I don’t know what Fortnite is.
I suppose everyone has that moment where you are suddenly completely out of the cultural loop. First, you enjoy the hip new thing that everyone is doing. Second, you don’t enjoy it, but know what it is. When Minecraft was cool, I had no interest but I understood what the game involved. I didn’t realize this was step two of becoming out of the pop culture loop. The third step is just not knowing what people are talking about.
You might hear the name. I even had people ask if I played Fortnite, which I confidently answered with ‘no’ and then we talked about something else. Oddly, nobody seemed to push the matter further or try to convince me to give it a go, which was nice of them. It also meant I could live in complete ignorance of what it actually entails.
I am aware that Fortnite is popular, of course, how could I not be? There are Fortnite jokes coming from the municipal government, which is your biggest clue that something has reached cultural saturation. Fortnite is everywhere, apparently, and yet not so everywhere that I have any indication of what it is or what it entails.
This is both liberating and terrifying. On one hand, I don’t know what a popular thing is and I don’t care. I am living my life completely oblivious to Fortnite, and I couldn’t be better. On the other hand, this means I am out of touch with the hot trends among today’s youth. I am my parents, tapping at a Game Boy, shrugging, and saying, “I don’t know why you are playing that all the time.”
I suddenly understand how the stereotypical hipster developed.
If you aggressively reject the popular thing, you’re actually trying to cover for being out of touch. It’s a genius bit of misdirection. No, you’re not old, out of touch, and no longer cool. You are, in fact, too cool for this thing you don’t understand. You’re so cool you don’t have to care about what’s popular. You’re above it all.
Becoming pretentious to cover for missing out on trends is genius. You’re not wearing suspenders and loafers because you’re lazy and they’re comfortable for a paunchy fellow; you’re making a fashion statement. You’re not using old technology as a retreat into a youth where you understood the world and everything in it; you’re making a statement about something and bringing back that obsolete tech. You aren’t merely confused by what the kids are doing these days; you’re better than it.
As I load a roll of film into a vintage camera, while listening to a song by a band that has definitely never sold more than a few thousand albums, I realize that I have also become a stereotypical hipster. Being confused by the hippest trends among the kids today is just the final stop on my way to completing that hipster journey. Now I just need to declare that I’m not confused about this hip game, I’m better than it.
It’s okay to become out of touch, so long as you embrace it. At a certain point, you know who you are and what you like, and maybe that doesn’t include the hip games the kids are playing. Maybe Fortnite is fun. It doesn’t matter, because I’m now either too old or too cool to care. Pick the one you feel is most appropriate.
