Perhaps you know a hipster, or maybe a one in recovery. More likely, the hipster you know ( and maybe even love ) is still active in the community. For most practitioners of the art of being cooler than you, shirking their role would, despite all cues to the contrary, might deprive the world of another obscure blog entry–or drunken interpretative dance on open mic night.

While hipsters have been around for a long time, and in some form probably always will exist, the shelf life of an individual hipster is far shorter than their actual lifespan. Thankfully this gap only places the slightest of burdens upon society.

For while the hipster’s posturing continues long after anyone stops noticing, the more obvious point is that nearly no one ever did in the first place.