Know Your Enemy

"We’re the pierced and tattooed, shorts-wearing, skunk-smoking, OxyContin-popping, neurotic dickheads who’ve presided over the commoditisation of the counterculture; we’re the ones who took the avant-garde and turned it into a successful rearguard action by the flying columns of capitalism’s blitzkrieg; we’re the twats who sat there saying that there was no distinction between high and popular culture, and that adverts should be considered as an art form; we’re the idiots who scrumped the golden apples from the Tree of Jobs until our bellies swelled and we jetted slurry from our dickhead arseholes – slurry we claimed was 'cultural criticism'."

Will Self may be railing against the ubiquity of hipster culture (as well as the internet, for being a democratic platform that permits anyone to think they're an "artist"), but much of his ire is reserved for his own generation for allowing it to happen. While I can take his general point, I'm less enamoured by the sneering at "frothy-coffee joints and vinyl record shops" and the sweeping dismissal of Clifton in Bristol and the Northern Quarter in Manchester as nothing but horrible hipster hangouts.

(Thanks to Adam for the link.)