Oh, irony, you scamp. In a recent post we identified “irony” as being, by some measures, a New Yorker kind of word, but today brings evidence that Time Out New York is the really ironic one. In this week’s cover story, “The Hipster Must Die!”, the weekly guide performs a “hipster detox” on a misguided (their assumption, not mine) hipster on staff named Drew Toal.

The feature puts The New Yorker in an, ahem, interesting light. First, here The New Yorker is defined as a hipster journal. I beg to differ, but I can’t deny that its reach encompasses George Saunders as well as Seymour Hersh. So in the makeover, Toal (or should I say “Toal”? He may be a real person, but the makeover is clearly facetious) discards The New Yorker in favor of “a Star Wars novel and a copy of Maxim.” Ah, good to know what “regular” people read! So what does Toal think?

Truth be told, I found myself enjoying tales from a galaxy far, far away. Despite the fact that they were written on a third-grade level, the lack of existential conflict and postmodern window dressing was refreshing. And the lightsabers were cool too. Maxim, it should be noted, was less revelatory, although I did learn six important tips on how to make a successful sex tape. I will be going back to The New Yorker and Harper’s, but I’m also going to make time for nerding out in sci-fi land.

Is “hipster” so strongly coupled with “intelligent” that its opposite automatically denotes a “third-grade level”? I don’t think so, but let’s move on.
Clearly, this is a backhanded compliment to The New Yorker—it’s the opposite of third-grade fare. But wait! Doesn’t that make it also a backhanded compliment to hipsters, too? In a feature about the necessity to de-hipsterize Williamsburg? Color me confused.
And the confusion doesn’t end there. If we showed ten random local culture vultures a Star Wars novel and The New Yorker and asked them to pick the purer hipster artifact, how many of them would reflexively single out the one that frequently dedicates considerable space to poverty and genocide? Surely it’s the Star Wars novel that reeks of hipster slumming, no? Even Maxim can be read ironically, you know.
At this rate we’ll need Jesse Thorn, mastermind of the new sincerity, to sort it all out.
Note to TONY: Did you mean McSweeney’s? Or was that too obvious?
—Martin Schneider