Feds Paid $5 Million For Monthly Government-Sponsored Hipster Raves, Featuring Lots of Anti-Conservative Political Agitprop

Ostensibly these Hipster Raves were for the purposes of discouraging an at-risk group (white hipsters) from smoking, because you know how much insecure young people who want to be seen as "cool" respond to government-sponsored anti-drug messaging.

But to get these white slackers to accept that not smoking was "cool," they had to throw in a lot of anti-conservative agitprop as the spoonful of sugar.

Oh by way the National Institutes of Health is spending this $5 million on Pabst Blue Ribbon for hipsters instead of ebola. You're welcome.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending nearly $5 million to get hipsters to quit smoking by starting “commune” dance parties in bars across California.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) are using taxpayer dollars to bring anti-tobacco marketing into bars by selling posters and t-shirts, including those that deride the views of neoconservatives, saying the political philosophy is as bad as world hunger.

The $4,904,466 grant was awarded in 2011, and runs through 2016.

"In our prior research, we identified a high-risk subpopulation of young adults in San Diego, CA: the 'hipster' subculture, a group focused on the alternative music scene, local artists and designers, and eclectic self-expression," the grant explained. "We developed a yearlong pilot social branding intervention to decrease smoking among this group, using social events and social leaders to promote a strong nonsmoking lifestyle."

Pamela Ling, a professor at UCSF School of Medicine, is leading the project. Ling was the "medical student who got her way" in the 1994 season of MTV's "The Real World" before becoming a doctor.

That's perfect.

Now Ling wants to help UCSF's Center for Tobacco Control Research create a "smoke-free world" by appealing to hipsters' concerns about "social justice."

"Saying 'Smoking is bad for you' isn't relevant to them," Ling told the University. "But they do care about self-expression and social justice."

...

The group holds events, known as "Commune Wednesdays," every month at bars in San Diego, San Francisco, and Burlington, Vt., trying to appeal to hipsters through artwork, alternative bands, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

You can read about the political messaging at the link.

You may already be infuriated, but prepare to be even more infuriated by this rhetorical question:

College-educated "hipsters" are not at particularly high risk of becoming habit smokers, at least not compared to other groups.

Another group much more likely to become habit smokers are non- college educated blue-collar whites.

A group that tends to lean Republican in politics and traditionalist on social issues questions.

Now, given that blue-collar whites are more likely to become habit smokers than hipsters, how many millions do you suppose were spent to attract blue-collar whites to bars to buy them their beers of choice, to hire them the bands they favor, and to try to reach them with political messaging of an anti-progressive, pro-traditionalist bent?

I've got a guess and I'm pretty sure it's not a guess, it's an actual correct answer:

Zero fucking dollars.

posted by Ace at 04:31 PM

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