Why We Hate Indie Kids
Eighteen Reasons
1) They like indie music. Obviously.
2) Their regulation thick-frame black glasses. No more breakable item of nosewear has ever been invented: on slow afternoons I could happily cruise the streets for hours walking up to indie kids, lifting these ridiculous excuses for spectacles from their filthy-pored noses and breaking them at the bridge. How the indie kid would howl! Perhaps they would threaten to “kick my ass”. Needless to say all indie kids have adequate eyesight: any slight impairment of vision is due entirely to their regime of perpetual masturbation.
3) Indie kids are at it like rabbits. Or want to be. Scratch any ‘community’ or ’scene’ of indie kids and you will find a seething cauldron of sexual frustration and backstabbing. Most indie kids are vile to look upon: I think this because I am enslaved by societal standards of beauty.
4) Societal standards of anything are bad, pretty much. Unless it gets you a shag. Or earns you – or more likely your parents – the vast amount of money needed to get through college on some no-mark computer games degree AND buy a billion useless identical records.
5) On the rare occasions when an indie kid does get it on it at least distracts them from listening to indie music. Or making it. All indie kids are in indie bands.
6) Indie is short for independent, because indie kids are not mainstream. No sir. They are individuals. A quick look at an indie kid website will reassure you of that.
7) All indie kids are unique. They are however looking for other indie kids who are unique in exactly the same way as them – cool, huh?
8) Among the unique things about indie kids are their haircuts. The square mainstream observer might mistake the uniform dyed bobs and crops of indieland as the sinister hairstyles of a clone army hell-bent on taking over teenage america and making it listen to At The Drive-In. But such an observer would be a fool. There are crucial differences in the haircuts. Some are, like, really expensive.
9) Some records are really expensive, too. You must really love the music to spend $200 on eBay on a one-sided seven-inch, right? It shows your dedication to music is for real and unique, like your taste.
10) Indie fashions are individual and unique too, and are marked by the indie kid’s strong sense of irony. For example, a lot of indie kids like wearing overalls and workshirts as worn by real live working class people. As the indie kid finishes a two-hour shift at Border’s they feel solidarity with their working-class brothers and sisters in the bakeries and pizza delivery companies all across the nation.
11) They don’t feel solidarity with the suits working in offices, though. Those people are a plastic fake herd of manufactured, soulless brainwashed lemming robot drone sheep enslaved to mass culture pap. (This is true, obviously. But sorry, indie kids are worse.)
12) Not all mass culture is pap, though. Hey! What about those cool Powerpuff Girls?
13) Infantilism is endemic to the indie kids. When was the last time you heard one of them use the word ‘man’ or ‘woman’. Nope, it’s always ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. Some girls are ‘cute’. Some boys are ‘cute’ too. The more incurable indie kids use the words ‘grrrl’ and – shudder – ‘boi’, for all the world as if they were living in a Disneyworld 1994 Experience ride or fell into a copy of Sassy once and never escaped.
14) When indie kids pair off with a cute grrrl or boi (all indie kids are in theory bisexual, of course. Just don’t ask them to do anything about it.) they tend to treat each other like shit and then write it up on their web pages (“I am SUCH the geek”). This is because they are very sensitive, not as the casual observer might have guessed because they are emotional dwarves with no concept of human interaction outside a fanzine problem page. You become sensitive by listening to Belle And Sebastian a lot.
15) All their records sound the same, due to influence inbreeding. The gene pool of influences on indie rock has been shrinking steadily since 1977, thanks to paranoid scenester tastemaking. The constant slathering praise directed at the likes of the Get Up Kids and Sleater-Kinney is the critical equivalent of a one-eyed chinless inbred mutant winning a beauty contest.
16) Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation. They like extremity, but not too much extremity. They like songs, but they like them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish. Best of all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they already know are cool.
17) Of course they listen to other stuff too, carefully weighing it up for its purity of motive and general indie-ness. Other genres are assessed with a practised eye, and only the records which have the most spiritual kinship to indie are acceptable – no attempt is made to take these musics on their own terms, since indie is in any case superior. Eventually a fashionably anti-PC stance allows the indie kid to reject even bothering with hip-hop or dance records – that would after all be ‘tokenism’.
18) The worst thing about indie kids is how apalling they are at even being indie kids. After idling their college years going to ’shows’ every other day and then spending two years in retail working on a screenplay or writing a novel about following a band or recording a thousand tinny songs on a hundred cheap cassettes and giving them to people they fancy in the hope that a rare Braid EP track might get them a quick fuck on some other indie kid’s sofa and pretending to like the Spice Girls and pretending to like the Magnetic Fields and pretending to like each other – after all that they suddenly get a job and start listening to Moby and Aimee Mann. What I ask you is the fucking point?
Tom Ewing and Maura Johnston
SPECIAL 2007 EDIT FOR THE COMMENTS BOX MASSIVE:
1. This was written in 2001. So don’t complain that we’re talking about emo not indie. Back in 2001, this stuff was indie, and emo was merely a gleam in a marketer’s eye.
2. I don’t know whether the View and the Fratellis are indie or not, but I do know that you should be ashamed to listen to them.
Tom in Uncategorized • Essays • 60,157 views • Share/Save
Indie Kids are the new Brady bunch. And what’s with the “The” prefix on every band name, the Killers, The View, The Feeling Etc, being done to death…
Hopefully The Plague will go on a worldwide comeback tour.
You totally epitomised the new musical movement (indie and all that shite) good on you!! and i would say the view and fratellis are certainly in the same boat as many indie “bands”. I would also respect the music and its fans if people in bands today could actually play their instruments and write decent songs.
This is probably more of a rant towards the music rather than the fans but at the end of the day it’s all relative.
u twat!
indie is cos its independent labels jesus ur main point doesnt even work
WANKER
*(i am not emo )death to emos))
It amuses me to see so much anger and vehemence at a simple joking article. Sure, Indie, Emo, Goth, whatever they are, some are pricks. Some are alright. In my own personal definition of the terms, I’ve never met a Goth I didn’t like, and I’ve never met an Emo I did. Indies I can take or leave. I listen to Indie music mainly, but I don’t wear the ‘uniform’. SO what? I dislike most people I’d call Emo, yeah, they sit in a corner and whine about how their girlfriend dumped them or whatever , and they cut across instead of along, the useless little feckers. Even so, I don’t get all rabid about it, and insult people on the internet for expressing a valid (if somewhat dated terminology-wise) opinion. Chill the fuck out, people.
This is shit and you suck hard..
Indie is the best !
..
It’s sad that you waste so much energy on hate
Yeah, it’s been rubbish since Buddy Bradley started dressing like Popeye.
I love seeing gangsta’s and bogans whinge about indie kids and emo’s – hey heres a question, does anyone ever get annoyed when a kid or even worse an adult listens to music that rhymes and so he/she thinks that they have a “ghetto” life and they they live it oh so hard on the streets and the next thing you know they form a gang of little shits who go looking for fights and one day get their heads smashed in by a normal group of people just trying to enjoy themselves . As for the bogans.. Meh go what ever you want dude your life aint going ANYWHERE. Its the people who DONT label themselves that are legends – and how can you truly know if someone is emo or indie?? I know heaps of people who have dyed their hair black and wear black clothes but aren’t actually emo – or what about the people who like the ” emo ” music but aren’t emo. Music is music – color is color, it belongs to no one.
First things first, this article was hilarious; and some of the people commenting don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. (I think that was actually the main reason this whole thing delighted me.) But to be fair the whole stereotyping thing amuses me. Yeah, I wear thick black glasses. I don’t go out of my way to convince people i’m so much more ‘individual’ than them. I DO listen to a lot of music that others haven’t heard of, but whatever. Y’know, I don’t even care because I like it and they can’t go plastering labels all over me just because they’re too weak-minded to keep up on track with the way people dress/dance/type and need something to remind them. But all the same, thanks for the laughs…and about three quaters of you need serious work on you’re spelling and punctuation.
ok seriously you are full of SH!T,
ok,
love,
the oninionated indie babe.
you cant judge what you saw and say there all like that, theres no such thing as an indie kid. the genre indie all dont sound the same either. people just stereotype other people and i dont know why. i know indie artists, and i like to dress the way i like to express myself. people need to chill and get over it. life goes on. stop complaining. i dont like allot of things but theres nothing i can do about it.
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I LIKE TO PAINT NEON ON MY FACE AND RUN AROUND IN MY TIGHT UP AMERICAN APPAREL DRESS THEN I SMOKE MARLBOROUGHS (WITHOUT INHALING) IM ADDICTED YOU SEE ABOUT 10 A DAY. OCCASIONALLY I SMOKE MR MARIJUANA ;) I WEAR GLASSES THAT ARENT PESCRIPTED AND RAVE IT UP WITH MY ALCOPOPS AND GET SOOO SMASHED AND THEN BY ACCIDENT HAVE SEX WITH MY BEST FRIENDS BOYFRIEND, I LIKE TO SPEAK SLANG LIKE ‘INIT MAN’ AND SAY IM IN THE GHETTO WHEN I GO TO HACKNEY.(diary from an indiegirl)
INDIE?-VIDUAL… AS IN DIFERENT.. PUT EM ALL IN A ROOM AND YOU COULDN’T TELL THEM APART.
There are some fairly aggressive comments here… It seems that while indie kids are undebatably NOT COOL they can give one hell of a comeback… (fuck you, retard etc.)
;)
who gives a shit who likes indie, who likes ANY OF IT. Pretty soon, you’ll get knocked up and shut the fuck up (insert other situation with means to the same end).
NOBODY cares what anyone does or says or thinks. They only care about themselves. SO! That being said, JESUS IS A FAGGOT. Was that ofensive? :D
Oh, what’s that? I’m EMO?! Ohhhh oh no, masses! fick. dich.
here, your clearly a twat
you picked out the fratteli’s and the view
both scottish bands, when there are pish bands coming from england?
twat.
HAHA this is pretty rich! Y’all can tell this author that they have too much time on their hands or whatever, but the fact is, indie retards, he called you out on every stupid quality that you all share. You’re all more hypocritical than the GOP, more pretentious than fashion models, less intellectual than field mice, and have about the artistic merit of Hitler.
By being called ‘indie’ in the first place, it’s a total sham. You’re independent because you can conform to a particular (not very creative) style of dress and behavior and all try to act exactly the same. God i hate indie..
you conclude with a question “whats the point?”. As you define what indie kids are through their flaws i guess ide have to say i dont know wat the point is. Maybe if you indulged in the lifestyle of an indie kid before you wrote your malinformed generalizing paper you would find an answer to your question. Wide ranges of clicks or lifestyles can be defined under indie and sure ide even agree with you that some represent wat it is to be indie in an undesirable way, but i would much rather associate myself with the odds of trying to be indie and looking like a fool over being the kind of person who writes tedious-to-read hate blogs on things they dont understand instead of idk working. Furthermore your first reason that liking indie music is a reason to dislike indie kids was such a rash and incredibly ignorant statement it alone should illegitimize your whole piece. Your a shitty person. i hate you.
I love this blog. Your opinions are valuable. Indie kids are not, they’re wankers that try and claim any style of clothing that isn’t ghastly to look at is- “totally indie”. “Yeah I like to dress well, so when I buy an adidas windbreaker, its indie because its bright yellow, despite the fact that adidas has been a sports make ever since it started in Germany. Before your beard grew and your music taste became indie, you’d have called me a chav for wearing it you twat.” Indie is all marketing. I can’t wait for the day when all these bandwagon assholes realise that the bands they think are “independant” and “indivudual” are merely a product of a scene that grew in popularity, therefore a load of pricks discovered they could make money out of it.
Wow douchebag.
you twat, get over yourself…
there is one thing that you should have but apparently dont…its called a life…indie kids have those so i suppose the odds of you getting one are too slim to even merit a comment on that….
my mistake.
go screw yourself sides ways then come back and maybe youll have a life because youll have accomplished more than that of the “lesser mans body”
this is jank. so what if we like to be Independent and non conformist? we like good music rather than your music witch is just bad lyrics with a back beat. we are originals. we can buy clothes from places rather than American eagle and such and have it look good the the “indie standard”.
SORRY FOR BEING INDIE!
Indie was being indervidual
now it’s become a style. The indie style.
I like it. Boys in skinny jeans
bi-sexual, sure half the people i know judge me for it
but i like girls sometimes , deal.
pretty clothes that arn’t your mainsteam.
opshopping, it’s cheap and more fun finding treasures.
totally indie
as for music, indie music is nice and you know it.
The teenagers – lovely.
um.. and ilike dizzie rascal, he isn’t “indie” but i still like him
no big.
you have just generlised the indie
those ones that hate music as soon as it gets popular and state they liked that song months ago. The ones that buy the clothes and the haircut to – be indie. Then there is the rest of us that just be ourselves and other people tell you :wow, your so indie”
You can’t tell people your indie..
that’s not very indie of you is it…
wow, just because someone dresses differently than you or acts different doesnt mean you have to be all “death to emos” cant you just live your life without being a dick? and the whole scene kid thing? people dress how they like to dress, and not EVERYONE is like that. i know a lot of people who dress this way and they are some of the nicest, most original people i have met. yeah ill agree with you that there are a lot of fakes out there. but dont generalize the entire group as something thats “bad” and shit.
i listen to mostly indie music…besides say anything and a couple other bands, most my music is indie. i just want to say i think nonconformity is so stupid. by saying you are a “non-conformist,” are you not conforming? you’re going under a label, which last time i checked, is not original. i don’t understand why nobody can like what they, whether it conforms or not, and stop trying to be original or special.
i thought this article was amusing, i found it pretty funny. i just hope people really don’t judge me by the music i listen to and group me as an arrogant, sarcastic asshole or an originality try hard.
You Fucking asshole.
I’m Indie. And I don’t blow up like this.
Learn your shit.
You just hate indie because we’re unique and we don’t get involved In mellowdramatic activities.
Shouldn’t the concept of indie be simple? Like what you like and hate what you hate. As long as you’re being yourself and following your own fancies, isn’t that what makes you unique, or in essence, indie? After all, there is no duplicate of the same person, but it seems like the so-called “indie” society is looking for that individuality, as long as a small group of people are following them. They want to be unique with a following without the pressure of being called a loser or a geek for flying solo.
my fucking god.
i love indie music. i love music in general to death so I fit that aspect pretty well. but i don’t dress up and i love radiohead and my bloody valentine along with fall out boy and panic at the disco.
ANYONE who actually labels themselves as “indie” is a useless piece of fuck really. as the saying went for punk: if you’re indie, you don’t call yourself indie. at the same time, i thought punk was stupid as fuck as well. fuck subcultures.
so. if you actually call yourself an indie kid, please do me a favor and go hang yourself while listening to morrissey or something because you give REAL music lovers like me a bad name.
BUT. indie music doesn’t all sound the same, it’s actually the other way around, i can list you lots of bands considered indie which all sound very different from each other. there are of course plenty of shit bands who like to call themselves indie. and unfortunately most of them have gotten a considerable amount of attention since indie kids will buy into anything.
also. i’d like to mention that there are two types of indie kids.
there are the mainstream indie kids.
then there are the pseudo-bohemian indie kids.
the latter looks down on the former with a passion.
the latter is also a much bigger pain in society’s ass.
the latter is actually part of another subculture(like a bastard child i suppose) that appreciates art in general, rather than music specifically. they also tend to be older, early to mid 20s.
you know those art films where there’s a pretty girl doing and saying practically nothing, those were made by pseudo bohemian fucks.
cbf’d to get into more details.
as for me, i like to lump myself into a group called “i fucking love music and you can fuck off if you don’t”.
saying fuck alot makes you cool too. should’ve typed this in caps.
anyway, go to hell you dog fucking cuntnuggets.
have a good night
also i’d like to add. the most indie thing you can do is to be normal, because god knows everyone is trying to be special. which might not be all that true in time to come. we’re actually experiencing a transition between simple counterculture into counterculture counterculture. i like to call it double compound counterculture. which means, people are going to be special by exaggerating being normal because it’s become normal to be special. sounds stupid(and maybe confusing) right? well just wait and see.
BYE BYE
fuck you. you piece of shit cunt.
Can the stupid bastard who wrote that essay just fuck off and go continue their whining on an emo forum?
I’m an indie kid and this is horrible. I’m only 11 and I’m a girl and live in England and I can’t find any indie kids these days, mainly because I go to an all girls school. OMG I hate it. We are amazing (lol), and aren’t depressed like emo’s or bitchy like, well, bitches, and cause mayhem like chavs. People who like absoulute shit like Paramore and the Jonas Brothers will learn one day that Paramore is not pop/emo rock. People at my school think that the Jonas Brothers play rock. And Fall Out Boy? What wannabe’s.
Thanks xxx Had to have my say :) xx
Does listening to obscure japanese bands count. Because that’s what I’m good at. not even the majority anime obsessive people know what I listen to.
Isn’t this a stereotype too? Those aren’t cool. Be who ever you want to be, weather your shy or outgoing. Stop marking people.
WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM YOU DUSH!!!
GO DIE IN A WHOLE FILLED WHITH FLAMING JELLO! :D
Oh God, so know what you mean!
I watch them on the Indie Nights in town, them stupid glasses and all uniforms
xo
blah-blah-blah
stop going on about indies. people call me indie all the time,but i dont care because i dont stereotype like some people -.-
DIE ALL U INDIES DIE!!!
Die, this thread.
Replace the word “indie” with “teenage” and you’re there. Who else would carry such massive chips on their shoulders? If I met my teenage self, I would punch my lights out and create some kind of personal generational paradox…for a laugh, like.
Excuse Me I Take That Rather Offensive.
Im An Indie, And Were Not That Hatable!
Only People like you Hate us!
So if You Have A Problem With indies, Or Anyone Else Keep It To Yourself, Okay?
I Dont Want to Hear A Sad Little Kids Story On their Opinions Of Indies!
Indie kids are the best kind of people, far better than you. You just don’t understand their Irony.
lame lame lame lame. you’re lame. you can’t just hate one category of human. you must hate emos and goths and hippies and preps and jocks and whatever else there is. it doesn’t even matter, why can’t people just be themselves and like what they want without other people hating them? there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?
WTF was all that about?
You need to get yourself a life kid and stop bullying people because they have different tastes, because they don’t follow mainstream fashion.
Isn’t there enought shit happening in the world with natural disasters and terrorism that we have to set about each other?
Get a life man!
@Becky # 295:
You said “Get a life” twice. I wonder what constitutes a “life” to you? He’s married with kids and does what he enjoys doing. “Get a life” is a *really* juvenile thing to say. Maybe you should… “Grow up”?
Oh, and by the way…
“stop bullying people because they have different tastes”
It isn’t “bullying” to criticise.
And…
“because they don’t follow mainstream fashion.”
One of the points (which you completely missed) is that they *do* follow mainstream fashion. Just because they do what 20% of the people do rather than 50% doesn’t stop it being “mainstream”.
Every ‘Indie’ poster on this thread that has been emotionally unable to take the criticism as it was intended; a silly good-humoured joke poking fun at po-faced self-absorbed teenagers who think they can buy individuality, is going to grow up and look back at this ten years from now and say; “My god, he was right”. Because the one thing he has right now that you *don’t* have, is the benefit of hindsight.
As for “Hate” – there was no hate in the article, even though he used the word. There was just some mild bemused irritation.
why does evrybody care about sum dumb group of ppl tryin 2 b unique. most ppl do. is it really such a bigg deal that ppl have to talk crap about “how pathetic THEY are” i mean srsly you ppl have taken yer time ( of wich u appently have alot of )to talk crap about sum dumb steryotype stuff. who cares. like why do u care. oh no these kids wanna be unique they wear skinny jeens n listen 2 “underground music” but its really “mainstream” waa im gonna go a blog about how stupid it is. if only i had life to fill up all this empty time i have to bitch about things that dont matter. if people focused this much energy on our country or school or anything really how much better this place cud be. but no we have ppl lik u by the thousands who sit on their asses complainin and disscusin this crap. oh yes godbless america. wut a country.
whats your problem buddy ? I listen to indie music but i dont fall under any of those thing you said about them . I dont call boys “boiiis” and i dont call girls “grrrls” i dont think i am a geek . I dont have a bob haircut . I dont dye my hair . I listen to indie music because i like it , the lyrics are meaningful . Oh and i dont “experiment” .
sorry that i dont love to “rock out ” to lady gaga and rihannas meaningless lyrics about partying and how great they are .