Words By: Chris Barth

There are typically two types of music blogs around in this here blogosphere – those that tell you what they like and those that tell you what you should like. And then there’s Hipster Runoff (aka hipsterrunoff/HRO/OMGZHRO/Carles). Authored by “Carles”, The Runoff alternates between hating on the things you like and hating on the things you don’t like, leaving an ambiguously nonexistent center – the inability to be authentically ‘alt’.

American Apparel ads litter the sidebar, flanked by animated gifs defining personal brands and bloghouse genres. The writing alternates between insightful prose and coarse post-racism, centering on image, culture, and the blog-house scene. “You” and “u” are interchangeable, “to” and “2” live side-by-side, and seriously is always spelled “srsly”. Quotation marks are applied liberally, and capitalization is reckless. Rare is the post that actually talks about music.

So maybe it’s not a music blog, per se. But it’s certainly a musically associated blog, with ties to the image of music, its fans, and its stereotypes. HRO takes people, the music they make, and the tunes they listen to, and treats them as a single entity. Its “lifestyle brand” is lifestyle branding. Continue reading →