become a dot-com hipster

I’d like a good dot com idea. I’m doing a little web design but that market feels a little bit saturated. I’m doing SEO but it’s not really interesting enough for me. There are plenty of ideas actually, but what is worth all my time?

The guys at 37signals say that you should solve your own problems. They didn’t like project management software so they built their own. I might be too laid back to have problems.

The price of an iPhone is coming down.

I think it has something to do with flash mobs. And wearing drainpipe trousers maybe. Do I need to get an iPhone? This might be too expensive for me.

A couple Sunday nights ago, I found myself playing Boggle in a used-book store at midnight with a guy wearing a super-neat preppie sweater with a tie underneath, torn beige slacks, and red converse sneakers. There’s no way I can compete with that.

All my social experimentation over the last 2-1/2 years has taught me something: I am very slow-witted when it comes to grasping social conventions and categories. I’ve learned a lot and had a lot of wonderful adventures, and will continue to do so, but let’s face it, my strengths are elsewhere. To be a hipster, you need talent for grasping the social world, so well that you can play with it, experiment, do tricks with it, find the sweet spots and the unknown ways to succeed at it. Hipsters are not just fashion rebels, they love fashion. They love it the way I love Indian cooking, program code, improv, and language. This kind of love isn’t something you can choose as a goal and achieve, it’s something that’s either in you or it’s not.

So, as much as I admire hipsters, it’s time to accept that I’ll never be one myself.

The Hipster Olympics

Hmm, maybe next year. It’s all about wanting it bad enough.

Someone on the street informed me that hipsters have 2% body fat and wear tapered jeans.

I saw this gentleman at the Haight St. Festival.

Just ordered The Hipster Handbook from the public library, pursuing my new policy of not buying books. I’ll pick it up from the branch half a block from me, amidst kiddies doing their geography homework.

Hmmm… The Hipster Handbook.

I now have a Treo. Palm OS, of course. Way hipper than WinMo. (And it’s way hipper to say “WinMo” than “Windows Mobile.”) And of course I subscribe to the EvDO unlimited data plan, so I can hit Google Maps from anywhere.

I now have a 415 area code. This is a “retro” San Francisco area code, and therefore hip. Makes me feel like Karl Malden. Except the second digit of my phone number is a zero. Sort of a mix of the retro and modern North American Numbering Plans.

I have accessed my web hosting service, gone to the shell, and run vim, all on the Treo. If you don’t understand this, clearly you’re not dot-com hip.

(I’m actually rather disappointed by the user interface in the Palm OS applications. C’mon, in a week, anyone could spiff these things up so they’d work much more nicely.)

I think I am now 70% of the way to a full-fledged dot-com hipster.