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Thinking that an office job might be a good thing to try, she did a six-month stint at Wieden+Kennedy—the modish Portland ad agency responsible for Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ campaign. (The agency’s playcentric workplace has been spoofed on ‘Portlandia.’) But working at an ad agency proved alienating, she said, because of the way ‘the work mimics art.’ She added, ‘Music, to me, is an earnest populist endeavor and this was a cynical populist one.’
Very well might have a forthcoming academic article in me about the myriad and obvious connections between humor and the consistent self-reflexive cred-checks we place on a countercultural sensibility in the 21st century, including Portlandia and Henry Owings’ insanely detailed The Indie Cred Test, among other things (WFMU’s Best Show and Hipster Runoff among them).
This piece is worth your time, and also perhaps historically important. At the end of 2011, The New Yorker did not place in quotes, nor feel the need to explain the term “chillwave.” Is that in itself a performative bit of “irony?” The mind reels.
