The media is waging a war on hipsters. It's easy to figure out why: they're doing what their audience wants, and what they want is to stop feeling jealous. They need the media to attack everyone who's better than them and take them down a peg or two.

Hmm: but how do you trash hot young creative types? You can't criticize their looks, or their intelligence, or their age, or their success. You can only criticize the unseen: their motivation, and their germs.

Motivation is attacked with the "wannabe" tag. Which, when you think about it, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Because what exactly is a "wannabe"? It's someone who wants to be successful in an unconventional field. There aren't wannabes in other professions, like architecture or journalism: no, they're called "apprentices." They're called INTERNS.

Why doesn't the media target wannabe doctors? Here's a hospital scene you won't see on ABC:

NURSE: This man collapsed on the escalator at the mall. His pulse is shallow and rapid and his BP is 172 over 95.

INTERN: Thank you, Nancy. I'll take care of this.

DOCTOR [pushing him aside]: You wish, you wannabe!

Why doesn't the media accuse high-fallutin' professions of being wannabes? For instance, I remember back in the 1800s Alexander Hamilton was all, like, "Hey, if George Washington is gonna be a Founding Father then I wanna be one too!" What did Einstein do when he had a Beatles haircut and nobody gave him the time of day? We all know the answer to that. And I remember reading this in Mother Teresa's archives:

Dear Diary,

What should I do? I really want to be a nightclub singer, but damn if Florence Nightingale doesn't get the hunkier dudes.

Oddly, though, nobody cuts hipster interns any slack.

RECORD STORE CLERK: What do you think of the new National record?

HIPSTER INTERN: I'm not really into it. It sounds exactly the same as the last record. And aren't their allegedly "poetic yearnings" just pseudo-romantic tripe?

RECORD STORE CLERK: Okay, that's totally unacceptable. Get out of Brooklyn, charlatan!

So, we get an endless stream of ridiculous studies that make couch potatoes feel better about being far away from the cutting edge. "At least I'm blazing my own trail," they think as they shovel down another handful of Doritos from that butt-sized depression on their Kmart couch.

The latest is a claim by some ABC affiliate that says most hipster beards have traces of poop in them. Clearly from the outset this was designed as a slam job. Because what else are you going to find if you search somebody's beard? Cassette tapes? A Miata? Slices of pumpkin pie?

In this study, exactly one researcher wanders the 'hood swabbing every beard he finds. He checks under a microscope and voila! There's poop in almost every one.

Once again hipsters morph into laughingstocks. They thought they were so hot and so young and so fashionable when actually they're all wearing little toilets on their chins! Tell me again how great homemade mustard is, Mr. Poopoo Face!

It doesn't take a genius to realize that this attack can be easily turned around. ABC's cup may be half-empty, but ours is definitely half-full. Here's how the headline in The Daily Hipster would read:

MOST ASSES IN WILLIAMSBURGHAVE TRACES OF BEARD ON THEM

There. The same study, with an equally valid conclusion. Mr. Smug ABC Viewer, let's see Doritos get you out of that.