Promotional material for Camel's new Williamsburg-themed cigarettes. No word yet on dogs and cats living together.
In what is surely the third most infuriating development of the last year, the RJ Reynolds tobacco company has begun marketing a brand of Camels to Williamsburg hipsters. The packs are being sold as part of a national campaign associating Camel Blues—née Camel Lights—with Austin, the Haight, and other ostensibly hip American locales, and feature everyone’s favorite cigarette-smoking horse in front of the Williamsburg Bridge, a New York subway stop and the facade of what appears to be a SoHo warehouse. The second most infuriating development of this year is this lead from the Observer article: “You’re just another rebellion-minded young kid with ambitions to be like one of those people you associate yourself with. That’s correct, you want to be a hipster.” I defy you to comprehend that sentence on the first try. The most infuriating development of the year is that people are actually buying these things. Once again, the concept of the hipster rears its two, bickering heads: one a risible and obvious construction designed to sell cigarettes, blog posts and copies of New York magazine, the other a phenomenon that is evidently real, if only a real illusion.*
