In the beginning, God created the earth. It was oblong and shapeless, and so the Trinity swooped down to mold epic mountains, cavernous oceans and vast skies. And then God said, “Let there be irony,” and there was irony. And then God thought to Himself, “Perhaps I should create someone to abuse this concept, irony.” And so He continued talking to himself. “Let there be hipsters,” He said. And there were hipsters. And the hipsters multiplied, so God said, “Let there be a sacred land for these hipsters to live in.” And there was Boston University. And it was long and skinny, much like the jeans these hipsters wear.

On Thursday, I was sitting in the GSU, or the George Sherman Union, as I like to call it. As I reluctantly devoured endless piles of textbooks, I couldn’t help but notice the equally endless parade of skinny jeans and retro sneakers. One after another, students suffering from some kind of Peter Pan disease shuffled down the runway. Their T-shirts were too tight and looked as though they belonged to some 5-year-old from Newton named Timmy. It actually had the name on the back. Their hair was uniformly asymmetrical, and some even donned creepy “ironic” mustaches. I’m pretty sure that I found Waldo that day in the GSU, in his tight, striped turtleneck, thick-rimmed glasses and messenger bag. He was drinking Starbucks.

Now I don’t have anything against self-expression. I do, however, have a sore spot for this new-fangled type of hipster found here at BU. They strive to be uncool. They try really, really hard to be uncool. They spend lots of money — daddy’s money — to be uncool. They shop at high-end thrift stores and give up shampoo for Lent. Being a hipster is expensive! Hipsterism, the little brother of slackerism and the weird cousin of emoism, is founded upon an appreciation for independent rock, a campy fashion sense and, all too often, a cooler-than-thou attitude. Make up your minds, hipsters! Are you cool, or uncool? Who even says “cool” anymore? Probably not you, because that wouldn’t be cool.

Hipsterism crept up on BU, a melting pot of subcultures. It currently boasts New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, San Francisco and Portland as its hubs, and Allston is climbing up the charts as I type. But true hipsters defend their style as an expression of conscious consumerism. If they have to be consumers, better they give their money to ethically sound businesses than to large corporations accused of slave labor and other atrocities. They are fundamentally a culture of quirky, self-aware individuals. Their sentiment of social responsibility extends to personal transit — the bikes — and musical taste. To the hipster, any band not signed to a major label is indie. To others, the word “indie” is nothing but a status symbol. True hipsterism was put to the test when the hipster aesthetic become trendy and faux-thrift store apparel became available for sale in stores like Urban Outfitters. Stores like these wrap up these new items made overseas with questionable labor into a kitschy little package. The moral hipster shies away from buying these items, while an aesthetically obsessed hipster embraces them.

So I guess that’s the problem: It’s not that BU has too many hipsters; it’s that they dry-clean their jeans. Next time you almost get run over by a pastel 10-speed bike on Commonwealth Avenue, you’d better hope that it was for a good cause. And wash your hair. I think you have something living in there.

Isis Madrid, a junior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at [email protected].