THE EDITOR’S DESK: What it Means to Be a Hipster
In defense, and definition, of hipsters. (image by Gretchen Robinette)
I came across this beautiful, flannel wearing, songstress soon-to-be YouTube star via Fimoculous. Here she is singing “Hipster Bitch” (that’s the name of the song!). What’s so interesting and weird about this is the mutation of the term “hipster.” According to this song, whose ramifications I can feel twittering across the Internets even as I write, the “Hipster Bitch” wears daisy dukes, compares her poetry to Dylan, and snorts cocaine at overpriced New York bars. I thought hipsters wore flannels, played accoustic guitar, called people out for misquoting Dylan, and posted their songs on YouTube?
Here’s someone I thought was a “hipster” at the American Apparel protest with a sign, “no more hipster scum.”
I would like to reclaim the term and adopt all the angry young hipsters in my neighborhood. A hipster is not someone who lives in mid-town, the Marina, or the Miracle Mile (depending on your city). Hipsters don’t listen to Britney Spears. They certainly don’t wear Daisy Dukes AND snort cocaine. If hipsters are snorting cocaine, they’re doing it in their pajamas before heading out to a Flaming Lips concert. They’re on their way to a Meth problem, not business school. And they don’t want their neighborhood to resemble a shopping mall.
portrait of the hipster as a 37-year-old writer
I’ve often been referred to as a hipster, or an aging hipster, because I haven’t done much in the way of growing up, i.e. owning property, holding down a job, getting married (or carrying on a successful relationship), and having children. And because I wear earrings, plain t-shirts, and blue jeans. But I like hipsters. Recently the word hipster is starting to take on new meaning, and I want to take it back.
If, like me, you were born between 1961 and 1977 (according to Jeff Gordiner), and you still think Doolittle by The Pixies is THE perfect album, then you are a member of Generation X. You probably remember the kids in college wearing tie-dyes, sitting cross-legged on top of the table in the cafe reading Baba Ram Dass, and listening to “classic rock.” Those kids wanted to be part of an earlier generation, the boomer generation, but they were too late. Their generation came and went right about the time they were born. They rejected the sullen individuality of Gen X.
Well, those twenty-somethings that we call hipsters, they are that version of us, our version of the twenty-year-old wearing a tie-dye in 1990. Hipsters are Generation X, but they were born too late. Hipsters reject being called hipsters because they don’t like to be grouped. To assign a collective consciousness is an assault on individuality. But hipsters don’t want to be millennials or “Generation Y.” And who can blame them? Who would want to be part of a generation that likes being told what music to listen to? Who would choose Britney Spears over Frank Black?
Here are some traits of Generation X, shared by hipsters:
More than anything we hate to be marketed to, that’s why our hero appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a t-shirt that said Corporate Magazines Still Suck.
We’re suspicious of corporate America (with good reason). We don’t like to join groups. We usually don’t like anything once it’s become popular (which is a dumb and lame way of looking at the world, but no cohort is perfect). We don’t like to spend a lot of money on clothes that make us look like everybody else. We shop in thrift stores or, if we’re rich, we buy expensive clothes that look like they were bought in thrift stores. We listen to music that was created by an artist, as opposed to music that is created by a marketing team and assigned to the next hot young vacuum. We take huge pleasure in finding great art no one’s heard of before.
The girl in this video singing about the Hipster Bitch, is herself the hipster. The boy protesting the chain-store moving onto Valencia Street is a hipster. We shouldn’t let “hipster” (or “aging hipster”) become a bad word the way “liberal” became a bad word. It’s time we embrace the term, though perhaps doing so would be too much like joining a group, or starting a movement.
Nonetheless, all you hipster kids are welcome in my shared one-bedroom apartment anytime. We don’t have a TV (of course), but we have a projector and we show movies on bedsheets (we’re a clichéd version of ourselves!). Tonight we’re screening Bottle Rocket.
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More from The Editor’s Desk
See also: Why The Hipster Must Die
March 15th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Meth problem? We’re headed for a Meth problem? Dude, that is not what I wanted to see in my future.
March 15th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
I’m sorry if this is rude — but you really come across as an immature narcissist, which is pretty much the definition of hipster. So you’re a hipster complaining about people making fun of hipsters? Aren’t you a little late?
March 16th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Here is what hipsters are to everyone I know:
Hipsters are the enemy.
A hipster takes pride not in knowing things, but in knowing about things. They are “hip” to stuff–that is, aware of its existence and basic cultural valence of everything from roxycodone to America’s Next Top Model.
A hipster is someone who sees passion as a source of weakness and thus affects boredom with anything that isn;t itself boring and passionless. A hipster may attack, usually with humor, but never defend. And never attack passionately or earnestly.
I think the pre-eminent hipster statement was made by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth when they asked her if she was going to be a “cool mom” and she said something like “Of course not, you can’t entertain a baby by acting detachment and bored”
In other words, hipsters think being cool is a pose rather than a result of having actual ideas or feelings about whatever individual piece of stimuli happens to be in front of you.
To a hipster: Thinking hard is “nerdy” feeling hard is “emo” and believing in things is “cliche”.
The hipster is generally a libertarian, a cokehead, a rich kid (so he or she knows all about the next big thing because s/he has a subscription to everything and can afford to buy new shit all the time), a social person, and is headed to business school and meth addiction simultaneously.
A hipster is aware that almost everything good is made by the committed and the romantic, but is unable to commit to the idea enough to actually make anything good.
The hipster is aware s/he will never make anything good (except when really high) but knows it would be uncool to complain about it, especially since they are hiply aware that this won’t stop it from making money which they like because they’re not, y’know, against capitalism or whatever.
The hipster style is calculated pseudo self-sabotage: wearing stupid glasses because looking good might imply you actually wanted to get laid, wearing American Apparel because cheaper and better clothes might imply you needed to save money, or believed in it, liking Britney Spears because not liking it might imply you had serious ideas about the way music should sound.
The hipster aims to seem as though s/he is aware of all things–all products, all the meanings of those products, all the implications of what they’re wearing or saying–and yet has resisted the urge to think seriously about any of them.
March 16th, 2009 at 12:02 am
god that was full of typos, sorry
March 16th, 2009 at 12:26 am
oh yeah:
a hipster is someone who tries hard to never appear to be trying hard.
so, as artists, their preferred media are:
turntables, appropriated images, video, photography
and their prefferred genres are:
the conceptual, the minimal, the faux-naive, the stoney
March 16th, 2009 at 7:21 am
wow. that was embarrassing. the following reads like it was written by a person who swallowed the transcript of a “what you need to know about generation x” episode of “60 minutes” circa-1991:
“More than anything we hate to be marketed to, that’s why our hero appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a t-shirt that said Corporate Magazines Still Suck. We’re suspicious of corporate America (with good reason). We don’t like to join groups. We usually don’t like anything once it’s become popular (which is a dumb and lame way of looking at the world, but no cohort is perfect). We don’t like to spend a lot of money on clothes that make us look like everybody else. We shop in thrift stores or, if we’re rich, we buy expensive clothes that look like they were bought in thrift stores. We listen to music that was created by an artist, as opposed to music that is created by a marketing team and assigned to the next hot young vacuum. We take huge pleasure in finding great art no one’s heard of before.”
March 16th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Being a hipster, I think, also entails leaving disparaging/critical comments on other people’s blogs to show that you are more clever than anyone else. (Way to go, Peter/Brad!)
March 16th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I’ve always felt there was an important distinction to be made when it comes to hipsters and their more loathsome cousin the scenester. I would write more but then it would look like I was trying.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:48 am
danni,
feel free to call me a hipster. i don’t think being a hipster is a bad thing. under the many other names they’ve gone by, hipsters have done a lot of good–certainly more good than bad. that said, “aging hipster” would probably be a better description for me.
i merely wanted to point out that members of “generation x,” who are supposed to be so aware of marketing and advertising–more aware than any previous generation, it is falsely claimed–and more averse to being defined by others, have done exactly what the boomers did, which was buy into and perpetuate media representations of themselves.
from 1993 ny times article about generation x and advertising
“The new campaign’s print, outdoor and transit advertisements are emblematic of efforts by marketers to aim sales pitches at younger consumers who are almost cynical in their disdain for traditional advertising puffery.”
from 1994 ny times magazine article about generation x and advertising/magazine industry
“The 60’s were revived, then the 70’s, and from the ashes of 1980’s decadence arose Generation X, a group of young network television dropouts who didn’t buy the traditional marketing methods used by magazines and advertising agencies.”
from 1996 ny times letter to the editor by member of generation x
“While Mr. Rich’s Harvard class of ‘71 was busy “entrenching its social revolution” for the last 25 years, we were growing up on a steady diet of advertising messages and marketing gimmicks that interrupted re-runs of “Charlie’s Angels” and MTV videos. We know when we’re being marketed to; we’re too smart to fall for any politician’s — or publicist’s, or movie star’s or newspaper columnist’s — rhetoric.”
March 17th, 2009 at 11:12 am
An interesting article, which I’m sure many people here have already seen but which I’ll nonetheless link to, defines a hipster as one who appropriates countercultural fashions and aesthetics without any inclusion of that counterculture’s rebellious positions or ideals.
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
March 17th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I think reading regularly or writing an article for ad busters is probably one of the bigger insurances of hipsterdom.
March 17th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
assurances rather. when I ruined that one.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
“A hipster takes pride not in knowing things, but in knowing about things. They are “hip” to stuff–that is, aware of its existence and basic cultural valence of everything from roxycodone to America’s Next Top Model.”–Pfff, of course. Knowing things is overrated. Knowledge is bullshit. Knowing ABOUT things, on the other hand, is what used to be called “having class.”
“hipsters think being cool is a pose”–OF COURSE that’s what being cool is.
“Thinking hard is “nerdy” feeling hard is “emo” and believing in things is “cliche”.”–Thinking hard is “nerdy”? The hipsters I know are among the smartest and most philosophical types I’ve ever met. Feeling hard, on the other hand, IS dumb. “Feeling hard.” It sounds so intentional. And that’s the problem with it. Feeling isn’t something you do as hard as you can. It shouldn’t be something you do on purpose. It’s something that occurs, so subconsciously controlled that you almost do it on accident. People who “feel hard” are people who FAKE hard. And believing in things, quite often, IS cliche. Want proof? Every hippie in the universe.
“The hipster is generally a libertarian, a cokehead, a rich kid (so he or she knows all about the next big thing because s/he has a subscription to everything and can afford to buy new shit all the time), a social person, and is headed to business school and meth addiction simultaneously.”–I don’t think you read the piece at all. Stephen’s entire point is that the person you just described ISN’T a hipster, or he used to not be a hipster. He used to be a frat boy. To me, he still is, he’s just maybe a little smarter now. A hipster might be a libertarian, but that’s more because he likes to do drugs and fuck a lot than because Ron Paul is politik-chic. He might be a cokehead, but he’s more likely to be doing acid, which fuck you up harder for cheaper (at least where I’m from they’re cheaper.) He might be a rich kid, but he probably lost all his money and got disowned by his parents if he was one, and he’s more likely to be a middle-class kid, a slight permutation of the old Kevin Smith/Ed Brubaker slacker.
“The hipster is aware s/he will never make anything good (except when really high) but knows it would be uncool to complain about it, especially since they are hiply aware that this won’t stop it from making money which they like because they’re not, y’know, against capitalism or whatever.”–You sound like an aging Sinatra fan ranting about these rassin-frassin gol-darned punks with their loud guitars. You know next to nothing about this group of people, and are making accusations about them that, in my experience, aren’t based on diddly-shit. Yeah, hipsters drive me up the wall sometimes, and I have huge reservations about this subculture I’ve chosen to attach myself to, but I’ll take ironically detached hipsters over hippies that foam at the mouth about veganism. I’m almost as far-left as you can get, politically and socially, but that doesn’t mean I have to put my hair in dreads and wear a fucking ratty Bob Marley T-shirt. I happen to like showering. I tried the hippie thing for a couple years, and it was fucking stupid. What happened to you? Did a hipster pour his latte on you outside the SOA protest or something?
“A hipster is aware that almost everything good is made by the committed and the romantic, but is unable to commit to the idea enough to actually make anything good.”–You mean like, well, everybody in America? Also, I challenge you to find people who work so substantially harder on their art and craft than hipsters like Todd Barry, Paul F. Thompkins, the Flaming Lips, Patton Oswalt, Louis CK, and most of the people who worked on Arrested Development.
“liking Britney Spears because not liking it might imply you had serious ideas about the way music should sound.”–Yup. You’ve never met a hipster.
“resisted the urge to think seriously about any of them.”–God forbid we have a sense of humor. I doubt I’ve changed your mind, Zak. So let’s just both move on. Enjoy your ulcer.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
“the conceptual, the minimal, the faux-naive, the stoney”–Yeah, fuck Picasso and artistic experimentation.
March 18th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Should I destroy that argument in merciless detail, ignore it, or just ask who the heck this Jono is and why he seems to have a problem with trying hard?
March 18th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Sometimes a person is kind enough to say something that lets everybody know that nothing they say could ever possibly be valid.
Thanks Jono, now we know you can be safely ignored forever!
March 18th, 2009 at 10:27 am
poor jono just had to go there–give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself
March 19th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I’d have to side with Jono on this one. I think people get really riled over something that essentially boils down to aesthetics (i.e. why Stephen’s piece is very good). Do some douchebags dress like hipsters, whether it’s flannel or ironic daisy dukes? Yes. Do some people who actually like things, care about things and like to try and create things dres like hipsters too? Yes. I think it’s an interesting aesthetic, and I tend to like the art/music/literature that’s associated with it, but am amazed at the vitriol it inspires. For a legendary D.C. case, see the comments on this story: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=2008
March 20th, 2009 at 12:08 am
the issue with Jono isn’t even about the pro- or anti- hipster stance at this point, it’s the personally aggressive way he argued his point. then there was stuff like–
” “A hipster is aware that almost everything good is made by the committed and the romantic, but is unable to commit to the idea enough to actually make anything good.”–You mean like, well, everybody in America? Also, I challenge you to find people who work so substantially harder on their art and craft than hipsters like Todd Barry, Paul F. Thompkins, the Flaming Lips, Patton Oswalt, Louis CK, and most of the people who worked on Arrested Development.”
that’s like two sentences in a row that say completely opposite things from each other.
March 26th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I would like to comment not on this article but on the comments.
I didn’t read them all however I can say that the first comment is my favorite.
I will quote it here:
“Meth problem? We’re headed for a Meth problem? Dude, that is not what I wanted to see in my future.”
-Jono
June 5th, 2009 at 9:39 am
fuck…I think you actually nailed my inner hatred of hipsters down to a T. As a gen X’er (a cookie cutter one at that) I clearly see the mirror placed in front of me. Think I am going to head down to Urban Outfitters now and hug one of those sum bitches.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:54 am
I had my 58th birthday yesterday, so I’m probably the least qualified person to weigh in on this discussion, but it seems to me – someone who now appears to have been a hippie though my friends and I would have recoiled at the term – that ‘hipster’ is reaching its sell-by date. I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and it seems like hipsters have been around for so long and that the cultural changes wrought by the Great Recession are quickly dating them as a term and a group. There are few writers of your generation I admire as much as I do you and I would never in a million years have thought of you as a hipster. I think it is, like ‘hippie,’ mostly a media construct. As James Baldwin wrote, “People are too various to be taken lightly.” The times, they are a-mutating, and the hipster is about ready to go into the diorama at the Museum of Cultural History alongside the hippie, the flapper, and all the other generational types.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Thanks Richard. That’s awful nice of you.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Ha!
June 5th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
The extent to which you deny being a hipster is the extent to which you are a hipster.
June 5th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I think every hipster should be required to listen to “Admit It!!” by Say Anything on their iPods every single morning.
June 5th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
To my understanding, Gen X, Hippie, Gen O, et al are, really, marketing terms created by a consumer driven capitalism anxious to slice, dice, and commodify people, their tastes — everything.
If one’s “belong” to a “generation,” then one is automatically wedded (so theory and, apparently, practice go hand-in-hand) to certain songs, movies and beliefs – a cultural narrative that comes to represent a personal narrative.
Whereas that narrative once reflected politics that were wedded to change, agitation and discomfort with the status quo, terms like “hipster” reflect the cooptation of politics by consumer culture. (Barbara Kruger’s once critical sloganeering being the apotheosis of this phenomenon & Morrissey, gut hanging out and staggering around, not just like an aging Lothario but an aging Lothario, the stage becomes the performative spectacle.)
The essay’s Rolling Stone / Nirvana image illustrates this perfectly: I can think if a no more prominent (and self-inflated) example of this demographicization and political / cultural misappropriation and exploitation than R.S. Jann Wenner’s obsession with “the 60’s.”
To dial back a bit, the “sixties’s” (that Jann et al have exhaustively chronicled and exploited) were an outgrowth of the earlier hipsters, as described in Norman Mailer’s essay, ‘The White Negro,’ & later referenced in Bruce Benderson’s brilliant, ‘Towards a New Degeneracy.’)
The single most astonishing exclusion from this essay is the AIDS epidemic. That – inarguably far more than the heteronormative Nirvanas and Winona Ryders and Douglas Coplands – defined and divided one generation from another. A brief period (about twenty years) of the most distruptive political event – sexual liberation – imaginable was abruptly brought to an end by the HIV Holocust.
In the terms presented here, all this dilating and parsing of these various definitions of “hipster,” aging or otherwise, and doing so SO uncritically isn’t just tiresome and mainstream. In the extreme. (Rolling Fucking Stone? Why not, US Weekly? Or, Life & Style?)
Given that the comments reflect the fact that there are endless definitions of hipster (which, for me, can be distilled in, ‘Whatever’), I’m still not clear: what was the impulse for writing and publishing this essay, the sum of which reads like a roll call for the McDonald’s of hip?
For me, the question is not one of articulating differences so much as finding commonalities. Average age being 80 or thereabouts, where do we intersect as human beings with precious little time on this planet?
June 7th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I applaud your attempt to redefine the hipster in positive terms, but I think it’s fair to say that in the time since grunge (the time in which your hipster status gained the prefix aging-) the creature of hipsterdom has mutated from what you describe. There are, no doubt, still cool hipsters who know how to make shit and think, close relatives of the flannel wearing, pensive, communally oriented outcasts you so commend. But there is now, also, the new, much loathed hipster (see the aforementioned adbusters article, or for first hand horror, http://thecobrasnake.com/) described in many of these comments.
I guess the inevitable issue is that when something really cool and something really lame are called the same thing, people get all hot and bothered about it.
watch the hipster olympics, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAO4EVMlpwM
and remember that Jack Kerouac talked about hipsters in On The Road, long before Kurt Cobain, or Calvin Johnson, or the members of Kings of Leon where a twinkle in anybody’s eye.
June 7th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
do you people ranting and flaming here realize how inane you come across, spending so much time banging away furiously at your keyboards to argue about the relative merits of persons dressing in one particular way or another, taking an interest in one particular form of music or expression over another, and adopting one general public attitude over another? the vast majority of people in the world go about living their lives without knowing or caring what a hipster is or whether they should be reviled or embraced. and lest i win the award for least relevant comment, i am an unapologetic hipster, on the cusp of being an aging hipster actually (though not a scenester, kudos to DW for acknowledging the difference), who is preoccupied with my hipster hair and clothes, plays a classical stringed instrument that demands years of disciplined training and practice to master, works for and with successful striving professionals with whom i would never choose to socialize outside of a paying job, values laziness above most other qualities, and has spent years working and volunteering with adults and children with developmental disabilities because it is something i feel passionately and earnestly about. i also say “thank you” and “please” and hold doors for other people whether i think they look like utter twats or not. i’m occasionally derided for being a hipster, but i find that the people who pass such judgements tend to be among the unimaginative majority of the population who i generally wish well but don’t have much interest in communing or bonding with, anyway.
good article, btw.
June 8th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
HERE HERE! Boys and girls just want to have fun. I like new things, I like fun things, I like unique things. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some people are far more culturally informed than I, some are far less. That doesn’t mean I hate either group, and neither should anyone else.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
“Hipster” is an empty, all-encompassing term to describe the unwitting little foot soldiers of the Corporatocracy whose endless quest for “authenticity” has become the the ultimate expression of conformity among white, smugger-than-thou urbanites exploited by the same same cynical marketing “geniuses” who branded “grunge” for Wal-Mart back in the ’90’s and later launched the career of Coldplay. While a “hipster’ might cringe at the comparison of their precious pursuits of “art” and appreciation of whiny ditties performed by some guy named Josh with a cult like following among the connoisseurs of organic wasabi in his Williamsburg ‘hood to the bland offerings of the copyright cartel record labels should realize that Hipster is just another word for the unpaid marketing tools of corporations who reinterpret their “edgy”, “authentic” unbranded lifestyles into flavored coffees for suburban shopping malls.
If anything, Hipsters are the gift that just keeps giving to corporate America, not only as clueless shills for consumerism, but as non-violent enforcers of homogeneity in urban centers, driving up real-estate prices as they supplant non-whites on fixed incomes in newly gentrified neighborhoods. I wonder if the author of this piece recognizes the unintentional irony of screening “Bottle Rocket” on his bed sheet for his slacker trust fund friends in his pricey studio apartment, conveniently situated in an ethnically cleansed neighborhood where a low-income black family was forced to move out, unable to afford the rent when this tragically misunderstood demographic took over. I would like to hear their thoughts on the unfairness of people labeling him a “hipster”.
June 10th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Hmm, people arguing variant points based on semantic differences. How about if I address what, among the comments, is completely wrong.
“hipsters think being cool is a pose”–OF COURSE that’s what being cool is.
- Jono
Oh lord, it’s easy to see where Jono’s problems arise. Being cool is a product of complete ease with oneself. It’s understandable that though he claims, “I’m almost as far-left as you can get, politically and socially,” that caring (and knowing) about things is a dead end. Because he tried being a hippie and it didn’t work. Damn it, he put it on the uniform and his life didn’t get better.
Might I suggest dressing as he damn well pleases while writing the occasional letter to his congressman and conscientiously recycling? It seems to safe to assume that he’s a fairly recent college graduate (from a “good school” though he’s still angry about not getting into Brown), but that he didn’t learn to think all that well and that he’s stuck in the college culture. Really, in the real world people can be committed without being one of those “hippies that foam at the mouth about veganism.”
And I hate to break it to him, but those who feel hard don’t necessarily fake hard. Those Emo kids really do feel a lot, but like Jono, they need some outward manifestation of their personality to feel at ease. And it makes them the object of ridicule. Some will come to put the overwhelming feelings in perspective, many more will continue to be dramatic their whole lives.
Jono, and those he reluctantly identifies with, back away from both the difficulty of feeling and the ridicule that comes from wearing it on his sleeve. But as Zak points out “almost everything good is made by the committed and the romantic”, and that’s where Jono’s beloved detachment fails him. That is, if he wishes to ever do anything good. It’s only in caring, and being unafraid of being seen as such, that accomplishment is possible.
Now resume arguing about “hipster” using the different meanings of the term that reach radically different conclusions. And congrats to Richard Grayson for his suggestion that the definition(s) of today are about to be mothballed. The longitudinal perspective on this one deserves credence.
Or maybe we could begin a discussion/attack on the scenester.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I like how Richard Grayson said it – especially the “sell by date” part.
Generation X, in reference to my generation, was coined by Canadian author Douglas Coupland, who gave that title to a book in 1991. I couldn’t get through the book, but a lot of my friends felt a special kinship with the characters, felt Coupland nailed life in the Reagan-Bush era’s economic and social stagnancy. The issues he portrayed resonated with me – e.g., exiting college into a McJob – I just didn’t care for the writing.
Incidentally, on my campus, tie-dyers were usually playing Hacky Sack, not sitting on tables, and they and listened to Reggae.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:46 am
I’m amazed by how many people got really worked up about hipsters. Hilarious and sort of absurd.
As a side note: very few people I know who were born in the early 60s consider themselves Gen Xers. Most consider themselves Boomers, although that doesn’t really fit for us either. I was born in 1961, and I don’t feel like a Boomer and definitely don’t identify with Gen X.
The marketers seem to be calling those of us born between 1954-1965 “cuspers” these days. (With the rise of Obama, born in ‘61, the marketing geniuses finally had to come up with a term for us because, you know, otherwise we wouldn’t really exist.)
June 15th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Having been a big-city dweller, turned country-gal, seems to me that the criticisms against hipsters change according to geographic context. In the city, there’s this incredible backlash against the “hipster” largely having to do with issues of gentrification, politics and corporate invasion of culture. In the country, though, it’s the hipsters that are the classic white American outcasts – like the goths or the punks of another time.
‘Hipster’ has become one of those insults that stings even though we can’t agree what it’s about. Kind of like when you’re a little tike, and someone calls you a faggot, and you say, “Shut up!” and run off the playground in tears. Later, after you’ve calmed down, you ask your best friend, “What’s a faggot?”
June 16th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
My dad (who was a hippie) called the beatniks “hipsters” but not in a derogatory way.
Kerouac’s On the Road references hipsters a couple times. Usually as coffee shop “faggots” or college kids. In other words, people like Kerouac. He probably meant it ironically.
In Big Sur there’s even more commentary on hipsters and poseurs and the over urbanization of the Bay Area.
Point is, this conversation has been going on for decades. It’s only now that people seem to be all hateful about it. Just relax. Hang out with people you like. Don’t hang out with people you don’t like.
January 18th, 2010 at 2:01 am
Wow. What a bunch of lame douchebags.
January 26th, 2010 at 7:14 am
I think that hipsters “know about” things rather than “knowing things” not because they are indulged rich kids but because they have a certain sensitivity to and curiosity about culture. The portrait of the cokehead brat conjures another profile entirely to me.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:49 am
“Cool is studied insouciance.” I wish I could state who first wrote that. Street cred is different as it’s an assessment by others, and if you have to wonder if you have it then you don’t. Why does style matter? Even if you’re not a fashionista there is value in fashion because it is always changing, so it reminds us of progress. Some neuroscientists and philosophers of consciousness (Damasio, e.g.) believe consciousness is the story an individual’s brain constructs for itself to help make sense of the world, so the person can move through it. Everyone needs to create an identity of belonging to ward of insanity–now we’re fully in my territory, nothing I’ve botched from half-remembered reading. Stephen wrote a good article. There will always be hipsters though they will be known by other names. The labels are useful for discussion, and fun. Borders and excluding others from a labeled group happens and can be hurtful to some, but that’s life–no one learns anything without contrasts in descriptions. Contrasts illuminate and keep cultures alive. There are groups you can be proud to count yourself among, and “hipster” is one of them.
February 1st, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Help me here–but aren’t hipsters the people spreading the “news” as opposed to the “originators” who are the cultural groundbreakers? This seems to be common through any “named” generation in any country. The hipster tends to be in a clan or clique while the originator is out there on his or her own.
February 8th, 2010 at 12:42 am
Hmm Harry, I suppose someone could be ahead of their time, an originator, initially dismissed by others known as hipsters. This same originator could later be embraced by hipsters as a visionary. If the originator rejects the “in the know, hip to it” flock maybe he remains on the outside, or maybe he becomes an uber-hipster, which sounds like someone trying too hard and so wouldn’t be ironic enough for many hipster tastes so an uber-hipster can’t ever exist. Hell, I really don’t know.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Well Vicki, the originator is ripped off of their vision by hipsters who will move on at some point to the next originator, repeat process while feeling smug and HIP. Hipsters are just another dumbass product of consumer culture.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Oh yeah…and hipsters are not searchers….just consumers who deal in culture as trophy, one gotten to outfit their “trip”. And they are not adapters but instead buy into a watered down product sold by the HIP bussiness and promoted by the HIP media. Nice and safe within a tidy little construct not the least revolutionary, and always changing for the wrong reasons…mainly $$$.
March 14th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Doolittle IS the perfect album.