EPTStanding 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."
"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."
From here.
Those girls do this. Dress like 'em, talk like 'em, and walk like 'em. But they'll vehemently deny being them. These same girls, while being very socialized (all they do is party), don't seem like they actually have a purpose in their life. The article I linked articulates it.
That's the only small pocket of them I know. Even then, they make me wtf with some of the stuff they do and what they say in class. I'll start paying attention and post shit here, but they'll do really inconvenient things just because its ironic. I don't want to classify all hipsters by this one group, but this one group just kind of siphons off everything.
If any of you know what I'm talking about from the inside, please explain it to me. I will listen. The only hipsters I know don't have any actual explanations for me.
But if you give me any of that crap about it being ironic or just saying how I don't get it, to me it means you don't think about your life choices or why you are who you are and something else is doing it for you. That makes you a dumb shit.
I'm looking for a sensible and opposing point of view to this article
...like this!
+ Show Spoiler +
On September 30 2010 10:17 Daigomi wrote:
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
Before you go on hating hipsters after reading this article, read these posts.
On September 29 2010 13:06 jon arbuckle wrote:
Williamsburgh, man. Although I've heard that the economic crisis sent a lot of trust fund arts students back to their houses for obvious reasons. And not all "hipsters" are rich; I know people who are arguably hipsters and they eat 99 cents worth of pasta a day (no sauce) + bagels retrieved from dumpsters because they're too busy going to concerts, buying records, or working with their band.
Which is another thing: the most hipster-y people I know are astounding at networking and under-the-table business. How else do you make money from music these days?
This whole "hipsters, GRR" attitude blows my mind because by the definition of people who deride them hipsters will not admit to being hipsters and will still deride other people for being hipsters. It's like you're trying to position "hipsterdom" as some sort of counterculture when there does not exist actual parameters by which to understand the composition or effects of the counterculture. It's the most massive exercise in Othering I've ever seen, and it primarily comes from people who've never met hipsters, or people who otherwise bear some unholy grudge against the arts.
Williamsburgh, man. Although I've heard that the economic crisis sent a lot of trust fund arts students back to their houses for obvious reasons. And not all "hipsters" are rich; I know people who are arguably hipsters and they eat 99 cents worth of pasta a day (no sauce) + bagels retrieved from dumpsters because they're too busy going to concerts, buying records, or working with their band.
Which is another thing: the most hipster-y people I know are astounding at networking and under-the-table business. How else do you make money from music these days?
This whole "hipsters, GRR" attitude blows my mind because by the definition of people who deride them hipsters will not admit to being hipsters and will still deride other people for being hipsters. It's like you're trying to position "hipsterdom" as some sort of counterculture when there does not exist actual parameters by which to understand the composition or effects of the counterculture. It's the most massive exercise in Othering I've ever seen, and it primarily comes from people who've never met hipsters, or people who otherwise bear some unholy grudge against the arts.
On September 29 2010 14:34 vek wrote:
Who honestly cares what other people do with their money/spare time?
If people are enjoying themselves (doesn't matter what "group" you decide put them in) and not harming anyone doing it then let them do whatever it is they do.
The US has many issues worth worrying about... this is not one of them.
Who honestly cares what other people do with their money/spare time?
If people are enjoying themselves (doesn't matter what "group" you decide put them in) and not harming anyone doing it then let them do whatever it is they do.
The US has many issues worth worrying about... this is not one of them.
+ Show Spoiler +
