what is Basic?
Forget everything you know about the conventional meaning of ‘basic’. The word means something totally different to 22-year-olds like me. To us, basic means to totally lack originality, to slavishly follow every whim of the ‘corporate overlords’ (aka ‘the Man’).
The Urban Dictionary, the bible of modern terminology, defines basic as being ‘only interested in things mainstream, popular and trending’. To avoid becoming basic, your likes and dislikes must stay in flux; you must never like something long enough for it to become mainstream.
Think of basic as meaning simple or simple-minded, in the most derogatory sense. Basic also means being boringly mainstream; so even this article is basic, because it is engaging with such a painfully mainstream idea.
Mainstream – or basic – culture is the enemy to the ultra-cool, edgy hipster. To qualify for this exclusive band, you have to be more than just up to date with the latest thing; you need to be ahead of it.
So, chart music is no longer allowed; you have to wear 1990s sportswear, all of it baggy; you need to have music on vinyl, watch independent films, and read non-superhero-related, graphic novels. Basic people do none of these things. They make no effort to be ahead of the curve – and so they are doomed to be forever basic.
If you consume anything made by our corporate overlords – Mcdonald’s, Smirnoff, Jo Malone candles – you are basic. The same goes for the way that you use new technologies. If you only use Snapchat (a picture message system on the internet) to do old-hat things – such as take selfies or pictures of food – then you’re basic. I’m afraid even Snapchat
itself is considered basic by the hipsters. Everything about life can be considered basic by the culture police – particularly coffee. Look up #basic on Twitter and you’ll find achingly self-deprecating, mind-bendingly complicated comments such as: ‘Asked @Starbucks for an iced skinny vanilla latte w almond milk and they gave me an iced caramel macchiato with almond flavouring (sic)…umm what? #basic #sorrynotsorry.’
There are multiple reasons why this is basic: a) the reference to Starbucks, the ultimate corporate overlord; b) the number of add-ons to the coffee, which shows that all the Starbucks advertising has worked on your basic, primitive brain; c) the use of the hashtags that are far, far too popular.
So how do you avoid being basic? It’s pretty tricky. The number-one thing is you must show individualism. But – bear with me! – even needing to demonstrate extreme individualism is in itself completely fake – basic, in fact.
Practically every aspect of our Millennial lives appears on social media. So the hipster idea that only the basic are lacking in independence is misguided, when we’re all glued to our screens.
That is the inherent, basic problem of Facebook and Twitter: we only share the best part of our lives, or at least what we expect other people to think of as the best part of our lives. In selecting those highlights, we are immediately being artificial, following the herd and, yes, being basic. In the end, the desperate desire to show you’re individual and genuine, and not basic, is completely ridiculous and insincere.
Please can we have the old meaning of basic back?