The Universality of the Gangster Lifestyle

Okay, so I am no G. I grew up partly in Russia and partly in the East Bay (and not even the gangster parts of the East Bay, mind you) but am coming to realize that everyone should live by the gangster code of ethics in order to get the most out of life. My conception of gangster morality can be summed up in this valuable aphorism:

Mo' money, mo' bitches.

This handy little saying helps me to justify pretty much every aspect of my life. Yes, I was a hedonist before I discovered the importance of gangster ethics, but now I feel connected to an enormous amount of hedonists around the world who incorporate such phrases into their lives. In fact, the more I am exposed to gangster ideology, the more handy phrases I discover. For instance, just yesterday I picked up two: bbc and dgaf. What better way is there to proclaim two universal truths: bitches be crazy, and don't give a fuck?



Overall, the gangster lifestyle applies to pretty much everyone and I think it's important to acknowledge the lessons it can teach us. So remember, "never fuck without a rubber, never in the sheets, like it on top of the cover, money on the dresser, drive a Compressor, top notch hoes, get the most not the lesser."



redpanda

In Defense of Vapidity, aka welcome to hugfaya, beezies

HugFire is a creation that has been brewing in the minds of Nastia, Christine, and Seamus, also known as redpanda, manbearpig, and crunkkoala, respectively. We meant to have a more extravagant introductory post, but everyone got too caught up with midterms, etc (you know how we do at UC Berkeley) so I am just going to take the plunge and post an editorial I wrote last week.

Recently, I read an article in Adbusters about how our generation’s hipster counterculture is basically a signal of the decline of western civilization. Yes, this made me want to giggle, too. The author claimed that hipster culture is uniquely vapid and self obsessed, unlike past counter cultures that valiantly crusaded against their parents’ values in order to spread, uhm, revolution. It seems that all hipsters are hopelessly vain and unoriginal.... oh, are we ever doomed!

Guess what? NONE of the above criticism is unique to hipster culture. At all. The punks in the 1970’s are used as an example of “good” counter culture in the article, a counter culture that really stood for something and had meaning. Does this author truly believe that all of the punks in the 1970’s were working to promote equality among the social classes in order to improve society? Isn’t it more realistic to believe that many of them were following a trend, trying to break away from their parents, and doing what they thought was cool, like the hipsters are doing now? The author claims that hipsters use emblems of the working class, like Pabst beer and v-neck t-shirts, as fashion, therefore draining them of significance. This isn’t a unique “flaw” of hipster culture either: in the 1960’s, for instance, it was popular for affluent, white teenagers to wear African and Asian inspired ethnic clothing. Interestingly enough, that type of clothing is still considered ethnic and particular to those geographic regions. Likewise, working class men of past generations can hold on to their v-necks and Pabst. And, of course, no two hippies or punks looked alike, right? Of coooooourse not.The hipsters are a group of youth like any other group of youth with common clothing, music tastes, and behavior—that is why we are able to categorize them as a subculture. I doubt that adolescent psychology has rewired itself in the past decade to bring about the “decline of western civilization.” You know what will really bring about the decline of western civilization? This: We have better things to worry about than a group of American Apparel clad kids destroying life as we know it.

redpanda