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On September 30 2010 05:17 Rho_ wrote:
So I'm a little late to this thread, but I have a hipster question. Why do they like fixie bikes? I ride my bike to work every day, and there is a hipster bike messanger business near where I live. Every messanger has a fixie bike, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. There are lots of hills, and hills on a fixed gear bike are brutal.
Edit: Also, they all smoke like chimneys when they're not on their bikes. If I made my living riding a bike all day, I would not fucking smoke.
fixie bikes? are you talking old bikes with single gears? or old bikes they fixed up? or NEW bikes with fixed gears?
But i think i know roughly what you're talking about. you're talking a cool looking retro bike, basically. thats what all my friends (and me, actually) ride. two reasons as far as i can tell:
1. they look cool, and
2. they are cheap
simple as that. i know a guy that got the COOLEST bike i have ever seen, and he spent literally 2 bucks for it at the junk yard, fixed it up, and has been riding ever since.
the cigarettes are probably because they're addicted. a lot of my friends started smoking years ago and have been trying to quit ever since - at least the ones that don't think of themselves as 'social smokers' who only smoke when they're at parties or wasted or something, but those don't sound like the kind of kid you're talking about.
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Hyrule19030 Posts
Hipsters scare the shit out of me.
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On September 30 2010 05:34 tnkted wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2010 05:17 Rho_ wrote:
So I'm a little late to this thread, but I have a hipster question. Why do they like fixie bikes? I ride my bike to work every day, and there is a hipster bike messanger business near where I live. Every messanger has a fixie bike, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. There are lots of hills, and hills on a fixed gear bike are brutal.
Edit: Also, they all smoke like chimneys when they're not on their bikes. If I made my living riding a bike all day, I would not fucking smoke. fixie bikes? are you talking old bikes with single gears? or old bikes they fixed up? or NEW bikes with fixed gears? But i think i know roughly what you're talking about. you're talking a cool looking retro bike, basically. thats what all my friends (and me, actually) ride. two reasons as far as i can tell: 1. they look cool, and 2. they are cheap simple as that. i know a guy that got the COOLEST bike i have ever seen, and he spent literally 2 bucks for it at the junk yard, fixed it up, and has been riding ever since. the cigarettes are probably because they're addicted. a lot of my friends started smoking years ago and have been trying to quit ever since - at least the ones that don't think of themselves as 'social smokers' who only smoke when they're at parties or wasted or something, but those don't sound like the kind of kid you're talking about.
fixie refers to fixed gear bicycles, as there is no freewheel and you cannot break. Benefits of fixies are that they are cheaper, and mechanically simpler(therefore lighter). Disadvantages are you cant coast, hills are brutal(cant shift gears going up, need to peddle REALLY fast going down up to 170 rpm) taking corners while peddling causes problems for new riders(peddles hit the ground).
In the end a fixie is a better sprinter because they are lighter therefore can accelerate faster, but cant come close to the top speed or endurance of a geared bike.
As for why hipsters use them, its mostly because other hipsters use them and they want to fit in(aka they look cool)
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On September 30 2010 03:22 tnkted wrote:i'm not really up to date on whats mainstream and whats not, and i don't really care, those are my favorite bands. if you're curious, here is some other music i like: Aphex twin (the earlier stuff, saw1 & 2), the roots, felix cartel, gtronic, pheonix, nin, deerhoof, caribou, local natives, etc. Are those mainstream? I wouldn't know, i never listen to the radio. all i know is that if i mention ANY of those bands to any of my uncool friends (lol) they are all like 'man, have you heard of taylor swift? she's pretty good. You can spend your time bitching or you can ask me some questions. as i understood it, the point of this thread is for the OP to learn a bit about hipsterdom. if i'm wrong, and this is about trolling hipsters, i can bum off. also, im making the my new siggy. 
Hey man, enjoy it.
I find this (and many TL threads) wildly entertaining and hope that my Interior Semiotics post is viewed with as much good-natured humour as it is with horror and derision.
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Australia3818 Posts
Holy shit, so much of this happens back in Australia - it's indeed a culture obsessed by the inane. Thinking they are 'all that', although with a paranoid fear that they aren't as cool as the next person. As though don't have a solid opinion on anything and their life beliefs are versatile based on the next person who comes along who is seemingly 'cooler' in someone else's eyes.
It's a bit shit, it's a bunch of people who don't know how to make up their own minds...whatever, let them be as they be. If they do indeed live for the 'hip' clubs they visit, then so be it.
But definitely reminds me exactly of the culture surrounding a few clubs in Sydney. It's kinda tragic.
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Australia3818 Posts
On September 30 2010 05:44 NukeTheBunnys wrote:Show nested quote +On September 30 2010 05:34 tnkted wrote:On September 30 2010 05:17 Rho_ wrote:
So I'm a little late to this thread, but I have a hipster question. Why do they like fixie bikes? I ride my bike to work every day, and there is a hipster bike messanger business near where I live. Every messanger has a fixie bike, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. There are lots of hills, and hills on a fixed gear bike are brutal.
Edit: Also, they all smoke like chimneys when they're not on their bikes. If I made my living riding a bike all day, I would not fucking smoke. fixie bikes? are you talking old bikes with single gears? or old bikes they fixed up? or NEW bikes with fixed gears? But i think i know roughly what you're talking about. you're talking a cool looking retro bike, basically. thats what all my friends (and me, actually) ride. two reasons as far as i can tell: 1. they look cool, and 2. they are cheap simple as that. i know a guy that got the COOLEST bike i have ever seen, and he spent literally 2 bucks for it at the junk yard, fixed it up, and has been riding ever since. the cigarettes are probably because they're addicted. a lot of my friends started smoking years ago and have been trying to quit ever since - at least the ones that don't think of themselves as 'social smokers' who only smoke when they're at parties or wasted or something, but those don't sound like the kind of kid you're talking about. fixie refers to fixed gear bicycles, as there is no freewheel and you cannot break. Benefits of fixies are that they are cheaper, and mechanically simpler(therefore lighter). Disadvantages are you cant coast, hills are brutal(cant shift gears going up, need to peddle REALLY fast going down up to 170 rpm) taking corners while peddling causes problems for new riders(peddles hit the ground). In the end a fixie is a better sprinter because they are lighter therefore can accelerate faster, but cant come close to the top speed or endurance of a geared bike. As for why hipsters use them, its mostly because other hipsters use them and they want to fit in(aka they look cool)
Example (friend of a friend):
![[image loading]](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs197.ash2/46067_426543144389_512904389_4596638_6577801_n.jpg)
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Hipsters are easy to make fun of because they do a lot of really strange things, and the Interior Semiotics video is a good example of that. But there is something to be said for trying to do something so outlandish. Interior Semiotics was laughable – but at least it was an attempt to create something. Because of their willingness to take risks, hipsters have probably been the most prominent contemporary subculture to substantially contribute too main-stream culture, and they do it in various media (art, music, design, film – nearly everyone entering these media would be classed as a "hipster"). The movement, if you want to call it that, is growing. As with anything that enters the mainstream, "Hipsterdom" is watered down for mass consumption. As it grows and is watered down, individuals who perhaps couldn't make the cut before or don't fully understand the original "hipster" ethos are allowed into the subculture and cripple the culture even more. Pretty soon, everyone just thinks hipsters are rich fucks who snort coke and ride their fixies all day.
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On September 30 2010 01:27 ryanAnger wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2010 09:24 No_Roo wrote:
Do not underestimate hipsters or the damage they inflict on a culture collectively.
Example: Hipsters buy iphones because they are trendy when most of them (not 100%) actually would have been better off buying some other device to satisfy their needs (some other smart phone that doesn't have absurd software restrictions, maybe a small laptop.)
Hipsters now try to justify their purchase by pressuring others into buying other apple products with the promise of being trendy. As the fad catches on it validates the hipster.
The company (in this example apple) determines they can establish a marketing strategy to pander to these people and make considerable profits off of them while gaining marketshare simply by deploying products with stupid features that obfuscate as much of what actually happens in the device as possible.
As the market share increases, you start noticing more and more people sending you PDF files in your office that are mostly just single image files wrapped in a PDF, or a short list or memo that should have been in a text file. This is happening because as more people use products designed for the hipsters, they become less and less aware of the technology they are using, and how to use it properly.
After rejecting said PDF mails for months, one day some one sends you a .webarchive, you then completely flip out, grab your ak-47 put on a ski mask and go to the nearest school spraying bullets into the wall then taking your own life in a rather tragic turn of events.
Hipsters will never go away, and like bacteria in your digestive system, they do play an important role. But efforts must be made to suppress them whenever they start multiplying out of control or start spreading to areas that they have no business being around. I didn't realize Chuck Palahniuk frequented these forums. Seriously. This sounds like something straight out of his books.
Never heard of him, I should go look it up to determine if this was a complement or criticism!
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Australia3818 Posts
I'd like to be rich and snort coke, but I'd get me some motorized wheels.
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Young people are ruining my life by existing
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There's a difference between "hipster" and "guy who likes to dress fashionably and listen to underground music". The difference is usually the attitude. The people I consider "hipsters" are the people who want nothing to do with anyone other than their fellow hipsters, and have this superiority complex + disdain for anyone who can't be as hipster as them. Those are the people I can't stand, but it's for their attitude that I can't stand them, not their stylistic choices/music tastes/taste in beer.
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hipsters are annoying, but not worthy of a whole thread. pointing and laughing is much easier
though sean avery is def a hipster and hes a pretty swell guy
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South Africa4316 Posts
I'm honestly confused here. A large part of youth society believes it's cool to be counterculture. Why exactly is this strange or new? Rock and roll, hippies, punks, hasn't this been true for each generation since at least the fifties, and hasn't each older generation decried it? Counterculture has been popular culture for ages now, hasn't it?
That adbusters article is full of shit:
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.
The first few sentences are stupid. Trying to measure when meaning is or is not created is ridiculous. Perhaps the article is implying that most of the hipsters are simply trend followers that make no contribution to culture, but the same can be said of every other counterculture movement. There were very few original hippies, and very few hippies did anything meaningful. That hippiedom as a whole was culturally meaningful, on the other hand, cannot be contested.
Secondly, the idea that previous youth movements challenged the dysfunction and decadence of the elders is just plain wrong. The Beats might not have been materialistic, but they were lazy and very decadent in their own way. The same can be said for the hippies, and once again all counterculture groups in the last fifty years.
Perhaps it's easier to look back at previous counterculture movements and find meaning in them than to see the long term cultural effects of the movement as they are happening. It's also easy to fixate on isolated ideals within each movement and then to argue that it will bring down Western culture. However, it seems to me that rather than ever truly entering mainstream culture, a more moderate, positive version of these ideals enter society. The hippies were free love and drug culture, but what entered mainstream culture was a slightly lower tendency to follow cultural norms blindly.
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.
The article first shows how the word hipster is almost always used in a derogative way before being surprised that youth do not like being associated with the term. Furthermore, is it surprising that a group of people who prize individuality (regardless of their success in achieving it) do not like to be categorized as a group? How is this surprising or bad?
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.
Once again, this is such a misguided paragraph. Yes, a few of the countercultures had energetic dances, but things like grunge and shoegaze in the 90s had very similar dances to the current hipster dance. Furthermore, the writer is implying that people who took part in other counterculture movements were not self-conscious (because of their dances), which is just as wrong. From what I know of countercultures, they have all been as self-conscious as the hipsters. Going back to the Beats (since I know the most about them), even within the fairly tight knit center of the movement there was a lot of vying for status and almost all the members were painfully insecure. Youth movements tend to revolve around "cool," and cool movements tend to be characterised by self-consciousness, regardless of how it is expressed. In the hipster movement, cool is just expressed by disinterest.
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.
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An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it.
Once again, I don't know where the writer got his information from. Just before the hippies, the Beats got so popular that you could hire a "beatnik" for your party who would then sit around, be drunk, and probably recite some terrible poetry. Punk is the same, look at the Sex Pistols: They were basically a manufactured band designed to sell punk counterculture and clothing. Similar to the hipster movement, Vivian Westwood played a massive role in creating the punk movement and ended up profiting from it tremendously. Perhaps the hipster movement is bigger than any previous counterculture movements, but just like all those movements it influences and is influenced by society.
I really don't think the article makes a single good point. It is best said by Gavin McInnes in the article: "They’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable." Just like most youth movements, being a hipster is about hedonism. It's about having fun regardless of the harm you cause. It's also about finding yourself and expressing yourself in some way. One ironic T might look just like any other ironic T, but it's a form of self-expression, and whether it's unique or not to an outsider is beside the point.
All of this is not to say that I particularly like hipsters. By and large, I find them to be pretentious idiots. However, as with the other things discussed, I doubt being a pretentious student is specific to this counterculture.
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The big question is that what will happen when the hipster culture will be "SO 2010?"
I believe it will collapse on itself and cause a fashion black whole, devouring humanity as we know it.
Also, one thing that no one has addressed about hipsters are the smell. You know if a hipster is in a room if the room smells like 80 people defecated in said room and were living in it for a year. It is seriously one of the worst things you can experience.
My credentials about hipsters is that I go to Oberlin College, voted as the "most hipster" college in the US. I am also a conservatory student and not a normal college student, so that means i'm allowed not to be hipster =]
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On September 29 2010 16:10 cyrus.beacon wrote:Surprised that in 7 pages nobody's posted this yet: Being a dickhead's cool
It's on the first page 
The whole Hipster trend makes me glad that I live in the South where most people can't afford all the hipster garbage, and the ones that could afford it get stuff that's actually nice.
That and ghetto black people don't do this crap cause they're total ballers.
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Hipster women can be hot. Except when they wear plastic non-prescription glasses. But other than that, I'd love to take one for a spin.
This is coming from a metalhead. Yes, I'd get a flogging if I ever told my friends this.
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Women from anywhere and anything can be attractive. It has more to do with the woman herself than anything to do with culture or subculture.
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On September 30 2010 10:36 koreasilver wrote:
Women from anywhere and anything can be attractive. It has more to do with the woman herself than anything to do with culture or subculture.
The second line especially. Something about a girl with a free spirit and sexual confidence is oh so desirable.
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disturbing should be the poverty levels you have in the usa not these conformist to non conformist alt indie consumers
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JWD is a hipster, but we all love him and his hipster blog gets spotlighted every time. Why does everyone hate hipsters, most of us have a lot in common with them.
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EPT
