Journal of the mental environment
I‘m sipping a scummy pint of cloudy beer in the back of a trendy dive bar turned nightclub in the heart of the city’s heroin district. In front of me stand a gang of hippiesh grunge-punk types, who crowd around each other and collectively scoff at the smoking laws by sneaking puffs of “fuck-you,” reveling in their perceived rebellion as the haggard, staggering staff look on without the slightest concern.
The “DJ” is keystroking a selection of MP3s off his MacBook, making a mix that sounds like he took a hatchet to a collection of yesteryear billboard hits, from DMX to Dolly Parton, but mashed up with a jittery techno backbeat.
“So… this is a hipster party?” I ask the girl sitting next to me. She’s wearing big dangling earrings, an American Apparel V-neck tee, non-prescription eyeglasses and an inappropriately warm wool coat.
“Yeah, just look around you, 99 percent of the people here are total hipsters!”
“Are you a hipster?”
“Fuck no,” she says, laughing back the last of her glass before she hops off to the dance floor.
Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.
But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”
An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
***
Take a stroll down the street in any major North American or European city and you’ll be sure to see a speckle of fashion-conscious twentysomethings hanging about and sporting a number of predictable stylistic trademarks: skinny jeans, cotton spandex leggings, fixed-gear bikes, vintage flannel, fake eyeglasses and a keffiyeh – initially sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory.
The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.
This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.
Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.
“These hipster zombies… are the idols of the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory real-estate agents,” wrote Christian Lorentzen in a Time Out New York article entitled ‘Why the Hipster Must Die.’ “And they must be buried for cool to be reborn.”
With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.
***
Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.
“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.
Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”
“Offensive?”
“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”
“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?”
“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”
***
Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice, who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom’s primary architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes, whose “Dos and Don’ts” commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.
“I’ve always found that word [“hipster”] is used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable,” he says. “I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”
Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.
***
“He’s 17 and he lives for the scene!” a girl whispers in my ear as I sneak a photo of a young kid dancing up against a wall in a dimly lit corner of the after-party. He’s got a flipped-out, do-it-yourself haircut, skin-tight jeans, leather jacket, a vintage punk tee and some popping high tops.
“Shoot me,” he demands, walking up, cigarette in mouth, striking a pose and exhaling. He hits a few different angles with a firmly unimpressed expression and then gets a bit giddy when I show him the results.
“Rad, thanks,” he says, re-focusing on the music and submerging himself back into the sweaty funk of the crowd where he resumes a jittery head bobble with a little bit of a twitch.
The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.
***
Perhaps the true motivation behind this deliberate nonchalance is an attempt to attract the attention of the ever-present party photographers, who swim through the crowd like neon sharks, flashing little blasts of phosphorescent ecstasy whenever they spot someone worth momentarily immortalizing.
Noticing a few flickers of light splash out from the club bathroom, I peep in only to find one such photographer taking part in an impromptu soft-core porno shoot. Two girls and a guy are taking off their clothes and striking poses for a set of grimy glamour shots. It’s all grins and smirks until another girl pokes her head inside and screeches, “You’re not some club kid in New York in the nineties. This shit is so hipster!” – which sparks a bit of a catfight, causing me to beat a hasty retreat.
In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery. Red-eyed and bleary, they sit hunched over their laptops, wading through a sea of similarity to find their own (momentarily) thrilling instant of perfected hipster-ness.
What they may or may not know is that “cool-hunters” will also be skulking the same sites, taking note of how they dress and what they consume. These marketers and party-promoters get paid to co-opt youth culture and then re-sell it back at a profit. In the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood.
Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.
An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over.
***
“If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck!” chants an emcee before his incitements are abruptly cut short when the power plug is pulled and the lights snapped on.
Dawn breaks and the last of the after-after-parties begin to spill into the streets. The hipsters are falling out, rubbing their eyes and scanning the surrounding landscape for the way back from which they came. Some hop on their fixed-gear bikes, some call for cabs, while a few of us hop a fence and cut through the industrial wasteland of a nearby condo development.
The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyah and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending demise.
We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.
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Comments
Nice reprint - from when, ‘93?
“Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group”
Not really… ever hear of psychedilic music and hippy lifestyle. they had an entire car devoted to them…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENDuh8lckG0
Very well said. I find myself, as an alienated 22-year-old, in a kind of cultural purgatory. There are definable moments in my life, and likewise pieces of my persona, where my inherent disdain and indifference toward established norms feels almost simultaneously a vehicle for normality itself. In a sort of Orwellian doublespeak sensibility, I can spark a conversation about conspiracy theory, and can we trust the government?, can our consumer tendencies be reconciled through government mandates?, and the media is criminally compliant in every aspect of society we deem corrupt, etc— and somehow return 360 back to my own hypocrisy staring me in the face, sitting in the McDonald’s drive thru, talking about a story CNN broke, using the term terrorist in every conventional sense it has been interpreted, saying “what a great thing Obama won the election”… That is the psychological aspect. These “hipsters”, these “I made this shirt at home with duct tape and scissors” but “I need to go to Target for a coat for this winter”, products of a lifestyle of plenty, who seek identity in whichever trendy aphorism saves face, these kids will never create anything of veritable value. Art kids all, I wonder how many of them have actually worked for a living, have actually wanted. And I’m scared shitless.
I was never a fan of hipsters, but after a while of clicking around Viceland.com I have decided that, if Vice truly represents the hipster, they are sexist, racist homophobes with ultra-reactionary and conservative politics hidden behind a “friendly” veil of pretentious, ironic postmodern know-nothingism.
Adbusters specializes in tearing down mainstream culture and read their stuff for a reason, they do it well. I’m sincerely curious though- does adbusters point the way to any productive and practical answers?
Amen,
They’re apt at attacking the “hipster” but don’t really offer how to use this lost generation to promote the activist role they seek.
The article was a miss.
I am so deeply offended that I can’t seem to get my head out of my ass.
“Hipster”, presumabley taken from “hippie”, right?
how I see it, they’re so different.
Hippies calling for FREE LOVE, unity of humanity, peace, and an end to all things discriminatory or oppressive. They grabbed onto the Vietnam war and felt passionately about something REAL in the REAL world.
I dont see the comparison with hipsters, and i feel like they took the vintage “i dont care if my clothes match or make sense” part of hippies and left out any empowering substance or ideals. What do they stand behind? What unifies them besides clothes?
I mean, a lot of messed up shit is going on right now on planet earth and i think there could be a lot more direction to our generations counterculture. i think veganism and bikes are a good start in saving our world and shouldnt be shunned or questioned because they represent concern for our environment. But lets stop with this constant introspection and judgement and exlusiveness. this is an incredible opportunity to be on planet earth. lets not waste it with arbitrary purposes.
it’s this kind of article that made me cancel my subscription to this magazine a year ago. I was just stopping by to see if anything had changed in terms of the negative, crotchety tone that pretty much defines the content of adbusters. have fun hating on everything!
“Hipster”. Well i guess i can label the author and all like minded readers as “Sophistos”. You are giving too much of “a fuck” about something that ultimately doesn’t matter. people like to mix and match fashion and take pictures and dance and that means it’s the end of western culture? how far did you want it to progress?
you aren’t even talking about “hipsters” anymore. you are talking about posers. sheep. followers. There’s always going to be cool kids that others are going to try to fit in with. that’s why the cliques get dumber with size.
the only thing i took from this article is the bit about the love of apathy. if we didn’t have a little bit of apathy to fall back on we’d all be too upset to live. we’d all be marching the streets year after year with complaints about smaller and smaller issues untill there wasn’t anything left to complain about except the weather. in that light apathy starts looking like hope. the only way we can enjoy ourselves in the little time we have without pissing our pants in outrage over everything we have no control over.gettig people together to stop a war or famine or something of greater importance regarding human life is more worth while than pointing out the posers in a trendy scene. fuck off and live.
The problem with hipsters, really, is the problem with Postmodernism, all passive nihilism really. There is critique, cynical, cynical, ironic critique. Some analysis (though not as much as postmodernism 1968-1992.) One thing there absolutely isn’t is even a general outline for how to improve things, not even a willingness to change. Even Foucault is more uplifting than the average hipster.
Hipsters have always been around. If not in a fixed gear/beer/aperican appareal appeal, then in fashion and clicks.
I would say that to define a hipster, you would mix fashion with self admiration, intimidation, selfishness, cliches, condemnation, a whole bunch of things negative. I forgot to mention, human nature.
If a group of kids have conformed to trends, then it’s there own deal. Hipsters aren’t the only form of conformists that crawl in our world. You can can find hipsters from america to japan and back again, but you can also find hip-hop heads, indie heads, country heads and all genres of people. If you analyze hipsters so intently, analyze a few other people.
Most media recognized music today has so many similarities from yesterday’s hits, that a whole ton of music heads are conforming to simple, catchy and talentless music composing. The same can be said for Hollywoods film industry.
I don’t mean to say I sympathize with hipsters, specifically, only I understand that they are a part of a group like everyone else is a part of another group. The whole world is conforming and no one really thinks to understand indivdualism, selfless action, creativity and the idea that a person can be “cool” and be differnent from the next cat.
Honestly, who thinks about this? Who thinks that just because hipsters are comparative to zombies in some lights, that other heads can’t be comparative to zombies also?
Stop only hating on one crowd, because maybe with this growing “trend” and crowd, it will bloom into a culture that is our today and tomorrow and from there, those who are true indivdualists and non-conformists can cut ties to this hipsterdom and create something new, but who is to say that what comes after hipster, if “hipster” ever sees an end, that we won’t like that?
If it weren’t “hipster”, it would be something else and I’m sure that people would be negative and disapproving of that too.
GREAT (and extremely well-written) article. You definitely articulated what the hipster is (and isn’t). Kind of sad that a swarm of hipsters will be attacking you for writing this now, especially since their waking hours are on blogs (lol).
But a good word about hipsters- while they are the death of counter-culture at least they go a little bit left, at least they are a step up from conservative suburban hell. It’s not saying much though.
Very insightful stuff anyway.
Wow. I really loved this article.
However, two things that I do think are productive that have come out of the hipster generation are the making bikes and veganism cool. I know Adbusters fights for a redefinition of cool. It’s better than Africa-mined jewelry, Hummers/SUVS, and 3rd-world Nikes - I’m talking to you hip-hop (though most hipsters love their vintage dunks, too).
I think the hipster thing is probably overripe by now anyway…and honestly I doubt it is, in practice, any more or less vapid than youth cultures that came before. (The beatniks may have had better figureheads, but in practice most of them just wanted to fit in and party.)
_
I know some hipsters that are involved in very productive activities — and some useless, perpetually-drunk ones — but if I get past my personal prejudices the same applies to society at large.
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I think that every movement has its scholars and spokesmen, and its less-insightful followers. The Woodstock documentary, for instance, has examples of both.
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I’m a little surprised at the lack of insight and perspective in this article. I think there are aspects of hipsterdom that make it uniquely troubling in a survey of youth cultures (mostly the “we aren’t hipsters” thing and the refusal of sincerity in general).
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But, all in all, you could replace the specifics and this could be about jazzers, punks, hip-hoppers, headbangers, goths, ravers, or anybody else.
_
Thanks for writing it nonetheless.
rs
ps, about fixies:
_
I understand that tons of hipsters ride fixies and I understand you were trying to impart that point. But, you strayed from the facts in an attempt to hammer your point home.
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A brake isn’t what defines a fixed-gear bike. Before hipsters came along fixies with brakes existed. A fixie is defined only by the lack of a freewheel or coaster brake, not the presence of any brake.
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Ultimately I see fixies as a positive thing, a “gateway drug” into commuter cycling.
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I think, given a few years of laboriously jamming around without coasting, that most of the fixie riders will begin to see the virtues of gears and freewheels but hopefully their riding will be a lifelong habit.
_
rs
I understand some parts or most parts of this article or maybe the main part of the article. The peace symbol is dead and gone, it no longer means a anything, punk ripped jeans, studded leather coats, patched hoodie…only a symbol left to rot and be sold back to us as the corporate “resistance” capitalists pick it up and sell it back to us. Fixed gear bikes are however no matter how trendy or hipster a viable and sustainable form of transportation. The loss of meaning….YES!!! Too critical…I dont think so. Youhave to be critical in order to move forward and understand. A generation waiting to be woken and moved and revolutionized….YES!!!! How? Where do we go? Should we feel guilty for wearing tight jeans, non prescription glasses etc……NO! Should we think about it and wonder….Is this revolution or this be sold to us as revolution or some new wave counter culture of course we should. Never feel ashamed for living and taking part in a culture which you grew up in…….or trying to break free form it. Should I feel guilty for clipping my sticker clad Nalgene bottle to my belt buckle full of wine and taking it to a party? NO! Should I think about it signifigance as a symbol of rebellion turned into consumerism? Yes!!!!!! that is my thought and i hope i made it clear…….How do we move forward…dont make sound so hopeless and dead……Revolution is alive …keep pushing…keep questioning…keep it local…keep ot original and make it your self or something you know DIY who knows……..
This article is dumb. My main beef with it is that they got “fixed gear bikes” all wrong.
Fixed gear bikes are the most durable, simple, sustainable means of transportation… and they do look good. They’ve been around since the 1800’s… They are NOT DEFINED BY A LACK OF BRAKES! ONLY TRACK BIKES ARE DEFINED BY LACK OF BRAKES!
How can you complain about people riding bikes! I can see maybe complaining about “hipsters” riding brakeless without proper experience, but complaining about people putting brakes on a fixed gear bike… something.. normal… practical… sensible… come on!
Okad said: “there is a complete avoidance as to what this ultimately means”
…….
We all know what this means, some people are just to freaked out, that their social order, is petty shit.
What it means is, The other side of the world is in PROGRESSION MODE, while all of us are stuck in “OUT MOMMY AND DADDYS MAKE US MAD” mode… basicaly.
You can see past the set up, and get the point.
Japan, has a fully flowing underground nightlife, that has taken over much of their main stream media.
Have we done that in the U.S.A?? NO
Have they doin it in the UK? Nope…
Fukkin hippsters… Always trying to drag others down, when the places they started in where a million times better than most.. but they just continue to pull others down to this “Working class” rhelm.. where no-one ever wanted to be.. but they are too snotty and bratty inside to realize that their life was made.. they just decided to “defy” by fucking it up.
Thats just on small problem with our western world.
Get me a plane ticket to Tokyo… fuck
Has anyone pointed out yet that Adbusters is a blatantly hipster publication?
or that over 923 million people are starving in the world, and you people are wasting breathing space? hunger is pretty hip huh?
hhahaha i think the article was nice made until the very end:
“Order this issue [#79 - East and West] or subscribe by visiting our Culture Shop. ”
:)
What is the point of counter-culture? Is it just to be different from our predecessors or is it to affect change on the world around us? Is it to fight against the main stream? The real issue with the hipster culture is that is manufactured by marketers. They are told what is “cool” through clever advertising. They are a bi-product of our decades long obsessive and destructive consumption. They are the epitome of retail gluttony. They swim with the current not against it. To be fair to the hipster, however, we all consume in lines with what we consider to be our culture. We all, well most of us, define ourselves through our purchases but on the other hand the hipster isn’t totally sure why they buy what they buy. There is a lack of sincerity to their buying,a lack of committal. If all I have said is true and this is what we can expect from future generations then it stands to reason that the hipster represents an end to western culture as they do not question or attempt to change the current paradigms. In fact that are happy to float along in them being lead ultimately by marketing and advertising which most of us believe to be shallow and detrimental to our cultural survival. The thing to do is to shift the current paradigm. We must move away from a culture of consumption and toward a culture of creativity, education and thinking. We will always consume and there isn’t anything wrong with going out and buying a kick-ass state-of-the-art sound system (which has stretched limits of thinking and creativity of a certain field)but we must be careful not to find our value and self worth in the things we buy. We must be careful not to spend so much of time choosing, buying and consuming that we have no time for more worthwhile pursuits.
When I read articles like this, or hear conversations about the decline of western culture as a whole, I’m interested to see that there is a complete avoidance as to what this ultimately means, and what individuals will then do with their own day to day lives. It makes sense that the erosion of a culture also infers the breakdown of certain assumptions about how we can live, let alone how we should. Choices and opportunities we take for granted, in even our current shallow form of Free Society, will probably not exist, in theory, during a transition towards the type of societal structure that the modern intellectual youth is attempting to achieve. So does the “death” of surface constructs designed by human beings trying to sell things mean that the idea of profiting from others who lack a clear ability to discern meaningful value will end? Rationally, no, and let’s face it, selling empty shit is only a means of survival for the seller, the most primal of motives. Most of these people in marketing and sales don’t actually subscribe to the crap their selling, and in the isolated cases where naievete supersedes reason, the people who do are only perpetuating the end of their culture, if only in their avoidance of the law of change. The groups and individuals who don’t agree with this core culture are only angered or frustrated further into action, which will lead to movements and protests, proliferated by websites, cult magazines, posters, and word of mouth denunciations, among other outlets. If we’re to believe then that this will or could actually usher in the end of a central culture and all of it’s now meaningless sub-cultural components, then what is the goal? To promote intellectualism? To Avoid sinking into the quagmire of kitsch? To create a projected better world for our children who will eventually grow to an age of semi reason and reject in part or in whole the designs of their parents? The cycle is continuous, because there are fundamental things that human beings can not agree on that debilitate even the purest attempts to alter the course of human kind, like whether religion in general is a harmful mass cult that hinders human growth or a basically harmless practice that has become a casualty of fanatical misinterpretation, leading to conflict on a micro and mass scale, to say nothing of it as a distraction from the more present dilemma of scarce natural resources and the systematic annihilation of the environment we need for survival at a more basic level. In terms of fundamentalism, it’s important to note that even a society of true open and honest debate without fear of violent or otherwise hurtful repercussions will still inevitably lead to divisions of thought, which will then lead to divisions of culture, leaving any vellum thin vestige of mass cultural change and complete cultural unity at odds with each other. Instead of writing articles about ignorant and sometimes flatly stupid irresponsible youths immersed in a coercive pseudo-culture of buying object after object while stoned, plastered, bent, twisted or otherwise, maybe recognition of the real battle front of our species, it’s continuance, should be observed as individuals, before socially designated groups, cults, gangs or cliques since logically, the only variable in the equation of life we truly have control over, and only to a limited extent, is ourselves.
I shall trade my cam for a rock.
Honestly is just sounds like any old out of touch person commenting on the youth movement of their time. look at criticism of any other youth culture made by people who are older and not a part of it. the same tones come across: self righteousness, misunderstanding and projection.
just the terminology and disdain sounded like something you would read on a middle age woman’s personal beef with the world blog.
My thought exactly. This could just as easily be an article written by an older person on any other youth movement from any other era. Why don’t people get this?
I am so, so, so tired of former hippies and former punk-rockers telling me that they don’t understand the current youth culture.
I generally agreed with this article, but have a few critiques. First of all, the author made the mistake of generalization. Everyone is an individual, no matter how similar they dress. The hipster decried in this article doesn’t exist because it is not any individual but an average of many. I would say that anyone born in the 80’s is a hipster, to varying degrees.
Personally I would rate myself 50% hipster. I drink pabst, am vegetarian, wear tight pants, and am into independent music and film. But I also despise green politics, v-necks, and over sized glasses. I don’t own a bike, record player, or analog camera. And I certainly don’t think that perpetuating economic inefficiency by purposely paying more to manufacture things in America, when it is clearly cheaper (more productive, efficient) to do so elsewhere is helping anyone. Why not boycott everything made in China? Then we stop the economic progress and rising standard of living there, and send the child laborers to the streets forced into prostitution or worse. But hey, at least those horrible factories will be closed right?
Rather than make a scathing review of what is simply a negative generalization, I think it would be more productive to separate the good from the bad. Pretentiousness, superficiality, and vanity are bad. But a lot of the art and music is good. Hipsters really do have good taste in a lot of things. The flaw is basing their identity on having good taste, and being condescending to others who are not as refined. Hipster isn’t another word for poser, it’s another word for snob.
As a side note, the pabst phenomenon isn’t about rich people pretending to be poor by buying cheap beer. It’s about poor people choosing the best option given their budget. And pabst IS the best option. Beeradvocate.com, a site frequented by middle aged beer connoisseurs, hardly a hipster demographic, gives pabst a solid B rating. The other mass marketed cheap beers (bud, miller, keystone) lag far behind with D ratings. Perhaps this is another manifestation that hipsters really do have good taste in many ways.
It is ironic that most of the culture (music, art, film) these days is coming from the very group this article claims is the death of culture. Going to an art show may be snobby and pretentious and I’m sure half the crowd is simply there to socialize and be seen, but it is certainly better than staying home and watching MTV. Don’t get me wrong this article is correct in what it criticizes but makes a mistake by saying hipster culture is vacuous in its entirety.
Finally, the voice of reason.
“…the author made the mistake of generalization. Everyone is an individual, no matter how similar they dress. The hipster decried in this article doesn’t exist because it is not any individual but an average of many.”
“Hipsters really do have good taste in a lot of things.”
I’m starting to get it. Hipsters are individuals who individually have the same good taste in the same things.
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