When MIT Technology Review recently published an article on "the hipster effect," or "why anti-conformists always end up looking the same," the editors used a modified photo of this guy.
The study MIT Technology Review wrote up, from Brandeis University, essentially found "that when a group of people decide to be different, to do something non-conforming, there comes a point when they all end up adopting the same behavior or the same style," editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield, told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro for Weekend Edition. And soon after MIT Technology Review published its article, a man sent this angry email:
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You used a heavily edited Getty image of me for your recent bit of click-bait about why hipsters all look the same. It's a poorly written and insulting article and somewhat ironically about five years too late to be as desperately relevant as it is attempting to be. By using a tired cultural trope to try to spruce up an otherwise disturbing study. Your lack of basic journalistic ethics and both the manner in which you reported this uncredited nonsense and the slanderous unnecessary use of my picture without permission demands a response and I am of course pursuing legal action. [Unidentified man, via NPR]
Lichfield and his photo editor contacted Getty, which looked up the stock model's release form and found that "the model's name wasn't the name of our angry hipster-hater," Lichfield tweeted. The tl;dc version:
The "hipster-hater" wrote back a gracious apology note. You can hear Lichfield and Garcia-Navarro discuss the somewhat ironical, unintentionally relevant episode below. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
