Gordon Edgar? John Ross Bowie? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Hippies and punks are two youth subcultures which emerged a decade apart. Both were known for questioning authority, but one wit formulated a cruel comparison. Here are two versions:
Punks are nice people pretending to be mean; hippies are mean people pretending to be nice.
Punks are good people pretending to be bad; hippies are bad people pretending to be good.
Would you please explore the provenance of this saying?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match found by QI appeared in the 2010 book “Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge” by Gordon Edgar. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
A lot of punks say they hate everyone, but a wise friend once said to me that punks are basically nice people pretending to be mean, whereas hippies are mean people pretending to be nice. A working-class anarchist whom I went to college with once interrupted a group of punks talking about the stupidity of “normal people” by saying, “You’re talking about my family.”
The “wise friend” is unnamed; hence, the creator of this saying remains anonymous. QI suspects that earlier citations exist, and future researchers may discover them.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
A contrasting viewpoint appeared in 1978 within an article titled “Look Out, Punk City!” in “The Washington Post”. An unnamed person criticized punks:2
“There are no real punks here.” said one man. “Punks are mean. They shoot heroin. They get into fist fights. Real punks would blow your mind.”
In 1990 columnist Lawrence Livermore of the punk journal “Maximum Rocknroll” described his journey from being a hippie to being a punk. The columnist suggested that hippies were mean, whereas punks pretended to be mean. This observation fit the meaning of the saying, but the phrasing was different:3
… my own hippie experiences. We weren’t the ones with the flowers, we were the ones with the bricks. We lived by stealing, prostitution, drug dealing, and about half of us were dead by the mid-’70s. For me punk was a step forward; I got to put my energy into pretending to be mean instead of really being mean.
In 1994 columnist Reverend Norb of “Maximum Rocknroll” wrote the following about hippies:4
In case you somehow missed this particular chapter in The World According To Oliver Stone, hippies are BAD. Hippies are the anti-Christ. HIPPIES ARE NO DAMN GOOD. Hippies are not, however, bad people (in general). There is no need to prove your punkness by tossing this magazine into your mother’s begonias …
In 2007 “The New York Times” printed a positive remark about punks:5
“Punks are good people,” writes the Sonic Youth vocalist and “Punk House” editor Thurston Moore in the preface. “Living together is a punk-rock rite of passage into responsibility in complete disregard of social standards.”
In 2010 the full saying appeared in “Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge” as mentioned at the beginning of this article:6
A lot of punks say they hate everyone, but a wise friend once said to me that punks are basically nice people pretending to be mean, whereas hippies are mean people pretending to be nice.
In December 2019 a tweet from the handle @asexualnews contained an instance of the saying with “mean” and “nice”:7
It’s the generation that gave the world Punk rock and Heavy Metal. The biggest difference between Gen X and the Boomers is summed up this way “Hippies (Boomers) are mean people pretending to be nice. Punks are nice people pretending to be mean.”
In July 2021 a tweet from @juanjomck contained an instance with “good” and “bad”:8
“Punks are good people pretending to be bad, hippies are bad people pretending to be good.”
In 2022 John Ross Bowie published “No Job for a Man: A Memoir” which contained the following passage:9
It has often been said that punks are nice people pretending to be bad people, and hippies are bad people pretending to be nice people and while I eschew such sweeping generalizations, holy shit has this been repeatedly proven to me.
In conclusion, this saying appeared in a 2010 book by Gordon Edgar. The statement was attributed to an unnamed friend of the author; hence, the creator remains anonymous. Versions using the words “good”, “bad”, “nice”, and “mean” are currently circulating.
Image Notes: Painted hippie-style van from Vasilios M and Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Jesse Sheidlower whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 2010, Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge by Gordon Edgar, Chapter 15: It’s Not What We Eat, It’s That We Eat, Quote Page 205, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1978 May 16, The Washington Post, Look Out, Punk City!: One Year Late, Five Years Ahead of Its Time by Tom Zito and Stephanie Mansfield, Start Page C1, Quote Page C7, Column 5, Washington D.C. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1990 April, Maximum Rocknroll, Number 83, Column: Lookout! It’s Lawrence Livermore, Unnumbered Page, Berkeley, California. (Verified with scans) link ↩︎
- 1994 November, Maximum Rocknroll, Issue 138, Column: Making new friends With REV. NORB, Unnumbered Page, Column 3, Berkeley, California. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 2007 October 7, The New York Times, Wreck Rooms by Armand Limnander, Quote Page F54, New York. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 2010, Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge by Gordon Edgar, Chapter 15: It’s Not What We Eat, It’s That We Eat, Quote Page 205, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- X-Tweet, From: Asexual News reminds you not to shame virgins @asexualnews, Timestamp: 2:19 PM, Dec 28, 2019, Text: It’s the generation that gave the world Punk rock and Heavy Metal. (Accessed on x.com on June 13, 2026) link ↩︎
- X-Tweet, From: Juan el terco. @juanjomck, Timestamp: 12:04 PM, Jul 30, 2021, Text: Punks are good people pretending to be bad. (Accessed on x.com on Jun 13, 2026) link ↩︎
- 2022, No Job for a Man: A Memoir by John Ross Bowie, Chapter 3: The Other Stan Lee and His Novelty Glasses, Quote Page 54, Pegasus Books Ltd., New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎