The (Ongoing) War Against Hipsterdom

I thought i'd take the great opportunity provided to me by Duderocket for a midweek gripe to recount a recent experience my girlfriend and I had with a Facebook admin of a relatively (and I use that term loosely) popular hipster publication.

Firstly I’m not sure if anyone’s aware of a magazine/journal called Monster Children, it's a sporadically published magazine covering mostly surfer and skateboarder culture with its primary audience, inner city latte-sipping hipsters and lets face it, theres a good chance quite a few of you have never heard of it. It’s the one not so subtly hidden in the art/photography/special interests section of your local newsagency always taking up way too much room, more than any magazine should anyway. Anyway over the years as a bored teenager and now manchild, I have often in my spare time flicked through its pages hoping for some boobs to appear (biker mags are great for this too, for those not ballsy enough to flick through The Picture or Penthouse in public), a funny and ironic photo spread and maybe some drug addled diatribes (Vice is also very similar but the only place I find it is Red Eye Records in the City). More often than not that’s the case so I always held a little bit of respect for the black swan, if you will, of the newsagent. That respect is now well and truly gone.

It all started simply enough. Last week Monster Children’s Facebook page started a competition (as they occasionally do) whereby if you got the new mag and took a photo of it in the most creative way, you’d win some free shit or as it described ‘a wild bunch of crap’. Let's just say the response to this new competition was not overly enthusiastic.

^^note the trends above: overly large coloured watch falling off the wrist, numerous wrist bands possibly 'Live Strong' one amongst them, ironic flannel shirt one size too big, etc.

My girlfriend pointed this out to me and suggested we have a crack at winning some free shit, seeing as the lack of competition entries meant we were almost definite winners. Having an all round lazy weekend with nothing better to do, we trekked out to the local newsagent and to our surprise they had a copy or two. Shilling out the ridiculously expensive $14.95 cover price we thought was only a small sacrifice as we were more than hopeful of a new shirt, cd etc.

We then collaborated on a few slapdash photo ideas and after a very unfruitful session we came up with this stunning homage to the 1980's beloved childrens classic E.T. :

and then this more controversial piece thrown together on the kitchen table with some salt and leftover booze:

Now I'm the first to admit that the pictures weren't all that flash but hey we gave it a go and entered them anyway. The odds were pretty stacked in our favour with our two uploaded and the only other sole entry, it itself not even abiding by the rules of having an actual copy of the magazine in the photo. These were the only entries (mine on top, along with another. My GF's has since been deleted) showing on Sunday evening:

Time passed along as usual and there was no clear indication of a winner well into the next day. My Girlfriend was on the case, this is a brief summary of the wall post (summarised by memory):

GF: "So Who Wins?"

Monster Children: "No one entered".

GF: "Ok so if you look on your wall, you'll see two photos, one by myself, along with another entry"

The post was then deleted by the admin.

At this stage being the pushover that I am, I resigned to the fact that getting a tonne of free shit was not to be and quickly moved on with my life. My Girlfriend had other plans and was up for a fight. Several more times she posted wanting to find out who won only to find her posts continually deleted. It then came to this epic showdown late on Monday.

It just really beggars belief to me that Monster Children could keep up the charade of pretending no one entered along with their schoolyard lies and petty Facebook page edits (which astonished me because they were always praising anti-censorship and 'Freedom'). OK maybe, technically we broke the rules by not posing with the magazine like a dipstick but what we entered at least deserved a little bit of recognition, any recognition, at the very least. But it was not to be. And we were both left with a very sour taste in our mouths. In conclusion, Monster Children magazine is an overpriced, commercialised, hipster, pretentious bullshit, fucking waste of paper and whoever works for them or buys it, should be fucking ashamed of themselves. I know I certainly am. My name's Luke, I write articles for Duderocket and that was my story.

Hipster explanation in video form (if you can ignore the very annoying, furry hand puppets)-