The Outsourced Zippie

This is a rather sarcastic take from WikiHow

Steps

1. Define the Zippie as rather new sub-culture that indicates a person who may live on a low budget, dress informally or casually or even inappropriately in the traditional sense.

   • Zippies received media exposure during the American 1972 Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Miami Beach, Florida, when the term was worn on t-shirts by counter-culture activists and groups working to end US involvement in the Vietnam War.

2. Drop-out if you wish into a lifestyle of seeking freebies: free food, free books, free software.

   • Eat fancy restaurant leftovers for free -- if you wash a few dishes or something?

3. Adopt an anti-Yuppie lifestyle. They are found as various youth groups that have taken up the term and may differ from the earlier groupings. They may interact with other Zippie tribes from across the planet and communicate, or just do their own versions as a group life style.

4. Be an informal dressing technician (Hippie techie culture...) as being opposite of the pinstriped, neck tie, suit wearing Yuppie.Wikipedia:Zippie

5. Adapt an Wired Magazine or Encyclopedia Psychedelica Magazine interpretation of the Zippie to yourself.

   • "There's a new and rapidly spreading cultural virus ripping through the British Isles. The symptoms of those infected include attacks of optimism, strong feelings of community and lowered stress levels. Will their gathering in August [1994] at the Grand Canyon be the Woodstock of the '90s?"[1]

   • This is also revealed in the magazine Encyclopedia Psychedelica (EPi), that identified them as "Hippies with zip." EPi says, a Zippie is

     "someone who has balanced their hemispheres to achieve a fusion of the technological and the spiritual. The techno-person understands that rationality, organization, long-term planning, consistency and single-mindedness are necessary to achieve anything solid on the material level. The hippie understands that vision, individuality, spontaneity, flexibility and open-mindedness are crucial to realize anything on the spiritual scale."[2]

6. Develop a style based on a "huge cohort of Indian youth who are first to come of the age since India shifted away from socialism and dived headfirst into global trade and information revolution by turning itself into world's service center". [The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman]

   • See another interpretation reported by Friedman as found in an Indian weekly magazine called Outlook. They called Zippies "Liberalization's Children," and defines one of that subculture as

     "a young city or suburban resident, between 15 and 25 years of age, with a zip in the stride. Belongs to generation Z. Can be male or female, studying or working. Oozes attitude, ambition and aspiration. Cool, confident and creative. Seeks challenges, loves risks and shuns fears." Indian zippies carry no guilt about making money or spending it. They are, says one Indian analyst quoted by Outlook, "destination driven, not destiny driven; outward, not inward, looking; upwardly mobile, not stuck-in-my-station-in-life."

     [Friedman, Thomas, "Meet the Zippies", New York Times (Op-Ed), February 22, 2004]

7. Work for the love it if you want to--even for nothing--not necessarily working for the suburban dream, and perhaps with little or no earnings, i.e. doing zip for zip:Wikipedia:Zippie

[edit]Tips

• The meaning of the "Zippie person" is changing fluidly as a sub-cultural description or even a societal slur.

• You may use the word "zippy - a: very quick or speedy b: strikingly fresh, lively, or appealing in style" but that is not necessarily closely related to what this article is about.Merriam Webster Online Dictionary - zippy

# posted by ethnopunk @ 3:28 PM