It’s highly probable you’ve been shoveled into what people consider to be a hipster. I don’t know when the term “hipster” first was put into circulation, but its definition has been misconstrued terribly and has led to naively pigeonholing people who think for themselves.

You shouldn’t have to defend yourself for having an identity and harboring personal views. A quick example is the revival of listening to music on vinyl, which unsurprisingly has been thrown under the umbrella of “just another hipster thing to do,” like everything else arrogant people who are so set in their ways don’t understand.

There’s a legitimate audible difference between today’s conventional-digital MP3 files and the unique sound vinyl produces.

You shouldn’t be admonished as a “trendy hipster” if you sincerely like doing whatever offbeat, slightly out-of-the-ordinary thing it is you do.

Reducing someone’s character as someone “trying to be edgy or different” is a plainly naive act, reserved for the closed-minded. It’s a sure sign of insecurity of one’s own image and values if he or she has to go to the reductive means of labeling people they don’t understand.

As a product of this, self expression has become something many are tentative to reveal — as if you should almost feel guilty for having an original thought.

For instance, I passionately despise the way people say, “Yeah, we’re getting weird tonight,” when referring to a night of partying. What do you mean you’re “getting weird?”

To my friends, this makes me a total hipster. They’ll sarcastically snarl things like, “Oh, is it not hip to say that?”

I truthfully don’t care if it is or not, I just think it sounds dumb. I prefer to substitute the annoying “Let’s get weird” with “Let’s have a dashing old time, gentlemen. Ah, yes. Jolly good!” which sounds equally peculiar and an oddly formal way for an American-college student to address his peers.

The point is, my strange affinity for British vernacular doesn’t make me a hipster, but rather, makes me more Tyler.

What I find preposterous, however, is the practice of being different for the sake of being different.
This attitude denies cultivating your personal identity and employs molding yourself to a set of social rules.

These rules, or trends, are dictated by those high up in pop culture, fashion and social media sites, like Tumblr. They convince impressionable kids they can reach a point where they’re considered hip, which obviously is a futile quest.

Don’t they realize this is an end that can’t be met? Trends are unfixed and constantly evolve.

No one should ever have to ask themselves, “Wait, um, is this in right now? People like this stuff, right?” I once overheard someone knocking the word “swag,” claiming it was “So 2011.”

I would like to know what exactly it was that elected him to decide it’s already unstylish to use the word “swag” and to go as far as banishing the word from his vocabulary. It blows my mind someone actually could think that.

I don’t suppose it will soon become lame to eat your fries with ketchup. Gee, I better get my fix in before people stop eating with me, because I’d hate to be “The weird one who still uses ketchup.”

This is best revealed in those that discontinue listening to a band once it breaks into the mainstream and gains commercial attention. It makes no sense.

If anything, these people should be stoked if one of their favorite bands becomes successful. It makes me question what their motivation for listening to the band was in the first place — to be different? They must never really have been fans in the first place.

So, for this reason, if you wear something as bizarre as a monocle — and wear it solely because you find it exceptionally fashionable — it doesn’t make you a hipster.

It makes you who you are, and that should never be discouraged.

Tyler Burt is a guest columnist at The State News and a supply chain management junior. Reach him at burttyle@msu.edu.