"The Way Forward for Hipster Food"

"what Craig tapped into was something much larger: a creeping dislike of the fakery inherent in the craft-food movement and a suspicion of so-called hipsters. As their company grew, the Masts made a fetish (or—is it too hopeful to think?—a joke) of the old-timeyness of their product and their production methods. At one point, they conveyed their beans under power of wind on a schooner from the Dominican Republic to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As a construct, the Mast Brothers were so obviously pretend that it is somewhat mystifying that consumers feel betrayed. “How the Mast Brothers Fooled the World Into Paying $10 a Bar for Crappy Hipster Chocolate,” ran the headline on an article in Quartz. It’s like being mad at someone because you found his Halloween costume too convincing...

So much of the artisanal movement is about a return to pre-industrial aesthetics and flavors, a celebration of the home- and handmade. I get it: food factories were a disaster for the diversity and wholesomeness of food, and we may never claw our way back. But the Victorian era the movement makes loving reference to was not a wonderful time to be a consumer...

Going backward is charming only to the exceptionally privileged—those who have tired of modernity and would like to try something else for fun."
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-way-forward-for-hipster-food

There is a lot of identity stuff right now that is about reconnecting to things that have been lost. I sort of feel like (and this gets super far away but it comes back) this comes out of the project of whiteness, the project of the 19th century to create a race called white that was defined by modernity and independence and rationality and all of these things that are great descriptors for a computer but not for a human being. And it isn't... satisfying or comforting to live like that in some ways (I say this as a black-skinned child of immigrant families to America who engaged in the very common immigrant project of trying to 'become American' which is really becoming white). I think our culture is seeking the things that are going to make it more sustaining and (frankly) human; there is this rise of anxiety and suicidality and chronic pain and addiction and it feels like what happens when we don't nourish our full selves.

A European-white society that is trying to find its lost romanticism is going to turn to old Europe, ideas of artisans and community-based products that consumers have a personal connection with - that make people feel like they aren't "consumers", part of a mass, but are instead members of a common intentional lifestyle. And I guess this first phase of reaching for that was through the hipster aesthetic, and that's starting to crumble because it's still too constructed and it isn't fulfilling the wordless needs that are making people so serious about these luxury goods.

related: Toile; political history of food