About ironically conforming to hipster stereotypes to deconstruct the notion that hipsters are about anything.
More seriously, Bahimiron nails it. The word “hipster” mainly means “those damned kids with their PBR and ironic hats”.
I think the idea is to dress like you didn’t give your clothes any thought, or don’t care about what you put on, or impress upon others the notion you don’t spend a lot of money on brands and labels. The irony is that in general hipsters probably put 300% more thought than I do into any given getup, and their lumberjack jackets and fuzzy hats and black thick rimmed glasses all probably cost more than anything I casually wear. What I find the most tedious about them is they give of that don’t-care-about-anything vibe that makes them really fucking boring. I don’t think it’s possible to be assertive and confident if you’re a hipster, it’s all whispered and mousy and hiding behind their clown clothes.
Goddam hispsters.
From that article:
The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks.
Hipsters are about the hips, unlike ordinary trousers, which sit about the waist.
End thread. Every generation has a “new” group with a different uniform/preferred musical style/slang/etc. but exactly the same raison d’etre.
But there are far far worse things than a garden-variety hipster…and one of those things is a club kid.
They know they’re conforming - they’re just trying not to conform to the mainstream.
Quick and dirty: every generation has a subset that tries to differentiate itself. Unfortunately, the percentage of people who are actually significantly different is somewhere around 1/99, so you get people who decide that looking a certain way is enough.
Thus Hipsters. They’re the exact same people that the grunge folks were in the 90s, the goths in the 2000s, the redone hippies in the 80s, etc. And every one of them, nearly, will wind up with a big mortgage and concerns about their cholesterol and a vague anger towards ethnicities by the time they’re 50.
In other words, don’t sweat it. Business as usual, with tiny fedoras.
H.
Irony is to a Hipster what suicide attempts are to an Emo kid. A way to get their parents attention.
the hipster represents the end of Western civilization
Those quotes are worth their weight in gold.
Last Night’s Party (NSFW) is another place to find them.
I don’t disagree with your sentiments, but your subculture dates are all messed up. Goth is 80s and early 90s. I don’t know what “redone hippies” are, but 80s and early 90s would also be new wavers, punks, and hardcore/straight edge kids. Then you have grunge, ravers, etc. Late 90s/00s would be emo and, more recently “scene”.
I think it’s oversimplifying to reduce it to “conforming to unwillingness to conform”. It’s human nature for young folks to want to identify with a group that is outside the world they were raised in, and I think it’s a pretty basic part of human development to attain a level of independence from family.
I think it’s funny to see how the internet is effecting these things – is it making teen subcultures more homogeneous by spreading the word? Or is it creating weird subculture echo chambers that let truly bizarre subcultures thrive (furries, juggalos, et al)?
The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore hipsters.
I’m pretty sure the only people who use the word “hipster” are either insecure about their lack of own fashion, or the kind of people to make a point of not caring in the slightest. To say you find “hipsters” annoying is basically to say “I do not want to identify with current acclaimed popular culture”, which covers a pretty wide gamut. It’s almost solely a pejorative term.
I’m pretty young, I like skinny jeans because I’m skinny, I listen to Animal Collective and pay more than five dollars for a haircut. These decisions aren’t me identifying with anything, they’re me liking stuff. I’d grant the stereotypical “hipster” more credit for taste than those dudes that exclusively listen to metal, at least.
The part I find interesting about the hipsters is how incredibly white and rich they are. Who the hell can afford to live in NYC, much less engage in bizarre meat dress up games?
I’m yet to see anyone in this thread dispute this compelling argument.
I read that as “BJP and a Bear”. I don’t think I’m a hipster. I think I’m old.
Yeah, American Apparel is a travesty.
Dude! The blog would be so much better if he drove around in a truck with a chimp instead of going to clubs.