What does "Aural Equivolent of Starbucks Coffee" mean?  We've all seen them somewhere, the seeming innately hip. Maybe they were at the hole-in-the-wall video store...you know, the one with all the foreign videos and xeroxed concert flyers on the windows. They could have been at the 'vintage' clothing store, stocking the hemp belts and Che Guevara messenger bags. They are the intrinsi... [+]

What does "Aural Equivolent of Starbucks Coffee" mean?

We've all seen them somewhere, the seeming innately hip. Maybe they were at the hole-in-the-wall video store...you know, the one with all the foreign videos and xeroxed concert flyers on the windows. They could have been at the 'vintage' clothing store, stocking the hemp belts and Che Guevara messenger bags. They are the intrinsically hip. They swirl in an aura of patchouli and casual indifference. They are the ones that enjoy the "five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes" of bohemian ecstasy. In our minds, they are living Fight Club's Brad Pitt character, complete with Goodwill fur jacket and Doc Martins. We have seen them, and the seeds of envy and yearning are planted.

We want to be the townies, the hipsters, but we don't have the time. We want the leisure to read Nietzche and Sartre, crafting a studied apathy to deal with the foreseen nothingness of a Godless and ultimately inauthentic lifetime. But money has to be made! We want the freedom to live a life not bound by orthodoxy and societal expectations, but the children's diapers won't change themselves. They inspire the lost and forgotten garage band drummer in us. They wake the failed art student in us. They awake whatever part of ourselves we long ago sacrificed on the altar to Mammon.

Business is not unaware of this secret yearning, and now they target it in their advertising. Suddenly everyone enjoying a coke in commercials transforms into a hipster, freed from external constraints and acting like kids again. Apple iPods are sold by disembodied shadow (a la Peter Pan) who get to rock out as if the iPod eliminates all cares in the world. Starbucks Coffee is selling you an image along with your half caf, no cream mocca latte. The image that all of these companies are selling is that if you surround yourself with their accoutrements, if your coffee has a brown and green holder and your phone has a cool ringtone, you will slip into Nirvana. If you become a big enough corporate whore, if your living room looks like Page 4 of Crate and Barrel's catalog, if your wardrobe looks like the warehouse for Gap and Gucci, then you can happily call yourself superior to your officemates, car pool partners, and dinner party guests.

That's where my playlist comes in. You have the clothes, the shoes, the car, the mounted plasma screen TV, now you have to have the tunes to be superior to your peers. These tunes will help you tap into that hip, trendy, bohemian underground that you are actually too uncool to discover on your own. Memorize these ditties, regurgitate them at dinner guests, and laugh at their unhip ignorance. Are they still listening to The Killers? Ha, they might as well be wearing Ugg boots, last season's Armani, and dancing the Macarena. Shame them! Shame them mercilessly! I mean, your self-worth is established by comparison to your peers, so tear them down unendingly! [-]