Reader’s note: This story is satirical in nature and published in a spoof issue.
Columbian College sophomore and hipster asshole Kevin Dyer said he can’t believe you haven’t heard of this band. “I mean, I guess they’re not that mainstream,” he said, sipping a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in his West End dorm room. “But come on, how can you say you care about music and not love these guys?”
Wearing girl jeans and a “Strictly For My Ninjas” T-shirt (both bought at Urban Outfitters, although Dyer claims he got them at Salvation Army), the emaciated 19-year-old looked at you in absolute disgust as he shook his $90 haircut out of his eyes.
“God, just go listen to…to Creed, yeah, go listen to Creed,” he said, referencing the popular alternative rock band that broke up in 2004. “I mean, I don’t mean to be judgmental, but sometimes I just don’t know. Everybody at this school is a moron, and the fact that you’ve never even heard of this band just reinforces that. It’s all such vapid materialism and cultural tripe around here, isn’t it? I really should have gone to art school. Everybody says I’m really talented, by the way, if you ever want to see some of my paintings. No? Alright, cool, your loss. Fucking plebeian.”
“Maybe if you were more in touch with what’s actually happening in the world, you’d understand the suffering that went in to the making of their record,” he continued. “It’s easy to live in blissful ignorance up in your ivory tower, but down here with the rest of us, down here in the streets, there’s pain, man, there’s pain and oppression. White privilege, man, that’s what your problem is.” Asked to name a single non-white person he knows, he demurred, although he wanted to make it abundantly clear how much he loves Talib Kweli.
People like Dyer are not uncommon on the GW campus. Characterized by a belief that they’re definitely smarter than everyone else at the school in spite of their 2.5 GPAs, they can be spotted by their ironic T-shirts, their hand-rolled cigarettes, and their utter contempt for you and your goddamn bourgeois family. They often use the word “esoteric,” although they very rarely actually know what it means.
So what does this band that you haven’t heard of sound like, anyway? Pressed for details, Dyer admitted that he’s never actually heard any songs by the band he claims to adore so much, and that his only knowledge of them is based on a three-line review he read on pitchforkmedia.com before he got “distracted” by the Suicide Girls banner at the top of the page.
Upon further inquiry, he acknowledged that he doesn’t actually like music very much. “I really like namedropping, but I’m not smart enough to read books, so I just have an encyclopedic knowledge of Elephant 6 bands instead,” he said. “God, I’m such a fraud.” He then began to softly weep.
