Remaining Still While Listening to Music
Although hipsters are loathe to dance at actual concerts, whilst listening to jams via their custom headphones, it’s inevitable—the rhythm is gonna get them. Why? Because the average hipster listens to good music and, come hell or high water, everyone around him must know how much he’s enjoying said good music, leading the drooling masses to jealously wonder which album has struck the hipster’s fancy so. The aforementioned phenomenon is made manifest in one of three ways:
1). Bobbing One’s Head: This is the more reticent hipster’s preferred method of musical appreciation. Often it is employed when the hipster is secretly listening to what is known as “shitty music” (read: anything that you listen to). While the head bob does indicate a certain level of enjoyment, it doesn’t attract the kind of attention that would impel a neighboring party to look down at the hipster’s iPod and discover that he is listening to the Fratellis’ “Tell Me a Lie” on repeat.
2). Mouthing Lyrics: This is a dangerous move, considering passersby could mistake this form of silent singing for talking to oneself. But when a hipster mouths the words to a song, he is proclaiming to the world—albeit without audible words—that he gets the lyrics that are currently snaking through his ear holes into his soul. They are a part of him. And he knows every single word to every single song on this motherfucking album. That’s dedication, man.
3). The Air Guitar/Air Drum/Air Keyboard: Sometimes more daring hipsters will break out with a split-second act of mime action: strumming in the key of minor G, whaling on a snare or tickling a sea of phantom ebonies and ivories. Such hipsters are usually musicians—musicians who desperately want you to know that they are musicians.
This is something I do all the time—at the gym, at my desk, waiting for the train. I don’t know if intense, awkward music appreciation is a hallmark of hipsters, only.
