Flower beards a “thing,” says unfalsifiable trend piece

Putting flowers in your beard impresses a certain kind of person while I look for my gun.

Put flowers in your beard. Impress a kind of person while I look for my gun.

Hustlin’ Justin Denman sent me this article from CBC News about how flower beards are a thing. As is often the case with trend reporting, it’s not clear what kind of “thing” we’re talking about. Writer Lauren O’Neil wisely and/or cynically begins from a position of skepticism, toward not just flower arrangement but beards themselves:

Often associated with hipster culture (though you’d be hard-pressed to find a young beardo who’d admit that,) large beards have become so much of a trend in some cities that they’ve actually inspired counter-trends. Earlier this year, GQ declared the facial hairstyle “officially uncool” after the New York Times wrote about how “The Brooklyn Beard” was going mainstream in one of its oft-mocked trend pieces. “Now that the New York Times has officially declared beards to be a trend, that trend is, by necessity, over,” wrote Scott Christian.

Having dismissed the validity of big-media style pieces, O’Neil says that GQ was wrong, too, because “Instagram, Twitter, and many a city sidewalk” prove that beards with and without flowers are totally a thing. Welcome to the postmodern era of trend reporting.

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Friday links! National Donut Day edition

The picture above is of my friend Nick, captured in honor of today being National Donut Day. I love motherfucking donuts,* as anyone will tell you, but Donut Day is not what interests me about this photo. What interests me is Instagram, the website on which it was posted, and their ad copy: “Robert is using Instagram—a fun & quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo, then choose a filter to transform the look and feel of the shot into a memory to keep around forever.” Let us put aside “quirky,” in the same way that Caeser put aside Cicero, and consider how choosing a filter will “transform the look and the feel of the shot into a memory.” It’s true that memories are low-contrast and color saturated, just like Polaroids. Long after Nick and donuts are forgotten, this photograph of a man in military dress eating a croissant will implant a flickering, false memory in all who view it. You can see him taking the next step across the office—is it that much more difficult to see it happening from the same perspective in the room?

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