It’s so easy to fall down Instagram rabbit holes. We’ve proven this time and time again, scrolling through Las Vegas, funeral, and night shift hashtags. Those are all great, but I tend to prefer something a little more mundane.
Everybody in the world is carrying around a camera in their pocket, and that has given rise to a very awful tradition. You’ve seen this play out dozens of times: Human being sees hat, human being puts on hat, human being takes a selfie.
I don’t know why, but images of ourselves under slightly esoteric headwear give meaning to the universal condition, and I postulated that there are millions and millions of pictures of men and women staring directly into the camera with some sort of sad hat on their head. I was totally right. Here are some of them.
This is a real Instagram caption: “It’s a #porkpiehat. To the you need to #mindyourbusiness people that are going to comment, isn’t that a fedora? No it’s not.” How can one person be so defensive about their choice of hat? Are fedoras so culturally verboten that the youth of the world need to strictly identify with other headwear? Is this like being a Breeders fan but not a Pixies fan? I’m very confused.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_R-acTMkgd/
https://www.instagram.com/p/-7M78dlGDI/
I like Instagram (and social media in general) because it occasionally forces you to confront how the rest of the world works. I am a degenerate nerd who has been drinking out of the same plastic red cup for the past three days. But maybe, in another life, I could be just like John Ashy in Galveston. Taking the boat out on a weekend with real-life friends and doing something wacky—like, buying a couple coonskin caps from the general store!
Still my favorite part of this post is the bottom comment: “What’s w the hats???” In a certain world, wearing a funny hat is the most transgressive thing anyone can do. Sounds like paradise.
Photo via Heather/Flickr