Monday, May 4, 2009

From the Slow News Desk

In case you, like The Typing Monkey, don't spend a lot of time on sites such as Gawker, perhaps you were unaware of the strange case of the "Hipster Grifter."

It's all true, of course. Even the unusual part about the grifter turning herself in in Philadelphia, as was reported on May 4. And you read that right, the Hipster Grifter is a woman.

Apparently she's been juggling multiple boyfriends in Salt Lake City and then Brooklyn for a few years. The HG beguiles these young, indie-rock enchanted men the old fashioned way: with sex, promises of free entrance to music clubs, claims of pregnancy and faked terminal illness. That she's been using her actual name -- or at least what is believed to be her birthname anyway -- is only one of many amazing details in her story, summed up in this head-spinning three-pager from The New York Observer.

Gawker documented the Hipster Grifter with a series of posts that, perhaps unintentionally, illuminate our admiration of those who take advantage of us. And if there's any moral to take away from all of this, it's that Vice magazine should do more thorough background checks.