The Scourge Of Smugface

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[Editor's Note: Now and then we here at FiPS like to feature smart, articulate New Yorker-esque writers. Not only does it raise our level of class a peg, but it gives me one less post to write so that I can eat cheese and catch up on Hell's Kitchen. I present to you all, "The Scourge of Smugface."]

When Richard Florida's Creative Class (aka the "bobos" of David Brooks' insipid prose) became the dominant hegemonic class among the salaried thirty-something set, a whole new brand of yuppie was created that would make all others pale in comparison. This dreadful development would lay the foundation for the advent of the smugface. Walk around the affluent pockets of Brooklyn and you'll see a certain kind of self-satisfied grin on the stubbled faces of the stroller-pushing Dads that traverse the tree-lined streets. It's the face of someone who was given a kind of out that previous generations never had.

In the old days, there was a clear-cut choice that faced all aspirationally middle-class adults as they neared their baby-making age: strive for fulfillment, or strive for stability. You could have one but not the other. There was a harmony to this trade-off, and it made the world sublime. Those who pushed strollers knew that they had sold their cultural and social capital for the comforts of domesticity and family life. Those who toiled in makeshift recording studios knew that they had made the romantic choice, and for a while, could reap the benefits of a "meaningful" life decision, with all that it entailed.

More importantly, for the rest of us it provided a clear dichotomy to help us deal with our own life choices. There was a way to put your own situation in perspective. If you were honking on the corporate advertising teat, you could rest assured that at least you were more responsible and hard-headed than the scruffy loft-dwellers twiddling with sampler knobs and Adobe Illustrator. Conversely, if you had decided to become an avant-garde transcriber of Japanese poetry, you could pat yourself on the back for having dodged the bullet of soulless corporate drudgery, despite your negative bank balance.

However, with the advent of the new "anything goes" rules governing  sub-culture and the well-documented hollow core of hipsterdom, the haute bourgeoisie have finally achieved everything they've ever wanted. There is no test to determine the quality of your participation in society. You can sell online adspace by day, and show purely through your consumption choices that you are soulful and avant-garde in the evening.

This confluence of circumstances has created the phenomenon hereafter to be referred to as smugface. White-streaked hair framing a pair of thick-framed glasses, peppery stubble and a shit-eating grin are now ubiquitous traits that cannot be escaped in New York's most coveted family neighborhoods. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen it. The look of sheer joy on the faces of the family man when he discovers himself somewhere cool. Even worse, everyone has been empowered by technology to engage in creative and quirky side projects, regardless of the nature of one's day job.

The smugface is an emblem of the steady evaporation of any meaningful counterculture. Now that most content creation industries have been destroyed by the Internet, the bohemian lifestyle has been turned into a self-esteem project by the already well-off, rather than a source of alternate viewpoints. Look at a prime specimen of smugface and you see someone who has finally got it all. Within their socio-cultural sphere, there is simply no territory left to conquer.

To quote John Dolan, "the rich have decided to steal it all, even the tears of the losers."