In Defense of Scenester Christianity

a generous take on irony-pilled, Nietzschean, performative Catholicism

[for the non-generous take, read this piece]

Picture a crowd congregating outside of an underground venue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that functions as a bar, literary and theatrical salon, and informal hangout spot. A mix of fashionistas, artists, writers, internet microcelebrities, and scenesters who just want in on the hype, this group of 20 and 30-somethings drift in and out from the venue to the sidewalk, most with a plastic cup holding a cheap drink in one hand, and an all-natural, Urbit-approved cigarette in the other. 

The conversations one will overhear are unlike most others held on the streets of New York, ranging from topics as varied as Freudian psychoanalysis, the evils of seed oils, Baudrillard, labor unions, Houellebecq, Lana Del Rey, Camille Paglia, The Smiths, ketamine, left-wing populism, right-wing Marxism…just to name a few. 

“You went to school uptown?” one extremely thin woman wearing a Brandy Melville t-shirt asks me in between puffs from her Elfbar vape. “What did you study?”

“Spanish Literature and…” I hesitated for a moment, as I usually do when telling randos my second major, “...Religious Studies.”

“Religious Studies?” asked the woman’s boyfriend, clad in a full three piece suit that seemed bewilderingly inappropriate for that late August evening. “Are you, like, actually religious?”

“Yeah,” I answered, hesitating again. “I’m Catholic…” 

“Oh word, dude? That’s based.”

“Yeah,” added his girlfriend. “I love the Cloisters…and everything that has to do with medieval mysticism. I just finished reading Julian of Norwich and am moving onto Hildegard of Bingen. Gregorian chant is gorgeous. I’ve been planning on going to Latin Mass at Holy Innocents with a friend who invited me. Veils are so lindy.”

Brandy Melville, Elfbar vapes, chapel veils are lindy. 

What is going on here?