The select club of refined gentlemen behind Things Bogans Like bring to you a new message: the 8 things bogans WILL like, but don’t yet realise they’ll like. Compiled from many hours of inner-urban research at venues that the bogan is not currently familiar with, the list reveals the trends that bogans will embrace in the near future, and completely ruin.
In the past 18 months, the new bogan has belatedly made the switch from MySpace to Facebook as its social networking website of choice. This has caused trendsetters to start making the switch from Facebook over to Twitter. Once the bogan realises that there are celebrities on Twitter, and that no interaction on there is more than 140 characters in length, it will be unable to resist the appeal of broadcasting its every move to its friends via its phone or computer. Even better, the 140 character limit is something that bogans have been training for for years, via generally unintelligible text message abbreviations. The trendsetters, meanwhile, will migrate elsewhere, galled by the flood of tweeted rubbish that the bogan will bring.
Phở
Now that Contiki is doing trips across Southeast Asia, and Vietnam has become known among the more avant bogans as “Thailand but cheaper”, it’s almost time for the bogan to adopt a Vietnamese dish in the same way that it did for Pad Thai, Butter Chicken, and Beef and Black bean. Pho (which the bogan will mispronounce with a hard P instead of an “F”) is a Vietnamese soup with rice noodles, meat and bean sprouts. Endorsing Pho will allow the bogan to appear worldly, but not TOO worldly.
Fat basketball boots
Inner urban hipsters have been (ironically) getting around in the chunky late 80s/early 90s style basketball boots for a while, and they’re now teetering on the brink of crossing over to the bogan. As was the fashion at the time, these boots are often characterised by their dramatic designs and bright colours, which will be enormously appealing to the bogan’s lack of subtlety and restraint. Some also feature fun gimmicks such as inflatable tongues. The new bogan will soon be willing to pay as much as $250 for shoes of this nature.
Fred Perry polo shirts
The new bogan is on a constant mission to wreck the brand image of every manufacturer of premium polo shirts. In the early years of the current decade, Ralph Lauren saw itself get whisked away into bogan hands, and soon every new bogan was swanning around in one of their polos, collars infuriatingly upturned. This trend lasted for a couple of years, after which the bogan went in search of a new brand to hijack. Temporary dalliances with Lacoste and Nautica did severe damage to both labels, but the new bogan is soon to discover Fred Perry. Fred Perry polo shirts are vintage English tennis gear, quite expensive, and a current staple of the inner-city trendster scene. Once the bogan realises this, there’ll be no turning back.
Bon Iver
Bon Iver ticks all appropriate boxes for receiving massive amounts of bogan love. The band has a second album due sometime in 2010, and while the debut received glowing critical acclaim, it did not create what the bogan can identify as ‘hype’. Bon Iver possesses sufficient sensitivity and clearly identifiable melody to make it appeal to the bogan, while offering significant scope for remixing. Even better, Bon Iver slots fairly neatly into the gentle acoustic milieu of Jose Gonzalez, Jack Johnson, et al, meaning that this particular brand of sensitivity is not for ‘poofs’. Just as Jeff Buckley allowed the bogan to appear emotionally attuned 15 years ago, Bon Iver will now fill the gaping void of accepted gentle male acoustic folk. Bogans will like them.
Gin
The new bogan is soon to grow tired of Jagermeister, along with developing a heart condition from all of the energy drinks used to create Jager Bombs. It will seek solace in Gin, a distinctly British drink that will surf the British fad in the lead-up to the 2012 Olympic Games. The inner-urban elite has been connecting over gin for a few years now, and the bogan will soon embrace the refreshing taste, premix compatibility, alcohol potency, and capacity to be blended with citrus. How well it combines with energy drinks is currently untested, but the recently released lemon flavoured V energy drink is an early bogan contender.
Carbon neutral products
Despite its illustrious history of burning vast amounts of fossil fuel in the name of transportation or leisure, the new bogan is soon to latch onto carbon neutrality for some of its purchases. The female bogan will drive this trend, adopting the increasingly mainstream mantra it is “the right thing to do”. This switch will come about primarily out of a desire to be seen as up to date, rather than from any particular conviction relating to environmentalism or sustainability. The male bogan will follow shortly after, enticed by the prospect of impressing the female’s new value system, and hopeful of bedding her. The bogan will apply the principle of carbon neutrality very inconsistently across its day.
Wayfarer sunglasses
The Blues Brothers is one of those films that it’s OK to like, no matter who you are. But not for long. A couple of years ago, when ultra-cool trendsetters started picking up Jake and Elwood’s ubiquitous sunglasses from op-shops, it spelled trouble. Today, they are issued to every person under the age of 30 who owns a pair of tight jeans and/or has over 10,000 non-remix songs on their iPod – or more appropriately, their Creative Zen. But it is going to be short-lived. Ray Ban has, by making squillions of them and giving them a cool-sounding name, made Wayfarers a prime target for the bogan hordes. They’re cool, they’re expensive, they have brand-recognition cred, and they look great with a flannel shirt and tight pants, the upcoming bogan uniform. Expect to see them at FCUK soon.
Fixed Gear Bicycles
We didn’t think so, but…
http://www.industrie.com.au/news/
Anything else? Suggest them on the new page…