Are you tired of the mainstream? Do you desperately need to differentiate yourself from the norm? Is your favorite character in Mean Girls (not that you would ever watch such a popular “film”) Janis Ian? If you said yes to any of these questions, I have great news for you—the counterculture is back!

That’s right. Finally, there’s a community for people like you and me, people who are so far above the vapid existence of the rest of the world. The world calls us “hipsters”; I think it’s fairly jejune, but so is the world. Every week, I get together with a focus group and we spend two hours using obscure words like “jejune” and “milquetoast” and complaining about the insipid reality television and celebrity-obsessed culture that is rotting the brains of the American public. Yes, we’ve watched every episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, but only to make fun of it, obviously. It doesn’t count. I swear, we’re the only hope for the world.

By the way, how annoying is it when things that you like become “chill”? Like, come on, I liked Birkenstocks before they were cool. I knew the lyrics to the whole Macklemore album before “Thrift Shop” hit the radio. I was a mixed kid before everyone started fetishizing them, too. Now I can’t like them anymore—not even my own future children! (Though, on second thought, continuing the human race seems pretty mainstream.)

Anyway, the rules for being a hipster are simple: hate everything that most people like, and like things just because most other people don’t. For example, since everyone hates the new Snapchat update, I tell everyone I love it. I don’t even use Snapchat, since social media is way too typical, but who cares? Also, even though my whole extended family already used their entire life savings to pay for plane tickets to come to my graduation ceremony, I’m deciding to skip because it’s way more “alt” of me. Sorry, Abuela; maybe you should’ve just given me money for my graduation present like I asked. And rather than conform to Western ideals of beauty and entertainment, I solely appropriate African cultures—I tried doing it with East Asian cultures first, of course, but it didn’t really have the same effect, considering I’m Filipino, and all Asians are the same. Oh well; too bad. I know what you’re thinking, and no, it really doesn’t matter that I know nothing about the African cultures I’m stealing clothes and hairstyles from, or that those things probably are popular somewhere in Africa (silly me, everywhere in Africa is the same, too, right?). I mean, clearly I’ll never interact with someone from a non-Western culture in my life!

Speaking of irrelevant groups of people, it’s important to remember that what we’re doing here is a completely novel concept. The counterculture may be “back,” but really we created it, just like Ellen created being gay and liberals invented global warming. Forget about that whole hippie movement that happened in like the ‘20s or ‘90s or whatever. That doesn’t matter. They didn’t even do anything useful anyway; like, who even cares about civil rights or the anti-war crusade?

But it’s not like we hipsters will ever oppose something in popular culture in a way that’s actually useful—oh no. It wouldn’t really be that fun to rebel by treating parents with respect or fighting discrimination, now would it? There’s no “helpful” in “hipster.”

So you should definitely join us. I mean, everyone’s doing it. Everyone. But wait…hold on…if being hipster is mainstream now, and God forbid if I’m ever associated with anything mainstream, God included, I guess it’s more hipster to be the old mainstream? Ugh…great, now I’m confused. Dang it. Grab me my kombucha.