Hipster Worried No One Gets His Ironic Confederate Flag Tattoo

Story by Egon Sinclair 

| Published Feb 23, 2010

Irony is a fickle mistress. A failure to fully grasp its discordant nuances -- whether that means possessing a genuine appreciation for music recorded prior to 1980, or believing shutter shades are "actually pretty okay" in any context -- can make a would-be destroyer of social norms look like an idiot.

No one knows the trials and tribulations of toeing that imaginary line better than Silas Doublebrook, a 26-year-old working at a pizzeria while he decides what to do with his life and biochemistry degree. Although he thought his Lady Gaga-stocked iPod and black-and-white keffiyeh (worn as a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, even though he doesn't know anything about the West Bank conflict) granted him eternal amnesty from looking like a tool, Doublebrook fears those around him are taking his ironic Confederate flag tattoo at face value.

"Do I look like the sort of person who'd be bitter about the Civil War?" asked the incredulous azure-eyed blonde of unspecified Anglo Saxon descent. "I mean, c'mon -- it's so obviously a joke. I even got the tattoo as a tramp stamp, okay? That's, like, meta-irony! There's two levels to this shit!"

The perpetual misinterpretation of his tattoo has forced Doublebrook to remain clothed when in the public eye, severely hindering his chances of building a reputation as "that slightly overweight hipster who always has his shirt off."

"Me and my friend Roscoe roadtripped down to Tennessee last week to get drunk, take off our shirts, watch a NASCAR race and silently mock all the hicks making asses of themselves, but people kept high-fiving me and shouting, 'The South will rise again!'" said a distraught Doublebrook. "Yeah, I got this tattoo as a symbol of rebellion, but not, like, the kind of 'Glory of the Old South' rebellion that compels white trash Civil War hold-outs to romanticize an oppressive landocracy built almost exclusively on human bondage. It's much more refined than that."

"Maybe if you were born into a social stratum that allowed you to sit in idle thought instead of getting a job with the degree your parents paid for, you'd understand that," he added.

Roscoe Mitchenblum, Doublebrook's longtime friend, has stuck by his pal through the bulk of the tattoo's embarrassing fallout. What bothers him most, he said, is that when fellow hipsters hear about Doublebrook's successionist body art, they laud it as "fucking brilliant, dude," but are repulsed when they actually see it.

"Shit's the 'Schrödinger's cat' of irony, man," Mitchenblum said, despite fully understanding neither the famed metaphysical thought experiment nor how it related to his friend's stupid tattoo.