The Luv Doc: A 20-Year Bait and Switch

Dear Luv Doc,

At the risk of sounding like a whiny “Austin was better back when” person, one of the things that  annoys me about new Austin is all the people pretending to be weird or edgy as some sort of business grift to make them seem authentic. It’s disgusting. I am from Austin. I was born at Seton hospital in 1991. Every day I see a post by some business claiming that they’re all about hippie values, or how they were “inspired by Austin’s laid-back culture” when all they are is just a trust funder from a wealthy Dallas suburb. Me and my friends talk about this all the time. If these fake entrepreneurs are so obvious to us, who are the people that are buying this BS? Not just the overpriced products but the completely made up “Authentic Austin” stories? Who are these gullible people who will pay thousands of dollars for basic cowboy boots, boxy snap shirts, and chunky, cheaply made jewelry. Where do they work? Or how do they get the money to pay for this fake authenticity? Us townies want to know.

– Baffled Local

Remember back in the heady, early days of Facebook when everyone was so excited to be able to connect with friends and create communities with people of like interests? You could post a funny video on your Alpaca Lovers group and literally everyone in the group would see it and post a nerdy comment. Nowadays when you post something it’s only visible to the one dead person in the group whose family couldn’t figure out how to take down their profile. Then every time you open Facebook, you get a pop-up with a still from the video you posted that says “reach more people with Facebook ads!” and you realize you’re not the King of Social Media. You’re the hapless victim of a 20-year bait and switch. And here you were naively thinking that social media was going to be useful for something other than vitriolic political posts featuring Trump as AI Jesus. Capitalism is clearly broken. How long until it breaks Austin?

I’ll admit it, Baffled, I am equally confounded by this torrent of greed and douchebaggery that has enveloped Austin. I would love to lead the finger pointing, but where to begin? Maybe we were too sexy (slutty?) back in the Nineties when you were innocently toddling around – probably in a saggy cloth diaper like a goddamned hippie kid – blissfully unaware that people with big ambitions and even bigger bank accounts were greedily eyeing Austin like the Property Brothers dry-humping a 3-1 teardown bungalow with good bones. Around the turn of the century, people really started flooding into Austin – presumably to hang out and talk indie cinema with Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez or maybe to toss back some craft brews with Taylor Kitsch and that ginger dude who married Kirsten Dunst. It was sort of adorable at first … all the flossily dressed tourists posing in front of the Jo’s “I Love You So Much” mural on South Congress and taking “real cowboy” two-step lessons at the Broken Spoke and the White Horse, but then they just kept coming and coming – snapping up all the cheap real estate, clogging up the roads with their indecisive driving, and yes, perhaps worst of all, figuring out ingenious ways to commoditize and capitalize on the laid-back Austin mythos, which, it turns out, was a goddamned gold mine that Slackerville had been taking for granted for decades while they were out going to see bands, getting late-night tacos, and sleeping off their hangovers.I’ll admit it. I was one of those people who woke up, walked outside one misty morning and realized Austin had a whole new skyline. “Fuck me. What is that thing?” I pondered as I finally noticed the towering silhouette of the Waterline, Texas’ tallest skyscraper. “Man, I really need to get out more. If only it wasn’t so fucking expensive.” I feel relatively certain that all these wealthy people that moved here in the last twenty years would totally pick up my bar tab if I could only figure out how to meet them. So come on, all you recently relocated millionaires! Give ol’ Luv Doc a holler!  Maybe we can get together with Baffled and you can show us how to make it rain hundos at Hotel Vegas! That would be so new Austin!

This article appears in May 1 • 2026.