You know you've heard it. You just don't remember or won't admit to it.

You'll hear it piped through the speakers in any trendy chain coffee shop or other place hipsters have historically gathered. You'll know it by the hesitant guitar notes and presence of "new cool" instruments like the ukulele. The singer usually mutters his verses with extreme trepidation. The singers' vocal styles range between high-pitched, like a candidate for a boy's choir, or brassy, like a reject from Muppets voice acting tryouts. The themes behind the songs are usually so safe to the point of being insipid -- travel, relationships, sometimes something so trivial as "it's raining."
 
Hipster music is unobtrusive; it knows it's not the reason why people go to coffee shops. It never comes to the fore because it's not mainstream, it's not corporate ("You just don't get it, man!"). It hasn't sold out, or at least it claims it hasn't. Its image depends on its audience not knowing it has, in fact, sold out to The Man.

Oftentimes, the volume is turned low so the music provides a barely-audible back beat to the chatter in the café, although sometimes it's annoyingly loud. On that note, when it's turned up too loud, it's really annoying because the genre seems to be about music that doesn't want to be heard. The vocalists mumble. A mumble that sounds like a roar is paradoxical, it's something you don't come across every day and when you do, it seizes your attention and doesn't let go. Like a train wreck. It's an awful thing to see and you don't watch it because you want to, you watch because it's something you don't get to see every day -- whether you want to or not.

All this begs several questions: who listens to this? Does anyone? Were you to go to the music store, would you find a section devoted to coffee shop music? Would you feel embarrassed at the look you'd get from the music store clerk on asking him where that section was?

On that last note, if you'd feel embarrassed at all, it's probably because you know what you're doing is wrong. Take off your scarf, it's a hundred degrees out. And take off your sunglasses too, you're indoors. Spit out that cigarette, it's not even lit.

Friends don't let friends listen to Hipster Muzak.

The Atlantic is wet. If that's not enough of a surprise, then rage comics (see example) don't pass for fine art. Watch your step on that sarcasm, it's hidden in there, somewhere.

We know we're overthinking this, but just humor us a moment.

It goes without saying that rage comics are poorly drawn. Anyone can glean that from a cursory glance, and we don't dispute that. The point we'd like to make is that they are perfectly drawn.

That last line may have some of you scratching your heads, others of you readying to throw a brick through your computer monitors. We accept this. If you haven't already cracked your monitors, read on to see what we mean.

There is a difference between poorly rendered and perfectly rendered drawings. To say something is poorly rendered is to speak in terms of degrees, such as when discussing how true to life the drawing is to the subject. However, if the ultimate aim of art is to evoke sentiment, even the best-rendered (by these criteria) drawings can be flat and lifeless. You can only look at so many hyperrealistic still-lifes of fruit on a table before they cease to hold meaning. 

For the purposes of our discussion, we propose that a drawing may be said to be perfectly rendered if its sole purpose and effect is to evoke a discrete sentiment or concept. A rage comic fits this description. The characters in these comics are not characters, per se. They do not have personalities that carry over or grow from comic to comic, as each comic typically is self-contained. The characters have no names other than the sentiment they represent. Indeed, each face is but a shorthand symbol for the sentiment it triggers. They are nothing more than what they make us feel, from the eponymous rage to quiet resignation.

That said, we posit that rage comics can be likened to visual poetry. We know that's one hell of a stretch, but regardless it serves our purposes. Likening these comics to poorly drawn poetry makes them doubly appropriate for inclusion here, because, as our motto dictates, you either get good writing or bad drawings or poetry.

Rage comics give you both of the latter.

From time to time, we here at Darkwater Syndicate will share with you the rage comics we draw up. And while a picture is worth a thousand words, we wouldn't want you to feel shortchanged, so we'll be sure to provide amusing stories to go along with our bad drawings.