The Splitting of the Hipster Mind
I think they're the opposite, really. A nerd (if I'm right in conflating 'nerd' & 'geek') doesn't give a shit about what people think about him, hiding in personal obsession at the expense of status games. It's self-conscious outsiderism. 'Hipsters', according to every definition above, are interested in subcultures principally as a status game. It's self-conscious insiderism. Their very LACK of obsession, of real personal engagement, is their main characteristic & seems to be the principal argument the self-proclaimed 'real' give against their 'right' to engage with the subcultures they toy with.
One area where this division break downs is in murky grey area between hipsters and political intellectuals. Both are equally concerned with manipulating codes, both are intent on effect, appearance, show and tell. The one wants to be seen, the other wants to be heard. In a sense, nobody cares more about status games than intellectuals, upon which they depend absolutely.
The secret link between k-punk and hipsters is here, I think. The hipster/geek division could be easily mapped into academia - with geeks being the kinds of scholars who obsessively investigate, I don't know, medieval marriage rituals or whatever, whereas hipsters being the kinds of figures who feel disposed to pontificate on every matter under the sun, presently going around, whether they know that much about it or not. Echoing your comment, I'd say k-punk - and the Adbusters guy as well - is interested in hipsters, quoi topic, precisely as a status game.
I think the difference between K-Punk and our increasingly stereotypical young 20 something from a trendy area in London/New York/Paris/Berlin/LA is that we trade heavily in the cultural signs and signifiers of cool, while he analyzes from a distance. Its the process of constantly keeping the fashionable at arms reach, cherry picking only the most hyper fashionable that gives a hipster power.
But - in this semiotic space where we find ourselves - is not analysis itself a form of semiotic trading? More to the point, whatever else k-punk is, he clearly isn't distanced; quite the contrary, he is consistently very polemical, very judgemental, and, ironically, very consumer-friendly; decreeing this or that cool, this or that not cool. At bottom, he rates, no?
I think this is a very good quote:
Nah. Hipsters are poseurs who self consciously flit from one cultural meme to another, consuming on a superficial level in a desperate attempt to appear ahead of the game.
I think, first of all, on some level we are all doing this - I mean, engaging in a desperate attempt to appear ahead of the game. Different games, maybe, but games nonetheless. I don't think this trait could be confined to one subgroup, be it hipsters, or otherwise... and I also think that what the figure of the hipster often serves as is a convenient way for people to dissociate themselves (and, in cases where this applies) their audiences, from these games. But speaking for myself, I don't want to be dissociated from that.