March 13, 2005

Pop Ya Collar

Despite my fine-tuned eye for all things poseur, it was brought to my attention yesterday that I had completely missed a crucial development in poseur-land, which now requires my unrestrained commentary. Interestingly enough, when Phil pointed out that he had recently noticed a lot of poseur idiots walking around Clark Kerr with popped collars and asked me why I hadn't yet ripped these fools, I noted the extent to which I had completely ignored this phenomenon. Although I had perhaps seen it subconsciously several times, I had never stopped to think how stupid it looks. Well, there's a first time for everything.

After thinking about it for a while, I have been able to come up with only three potential reasons why people might do something so strange:

1. They are too lazy or too absentminded to notice that their collar is not set correctly and thus walk around with a popped collar being a testament to their social ineptitude, similar to walking around with one's fly open.
2. They took Usher's song, Pop Ya Collar, way too seriously and so in addition to looking unkempt, they like bad music.
3. They actually believe that they are hot shit and thus, have to pop their collar, so that all of us can know this as well.

The first reason seems unlikely, but I wouldn't put it past engineers, and other equally socially incapable people. Worse, given the fact that this particular group of people is hopeless to begin with, there's not much I can say that will change anything. The only solution is to do what we always do, and that is to keep these people away from us, locked away in basements and other subterranean locations, where their unkempt appearance won't adulterate the population as a whole.

The second group of people is equally hopeless. Although not socially incapable, they enjoy pop music and thus are people not worth the oxygen that they breathe (at least engineers are useful). I suppose we could try to round up all these fools and lock them in a room with MTV playing 24/7 and maybe that will kill them, but I'm not sure; they might thrive in such an environment, and then we'd have an even larger infestation.

Finally, the third group—my personal favorites. Frankly, in my opinion, there aren't enough bullets in the world for these assholes. They're like cockroaches—kill a couple, but more just keep popping up (ha!)—you can't get rid of them! Here's what I have to say to you, if you are one: Listen you trendy poser piece of shit—you are not hot shit or cool shit or anything but shit! Furthermore, popping your collar will never, ever change the fact that you are a worthless slave to an even more worthless culture of ineptitude and incompetence. The only people who probably find it cool or attractive are those who are even more miserably deluded and less deserving of the resources they consume than you. Do us all a favor and take your idiotic popped collar, your prefabricated torn khaki shorts, and your hopelessly trendy ass back to West LA—I'm sure you'll fit right in.

(PS: To all the people I know who actually do pop their collars, please stop or I'll have to say this to your face, which might be unpleasant.)