Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

So now that fixie bikes are now more or less mainstream, the originators of this trend are probably feeling a bit resentful of the trend hopping newcomers. Or, as it was eloquently put in the article I linked:

We all know there’s a real culture of fixie riders, especially with the messengers. But let’s all be honest with ourselves. Up until about a year or two ago only messengers and a select few others were on these things, but at the last Critical Mass I rode in the crowd had a huge percentage of fixie riders. There were more fixies than I could count.

Now it’s cool and all that people try new things. After all, everyone has a right to hop on a fixie and custom paint it and get a carbon front wheel and add a top-tube pad for extra cool points, then put on their hottest outfit to ride around in. It’s the hipster version of an Escalade on 22′s.

But when I see the list of people picking up on the trend these days it’s kind of disheartening. Lots of ‘indie’ types, lots of ‘creatives’, lots of ‘I’m not ready to be a 30-something yet so I’ll get a fixie to feel young again’.

Oh well, in a few years when it cools off there’ll be a lot of good deals on Craigslist…

Insiders resenting newcomers is a natural and expected response to newcomers coming on their cultural turf. You think Hell’s Angels took kindly to middle-aged men when they made Harley Davidson into a mechanized version of Viagra? When feeders start sucking of a brand’s or cultural movement’s meaning, the insiders are bound to tighten their ranks and look to exclude the newcomers. In Harley’s case they did this via newcomer jokes, putting more meaning on fixing your own bike as a rite of passage, glorifying older and discontiunued bike models etc.

With fixies it’s harder for insiders to show their exclusivity and worthiness in relation to the trend-hopping feeders. After all, fixie bikes are quite simple to build and it’s hard to distinguish an original bike from one a newcomer built, so it’s hard to discriminate by scarcity. Fixie lovers are a heterogenous group (save for bike messengers) so there might not be any traditional external identifiers of who’s worthy and who’s not (correct me if I’m wrong).

My educated guess is that the so-called mutant bike movement feeds from this resentment towards the fixie craze. The bikes are almost impossible to ride, but I guess that’s the whole point. Only an enthusiast would go through the trouble to build one. I would like to know if these mutant bike enthusiasts are old fixie builders as well.

See if you can hop on THIS bandwagon!

Hat tip to Murketing.