Dissecting the INTERNET HIPSTER

Pre-eminent among the many strange beasts that can be seen prowling the grasslands of the average News Feed is the Internet Hipster. The Internet Hipster comes in many flavours but its defining trait is a hatred for trends; any trend. Perhaps you, like roughly half of the internet population, had been caught up in Dogemania and thought it was, to say the least, 'much wow'. The Internet Hipster will rant and rage about how he can't stand that terrible mutt. Or maybe you had a nice night at an international music festival and posted a status praising the experience. How dare you enjoy good music while the economy is in ruins?!? Everyone's mourning the death of an actor? Isn't it terrible how people care more about some B-list Hollywood motorhead than their own countrymen burning? And of course if you felt yourself safe when celebrating justice being done and a known war criminal meeting his end, think again. The Internet Hipster will call you a heartless monster for celebrating death, and sneer at everyone for being ignorant sheeple so easily being made to dance by string-pulling politicians.

What is it that drives the internet hipster away from the herd and into a strange twilight world where everyone else is wrong and the hipster alone is right? Perhaps it is the feeling of being special: a lone wolf unfettered by peer pressure and unafraid to tell it like it is. It's not just them patting themselves on the back either, of course. These days there's so much stuff that appears on a News Feed, most of it so banal, that we tend to scroll past everything that doesn't immediately grab our attention. Expressing a controversial opinion strongly is certainly a way of doing that, and the hipster can enjoy a string of comments pouring in from outraged sheeple, and Likes from people who are otherwise sheeple but realise the truth once the hipster has pointed it out to them.
Internet Hipsters are a hypocritical bunch. They're denouncing trends on social media. Let that sink in for a minute. They hate trends on social networking sites. It's like signing up for the army and saying, “I don't like guns. Guns are stupid. You shouldn't use guns. Use glowsticks instead.” If encountered with the question of using Facebook, which in itself is a global trend, the hipster will do a double-take and say, “It's a medium for self-expression.”
These hipsters elevate themselves by discovering trends before the common folk. They claim to be early adopters and early rejecters as well. That's all fine, right? One can obviously get tired of a trend but going on an e-rampage is what the Hipster excels at. Quoting an internet hipster, “Next time I see the phrase 'much wow' on my news feed, I will personally go to Japan and kill a shibe inu with my bare hands.” Easier typed than done, son. That's what we have to say.
At the end of the day, there's probably not much to be done to cure the Internet Hipster, aside perhaps from an intensive treatment consisting of lots of time, a growing sense of the insignificance of one person's opinion, and perhaps a girlfriend. As to what to do when confronted with such a hipster, always remember that someone who wants you to 'think for yourself' really just wants you to think like them.