Hipsters are taking advantage of the rising unemployment rates by embracing the chaos, forgoing the soul-deadening life of work in cubicles and steady paychecks, and instead dumpster-diving for old bananas and half-eaten burritos.
It may not have entered our daily lexicon yet, but a small army of social media junkies — and regular junkies — with a sudden overabundance of time is busy Tweeting: “Funemployment road trip to Portland. Hope this truck driver doesn’t rape me! LOL!” “I can finally fit into my skinny jeans. Thanks, starve-cation!”
Hey, if you’re in your 20’s with maybe a trust fund as backup, that might even be a whole lot of fun for six months or so. But what if you fall into the underclass and can’t get back? Or actually do get raped? Oopsie.
Like someone said back in the 60’s about the same kind of thing – when do you stop being a hippie and start being a bum?
The recession also catapults people in the other direction, “forcing” them into entrepreneurship. We’ve been so brainwashed into thinking we can only survive with the help of a major corporation that sometimes it takes a crisis (or abandonment by that corporate system) to make us realize we CAN still rely on our own resources.
It happened to me during the recession of 1990, and I’m pleased to pass on what I’ve learned to those who’ve more recently given up their shackles.
This has been going on for a while. There is a group in SF that has turned it into a high art. They get canned salmon and wine as well as produce etc. The stores can’t sell it so – they pitch it. These people know what days to go to each place and teams go to each place and they meet up and divide the spoils an then the feast is on.