Watchdog blurts out hipster poetry
The website of the new university watchdog, intended to enforce better value for money for students, seems to have been overtaken by hipster slang.
Visitors to the Office for Students website, looking for advice about university finance, found references to "lumbersexual cloud bread", "tofu tote bag" and "snackwave artisan".
The watchdog tweeted an apology: "Ooops, we came over all poetic for a moment there."
The pages have since been taken down.
The Office for Students has been launched by the government as a tougher and more consumer-aware regulator for higher education.
But the higher education policy website, Wonkhe, had spotted some strange text buried away on the watchdog's website, alongside the regulator's strategy in the higher education marketplace.
This prompted debate on Twitter about what the regulator meant by phrases on its website such as "Mumblecore mixtape tofu tote bag", "chillwave occupy bicycle rights" and "biodiesel unicorn".
Other touchstones of hipster life - "trust funds" and "craft beer" were interspersed with the name of that epicentre of London pretension, Shoreditch.
As the website told students and policymakers, "bespoke godard, cliche raclette", "gastropub tousled" and "direct trade meditation".
It was suggested on Twitter that the website had filled pages with a form of hipster "filler text", which generates dummy text for website designers, using the slang of hipsters, characterised by beards, brands and expensive breads.
The Office for Students responded with a promise to remove its unintended "poetry".
But as the website, which has just published its strategy and business plan, says: "Love reindeer?"