood and going to the same rock show.

The tastes and habits of the world's bohemias are real symbols of a certain way of life and way of thinking; there's fidelity to a certain truth in the underlying reality, and that is how a Tokyo hipster can quickly recognize what might prove to be a kindred spirit in Buenos Aires or Austin. This kind of symbolism has been around since at least the time of Oscar Wilde, when the greenery-yallery aesthetes drifted about carrying "a poppy or a lily" (q.v. Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.) In the age of the Internet, though, that symbolic force has become just hugely magnified, because new symbols can penetrate the hive mind so quickly, and so deeply.

So today's bohemians get in a big gang and live together, as they have for over a century at least; almost every city of any size in the Western world has at least one such neighborhood, and the big cities have many, each with its own flavor. In effect, though, all these places are the same place, like Solzhenitsyn's "archipelago" (except not a prison camp for political dissidents): a series of far-flung islands but really one place, invisibly linked. In this case, residents of the archipelago value inventiveness, intelligence and taste over wealth and conformity; what Lethem is calling "connoisseurship." There is lots of artwork and music and clothing being made in these places, experiments of all sorts, an atmosphere of discovery. There is generally "more dash than cash." It is fun to have lunch or buy records there, more fun than having lunch in the rich neighborhood; people from "outside" come along to see the foreign movie, to have coffee. The hipsters live there, and the poseurs who follow them do, too.

The widespread vilification of hipsters has entirely failed to distinguish between the hipster and the poseur. Maybe that is the very reason why people never seem to tire of the constant ragging, even though it's all been done to death; the irresistible "Being a Dickhead's Cool" had millions of YouTube views only a matter of weeks ago. But please note that what is being mocked in every case, from "Dickhead" to "Hipster Olympics," is not really hipsters! It is poseurs. Nobody is ever mocking anyone who is having fun. The mockery is reserved for those scowling, affected types who are in such a hurry to be the first to know the New New Thing before anyone else does, not out of real curiosity or scholarship, but just out of anxiety and a cold, sterile competitiveness, a kind of pushing other people out of the way. It's the ignorance and fakery that are being mocked, not the actual hipster culture: "We're puttin' on this rave, and there's a band in the mosque? And all the proceeds are going to that thing that happened in the Middle East or Africa or whatever?"

So what are these alleged good reasons for praising the hipsters? There are two. One is to decrease suffering among the youngs, because there should be no shame ever surrounding the love of or identification with a place, a way of life, a band or a pair of glasses. There could be so much more happiness (and inventiveness, and liberty) if people were just free to just love what they love without having to worry about whether or not they are going to be crucified for being a hipster.

When you are around young people who have ambition and taste, and who long to enter an imagined world full of gloriously attractive and brilliant cognoscenti, it can break your heart to see their fear and insecurity—which is very natural and really, almost inescapable for the young—manifested in distrust and an assumed arrogance, in a pretense at more knowledge than they really have. The way they pretend to know about this or that band, or the way they suddenly up and say that Pitchfork itself is "too mainstream," or they pretend to read a book that they haven't read. They literally twitch with grief and fear. They are suffering! And this suffering stifles their natural curiosity and pleasure, imprisons them in an airless chamber of embarrassment and insecurity. How many lofty, jaded teenagers are out there right now, too bored and cynical to enjoy anything freely? When they should be having fun instead. So that is why it is a good idea to say, go ahead and be a hipster, if you want to! That is very charming and delightful, and please tell us when you find another band as good as WHY?.

An aside: I am one of the ancients, myself, but I can still remember something of that fear; wanting to prove I was smart, fit to participate, things like this. Nervous that I might not really be as worthy as I hoped, no matter how hard I worked. A common paradox, I think: it's a strange thing, but as an ancient I feel far less informed, less well-read than I did at eighteen, when I thought it was such a big deal to have read (a tiny bit of) Dostoevsky (in English.) Maybe this is partly a question of making friends with your own inescapable ignorance? So that you go in the library and can fully, absolutely realize that you're only ever going to absorb the tiniest particle of what there is. I can remember, too, how liberating it was to be able to admit freely and even with pleasure, "I don't know!" and to view saying so as an opportunity to learn something, rather than as an admission of inferiority. Ignorance is Liberty! Haha, God, now I sound like Orwell, whatever.

The other and equally good reason for encouraging the hipsters is that bohemian values of inventiveness and not-so-much-materialism are particularly helpful to have just now in the U.S. Because there has been way too much materialism over the last fifty years, new ways of looking at "success" and so on are badly needed. It would be great if, instead of excoriating the hipsters, people took a serious look at how they like to live, and maybe tried some of the things they like, for example riding a bicycle instead of driving a fancy car, or trying a vegan diet, or learning to play music. If we could broaden the idea of excellence to include more than wealth and power-to include cultural fluency, invention and new experiences—it could be such a good thing.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

Photo from Flickr by Fred Benenson.

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I was going to write an incredible piece detailing the exploits of a controversial "hipster conference" on an esteemed university campus. No other journalist would have the guts to write this because of the potential backlash from the Hipster Media Elite. This event was to be held on neutral territory to prevent "New York media gang violence."

I was going to start by detailing the crowd.

In line I saw: three fedoras. one sleeveless t-shirt. Rainbow sandals. White people. Headbands. Dr Martens. More Rainbow sandals. One asymmetric haricut, and Tao Lin spinning around in a circle.

Then I was going to mention that my dad bought me a "burrito bowl from Rubio's" as a clever way to disclose that my father works at the University and that's how I was granted access to a student event.

Then I was going to detail the most exciting things that happened:

Gavin McInnes didn't wear a shirt. He told Tao Lin to tell Steven Wright Jokes. Everyone on the panel said that Gavin McInnes invented hipster culture. He said that women's eggs have expiration dates on them. To which Brenna Ehrlich responded "women are tired of the shiftless adolescence of men." Alexi Wasser noted the difference between the Hipster Attitude and the Hipster Aesthetic. Gavin McInnes said that hipsters are the most queer-friendly youth subculture ever and then made fun of a guy's haircut. Tao Lin announced that he did in fact like the guys haircut. This was the most opinionated statement he made during the evening. Alexi Wasser said nobody on the panel were hipsters, they were all yuppies. Mark The Cobrasnake said he wanted to inspire, and thought it was okay that kids discovered Sonic Youth at Hot Topic as a way to learn about cool stuff from an inauthentic level.

Ultimately the panelists spoke to the merits of "hipsterism" (as coined by Professor Mary Corey) and unanimously rejected "hipster bashing." I left the panel entertained but wishing they'd talked more about race, class and anti-hipster sentiment. I also wished someone made a big budget buddy comedy starring Gavin McInnes and Tao Lin.

I wish there were more events like this so I could someday write an incredible piece detailing the exploits of a controversial hipster conference.

- Josh Heller

Joshua Heller is well-informed now about hipsters.

Photo from Flickr by Eric Molina.

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