So, to wrap it up: if you wear a square shirt you’re hipster — but if you’re a working class wannabe hipster then you’re a bipster — while if you don’t wear anything in particular you risk to be normcore (even if you don’t even know what that means). Yesterday I wore a square shirt; today I’m wearing a blank t-shirt: What am I? Should I be worried? Always worried, forever?

I agree that cool capitalism has made it hard to be oneself without concerns. In detail, anything seems to be immediately captured by the big commercial frame and boiled down to an objectionable category. (And authenticity itself is one of the most criticized as basically unattainable, a ghost concept, pure capitalistic illusion).

What I would add, though, is that there’s a proliferation of cool sociology as well — a kind of guilty pleasure of criticizing everything and make it a new post-deleuzian case or the likes. Thus sit on the throne of theory, we feel safe; capitalism throws at us new brands and words — normcore, for instance — and we throw them back chewed and dissected. We are safe — we are all aware of the big illusion. But are we?

Don’t mistake me: I don’t mean to dismiss sarcastically all the excellent theory about, well, anything in pop culture. When I hear people complaining of in-depth analysis about selfies, I always wonder why: there’s no privileged subject for theorization, and if I read something illuminating about people taking snaps of themselves, I’m more than happy.

What I suggest is more a feeling. In fact I could be completely wrong. But I kind of feel that the attitude of taking all new trends and objects as inherently problematic — and maybe representative of the “contemporary crisis of the self” — may hide something wrong. At least some easy overthinking.

Again: I’m not asking for less theory. I wholeheartedly agree with Nathan Jurgenson when he urges for more, better theory. But then there’s exactly the point: are we sure that we’re making better theory? Are we sure that the flood of criticism doesn’t hide a knee-jerk reaction? Isn’t this, I dare, a specular form of commodification? Cool capitalism could ask both for new trends and for their immediate criticism. “The self is commodified”: yeah, sure. But what about this very sentence?

Can I be myself without suspecting that “myself” will be always slave to some neoliberal frame?

(Post scriptum: I think that the only good definition of hipster is “someone who’s more hipster than you”).