{"id":18514,"date":"2016-09-21T16:45:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T04:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=18514"},"modified":"2016-09-21T16:45:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T04:45:14","slug":"subcultural-cringe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/09\/21\/subcultural-cringe\/","title":{"rendered":"Subcultural cringe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Wellington<\/a>
Photo by Todd Atticus<\/a>. Original artwork by the Wellington City Council \u2014 and me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, that was me. I’m the wag<\/em>,\u00a0in the old-timey parlance of the newspaper<\/a>.\u00a0There’s little point pretending otherwise, since the\u00a0sign was twenty steps from the front door of the pub where I work \u2014 and a large part of my m.o.<\/em>\u00a0here involves uploading literally hundreds of handwriting samples<\/a> you could compare against. I’m all for the normalising of beer into the wider popular culture, but this crap isn’t helping. And I say that as a bearded someone (admittedly, it’s neither\u00a0“bushy” nor “bristly”) who works in the (for want of a better word) craft beer business.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The campaign uses this\u00a0x<\/em>-to-my-y<\/em> formula to reference various Wellingtonisms and encourage voting in upcoming elections. A worthy cause, sure. And some of them are great: the bucket to my fountain<\/a>; the lightning strike to my wind wand<\/a>. Pitch-perfect local silliness. But the Council apparently just can’t talk about beer<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> like a sensible person. It gave me terrible d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/em> for the ‘Well Proud’ ad from three years ago which was so grasping and gross it made me put on my ranty-pants<\/a>. Here again,\u00a0they fail on multiple fronts and just come across as an awkward effort to seem cool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, can we just ditch the adjective\u00a0craft<\/em> unless we really need it?\u00a0It is useful sometimes, and I’d defend it as meaningful-enough despite it continually eluding any decent definition. But when you use it where everything else would just be an unadorned noun \u2015 they’d say\u00a0coffee<\/em>, not “single origin fair trade coffee”<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2015 it seems weird and desperate. Far worse, though, is the second half: the\u00a0beard<\/em> trope is just so played out and tired and limiting that it really needs to go. Perhaps I should send them\u00a0my hopefully-exhaustive guide on gender in beer-related marketing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Beer is<\/em> a big part of Wellington life; a perfect subject for a reference like this. But these posters don’t do anything to celebrate or further it. In the clumsy pursuit of second-hand hip, they perpetuate the idea that it’s a fringe, niche thing \u2015 and that it’s for stereotypically-hipstery\u00a0men<\/em>. That’s a fail grade.\u00a0The Council should try again, and try harder. Or just stop.<\/p>\n

You really should vote, though.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, that was me. I’m the wag,\u00a0in the old-timey parlance of the newspaper.\u00a0There’s little point pretending otherwise, since the\u00a0sign was twenty steps from the front door of the pub where I work \u2014 and a large part of my m.o.\u00a0here involves uploading literally hundreds of handwriting samples you could compare against. I’m all for the … Continue reading Subcultural cringe<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-finds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18514"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18543,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514\/revisions\/18543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}