Inactive Blog Hipster Runoff Shows Up On Auction Site Flippa

Here’s a recent auction listing on Flippa that is making waves:

“Famous niche hipster PR 5 Site w/ 168,648 uniques/mo making $1,300/mo w/ no work

Well-established site that has gone inactive but still generates traffic. Quality inbound links from NYTimes, Gawker, Wired, & more. Great opportunity to take brand and rebuild audience.”

40 bids have been made and the current price is $11,000USD. If this isn’t modern digital media at its modern-est, then I don’t know what is. But what exactly is this “famous niche hipster” website of which we speak?

I’m going to throw some words out there: chillwave, alt, normcore. Lost in the jargon? Don’t be. Although these words all fall within the realm of Hipster Runoff (HRO)--a blog that breaks down trending topics into contrived subsections until they are unrecognizable to even the trendiest of readers-- HRO is really just a business like anything else so here’s the deal:

Once upon a time an anonymous blogger named “Carles” started a music blog that soon morphed into an alternative music and culture blog (read: very hipster) that took the quirks of other alternative blogs to the extreme. Pretty much all that we know about Carles we know from his 2009 interview with Village Voice:

“I am a pretty standard bro. I grew up in suburbia and recently graduated from business school. I now have a ‘job that I hate’ and doesn't really ‘allow me to express myself.’ But my day is pretty much taken up by my "real job." I am hoping that ad money will enable me to quit soon.”

But all you really need to know about Carles is this pull quote from the interview: “I don't even really remember life before the Internet.”

Thus, HRO directs itself at people that don’t remember life before the Internet by making fun of such people. And then in turn, making fun of these digital natives for making fun of themselves, in the same way that trying really hard not to be cool is possibly the same as trying really hard to be cool:

"I just want to live a meaningful life without feeling like 'every one else.'
I deserve more than I have.
I am entitled to a fulfilling career.
I am entitled to a fulfilling life, even if I 'don't take things seriously.'
I wish people could just 'chill' and give every1 like $55K/year, and we could all just sort of 'be happy' and 'buy some cool shit.'
I feel like I shouldn't have to work.
I feel scared.
Feel like I've been lied to/might have been lying to myself based upon lies other people told me."

The site has about 22K Facebook likes and 97.6K Twitter followers. And although the style is somewhat illiterate, Carles was/is apparently a contributor to Bill Simmons’ Grantland. As the auction listing promises, none other than The New York Times is driving traffic to HRO, according to Alexa. The fourth-most-active referral link is this 2010 NYT piece titled ‘When Funny Goes Viral’.

HRO stopped “trying” in 2013--aka, the blog and associated social media accounts went inactive. However, in the last couple of days Carles has started posting again.

So what’s the precedent for the sale of this type of blog? The Gawker Media empire consists of blogs with comparably irreverent tones. In 2008 they sold two of their blogs-- music site Idolator and urban travel blog Gridskipper -- for undisclosed amounts and a third, liberal policy gossip Wonkette, went independent (still liberal though).

In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook ancestor Facemash was sold for $30,201 on Flippa and a portion of the proceeds were donated to charity. The domain now appears as a spammy landing page offering to sell me a wife.

Just this week, ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com-- the site that went viral for promising exactly what it seems to promise-- also sold on Flippa for an irridescent $85,000USD after 345 bids.

Clearly, HRO is in good company... or, maybe--your views on creative revenge depending-- just in company. But honestly, when your personal brand is making fun of personal brands, what’s more on-brand than selling yourself?