Hey.
I’m not a hipster, although my life has had some “Bobo” elements.
I started wearing fedoras because I wanted to be cool like Bogart. At the time, everybody was trying to look like the BeeGees
(ask your mom).
I grew the facial hair to look scruffy like Springsteen and Dylan.
I started wearing boots because I wanted to be cool like Sid Vicious.
(Do you even know who Sid Vicious was?)
I found I liked all these things, and I added vests because I liked them. They also give me a place to keep my watch.
I’ve never read On the Road; although I think we used to pretend we had.
A long time ago, I used to carry around copies of Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, but some of that was posing, too. I do think that reading Turgenev might have changed my life, but I am certain that it changed my wardrobe.
I like locally owned microbrews because they are really good beer.
I buy cheap beer because I cannot afford locally owned microbrews.
I love irony–I had forgotten my youthful fondness for irony & symbols until I recently found a picture of me in my 20s wearing a Mickey Mouse Tshirt with safety pins in MIckey’s ears. I also….

(Wode Toad tells me that I am digressing,
and need to get back on track…)
Because I value wit, I also value irony. It is a useful & fun form of expression. It also seems an antidote in a world that is filled with people who are way too serious.
But look, irony also involves a failure to commit; something said, or even just hinted at, ironically can be disowned or dismissed if it gets too close to being called out.

So here’s my advise:
Don’t.
Stop it right now!
Stop trying to be ironic.
Don’t speak ironically, speak honestly and passionately; don’t flirt, love. The original hipsters viewed the quotidian society with irony, but threw themselves into life, into dancing to bebop, into loving the women and men they were with, onto the road.
Tear it up.
“Sound your barbaric Yawp over the roofs of the world!”
Throw yourself into where and what you are; learn to be, and do not be ironically.

Photo courtesy of EGS
feet courtesy of the divine meg

You are being ironic because you are afraid of being silly, but why? If living fully, if experimenting with life makes you look silly, then own it; everybody looks silly the first dance, the first time stepping on a long board, the first step into freezing water at the beach, but they look sillier if they hesitate.
Jump into life, even if it seems silly.

(Besides, I’ve seen your little hats and your mustaches; you already look silly.)
Stop being ironic right now!

No, that’s too harsh: Tshirts, bumper stickers, & memes can be ironical. Jokes among friends can be ironical; comments whispered about other people can be ironical, especially when to do otherwise would be cruel.

Just don’t be ironic to people; always be honest to people.
Especially yourself.

PS: also learn to use the word “ironic” correctly. You are killing me kids.