Hipster blogs and faux journalism

I get nearly 99% of my news and information online. I stopped subscribing to the local paper (sorry to the folks who recently lost jobs) and I don't have TV anymore. I don't have enough free time to loll about in coffeeshops (though I wish I did) so I don't see those free weeklies.

I do, however, subscribe to about 40 feeds and I typically catch up on my reading during lunchtime in my office. I am annoyed.

More and more I'm seeing self-indulgent rants and egregious errors in grammar (or more often, word choice) on what I've begun calling "hipster blogs." The writers there seem to believe that they invented the green movement, and that no one ever wrote about music before 2005. According to some of them cooking at home, urban gardening and riding a bicycle to work NEVER EXISTED until they became adults last year a decade ago.

Now I know why many of them hate us Baby Boomers for our self-righteous attitudes and confidence that we are the coolest generation.

Among the worst offenders, however, are the ones who see political corruption everywhere and choose to be snarky about it. It's as if they believe that power corrupts and that any elected official or anyone who heads a public agency must be, without question, dishonest, unethical or worse -- doing their job. These writers stand in the shadows and snipe about what should have happened when the water main broke or how animal services should be run.

Today I'm annoyed by those who are self-appointed community boosters. In their cheerleader tones they tout food trucks and film festivals, art fairs and farmers markets, gelato and small batch bourbon. Their attitude seems to be THE MEDIA WILL NEVER TELL YOU ABOUT THESE COOL THINGS SO IT'S UP TO ME TO KEEP YOU INFORMED.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon. I'd be willing to admit that.