For years, the pop culture blog Hipster Runoff has puzzled, intrigued and enraged the "alt" and "mainstream" world in almost equal measure. Gawker honored him in 2009 with the much-coveted "Hipster of the Decade" award. But this afternoon Hipster Runoff's enigmatic boss Carles has signed of forever with a short blog post:

I think I've accomplished everything I wanted to with this project. I can't imagine myself blogging about anything else ever again because I feel like I have already blogged about everything and I am just a slave to boring alt memes. It's probably time to move on and find a real career & some challenges that can actually make the world a better place.

Thanks for the memories. We had a good run. I apologize to every one who I have hurt.

Carles rose to blog stardom with his weird quotation-marks-strewn commentary on various "alt memes"—i.e. bands and trends—as they rose and fell in hipster culture. No doubt the mystery surrounding his identity helped, too. Hipster Runoff was usually pretty funny, though reading more than one post at a time was exhausting. Seems like Carles just got worn out.

Update: Carles emails us:

Sup bro.

I am closing because I don't really enjoy content farming any more. Blogging used to be a little bit more fun and rewarding when I had a more naive outlook on what modern journalism meant. Now in a world filled with tumblrs, twitters, listicles, and an intense meme cycle, I don't think there is any thing very fun or special about it. I probably started HRO when I was insecure and felt like I needed a tribe of people to understand me to feel validated, but now I have predictably 'grown up.'

The money was pretty decent (usually took a long time to actually reach my pocket due to advertisers delayed payment schedules), but being a one person blog it is probably not a solid long-term career choice. Plus on top of that, ad networks usually take at least 50% off the top.

I have a few career options, one of them being the editor of a pre-existing blog where I would basically be doing what I do now except with a little bit more stability and less pressure. The other option is working for my uncle's family business where I could have a better idea of what I am going to be doing in 20 years as opposed to trying to farm as many hits as possible and crossing my fingers every month for ad revenue.

If I could have sold out, I would have, but that opportunity never came, and probably wasn't going to for HRO.

[Illustration by Steven Dressler]