Hipsters: Scourge or Irrelevence

STN

sou'wester
I am a nerd with (some) social skills. This, I believe, makes me a hipster (possibly a low-level one).
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
The Image of the Archetypical Hipster

The image of the archetypical hipster is of one for whom this is the be all and end all... Picking and choosing your likes and dislikes based on whatever happens to be the current micro trend, whilst safely tucked away behind a veil of ironic distance.

To what extent does this image conform with reality, though - any reality? More generally, how much reality do the imaginary archetypes ever really have?

What I question, in short, is precisely this image. I think it's a smokescreen of dubious substance, as archetypes tend to be. Furthermore, I contend that its main function consists in allowing one to say "Whereas they consume fakely, I consume authentically." Games, upon games, upon games...
 

mms

sometimes
To what extent does this image conform with reality, though - any reality? More generally, how much reality do the imaginary archetypes ever really have?

What I question, in short, is precisely this image. I think it's a smokescreen of dubious substance, as archetypes tend to be. Furthermore, I contend that its main function consists in allowing one to say "Whereas they consume fakely, I consume authentically." Games, upon games, upon games...

it's not about fake vs authentic consumption, it's about surface consumption, vs engagement. championing, working with, critiquing, supporting etc. That has nothing to do with games, just supporting something whether it's popular or not.
You just have to look at the 5 minute fashion for grime, to see that it's not just a myth.
 
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droid

Guest
it's not about fake vs authentic consumption, it's about surface consumption, vs engagement. championing, working with, critiquing, supporting etc. That has nothing to do with games, just supporting something whether it's popular or not.
You just have to look at the 5 minute fashion for grime, to see that it's not just a myth.

Absolutely.

Its only a game if you're playing.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
Bit of a tangent, but what's the attraction of these single-speed bikes (beyond "cool people have them")? I seem to remember there was a thread about them on here a while back, can't be arsed to look for it now.

Edit: ahh, so it's a bit like a BMX?

I know several fixed gear people who are definitely not hipsters. It's a bike nerd thing, something hipsters have got hold of via courier culture. I don't know what it's like in the states, but in London you saw couriers riding fixed gear bikes years before it was generally a "cool" thing to do.

Advantages are low maintenance and lighter weight. Enthusiasts say that it puts you more in contact and control of the bike, and I guess that it's a more, um, authentic way of riding. It's also better for your knee joints, I've been told, although I imagine that's probably relevant over longish distances.

A large percentage of the bikes you see in Shoreditch are single speed rather than fixed - cool factor without the hassle of learning to ride a fixed gear bike. Hence the need for brakes, which it seems is also true in the US and is confusing the journalist.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Surface/Depth

it's not about fake vs authentic consumption, it's about surface consumption, vs engagement. championing, working with, critiquing, supporting etc. That has nothing to do with games, just supporting something whether it's popular or not.
You just have to look at the 5 minute fashion for grime, to see that it's not just a myth.

I dunno... It seems to me that you have a surface/depth dichotomy going on here which although, okay, is not quite authentic/fake, is at least in some ways similar. And I think the idea of "just supporting something whether it's popular or not" mystifies things... it's not about popularity per se, its about the cultural signifiers attached to various cultural products. I don't you can escape from this, although you might want to.

Some people liked grime for five minutes, others support it and champion it... but so what either way? Some people only like cake a little, others like it a lot, indeed, may actually bake cake. The latter groups in both cases, I'd wager, know a lot more about the one or the other, but that's about it; just because of this fact, they don't earn any extra prestige. Which is what I take to be your tacit argument here - that people who are engaged, critiquing, supporting, etc - do indeed merit some extra cultural prestige, held-up against the superficial nihilism plain to see in the Hipster. Which is why I say its a game, and a strategy.

Absolutely.

Its only a game if you're playing.

But is the idea: "I am not playing the game" not in some sense the ultimate game?
 
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droid

Guest
But is the idea: "I am not playing the game" not in some sense the ultimate game?

This guy must be the ultimate game player so:

tj_tony_blackburn_470x353.jpg
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Some people liked grime for five minutes, others support it and champion it... but so what either way? Some people only like cake a little, others like it a lot, indeed, may actually bake cake.

But the (stereotype of the) hipster approach is more than not/liking cake. It is all about discovering cake first and then getting into lasagne and then getting into fasting and then getting into pork pies, all the while slagging off people who are still into cake, lasagne, fasting or whatever.

It seems to me that the likes can only exist alongside dismissals of what other, less hip, people like.

The stuff that got wrote about grime when everyone became enthusiastic about funky is a case in point.

The hipster/nerd dichotomy is therefore more about surface vs depth as has been said upthread.

I don't think authenticity is the correct word - I've been into reggae on and off for 20 years now and seriously for about 15. But I still wouldn't say I was an "authentic" fan, just someone who has got into it more than the level of t-shirts, namedropping and being seen at the right places. I am, if I am frank, a one trick pony - ;) I even relate grime pretty much to my knowledge of reggae MC culture instead of some idea of cutting edge "newness".

Having said that we are back to the eternal Dissensus theme of "how important is music anyway?". If people want to go out and dance about and nod their heads and wear mad clothes and cop off with people then that is all for the good and probably better for people in their twenties than sitting at home wondering about colonialism and mp3 culture.
 
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CHAOTROPIC

on account
Fundamentally, hipsters are people who look interesting, but aren't. So they waste everyone's time. Which makes them naff.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I dunno... It seems to me that you have a surface/depth dichotomy going on here which although, okay, is not quite authentic/fake, is at least in some ways similar."
I think you're right. However, the fact that realness/fakeness is so often mentioned in this context and is something that most intuitively relate to these people (vs themselves) suggests to me that there is at least something in this idea. Even if it is hard to put your finger on who is real or what exactly makes someone fake it seems plausible to me that there can exist such a thing as this fakeness or lack of depth and that it is an undesirable trait.

"It seems to me that the likes can only exist alongside dismissals of what other, less hip, people like."
Seems important as well. Basically, I get the impression that hipsterism is seen as not just unpleasant because of its perceived shallowness but also because it is nakedly competitive and thus unfriendly.
 

echevarian

babylon sister
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?

Sorry, would have gotten back to you earlier but I had to work.

He does rate, but I doubt that he internalizes, or adopts the styles he rates.


The language we use to describe this kind of behavior is perhaps a little vague, but his status game seems to exist in a different realm of experience than the status games played by the hipsters he analyzes.

I'm not saying he is aloof, but the world of a philosophy professor usually only intersects with the world of the youth in the teacher<->student exchange.

Hipster behavior is intensely dependent on peer to peer exchange and analysis of subcultural values.

And an aside to John, I was one of the people writing those things about grime.

What I like most about funky at the moment is how much it reminds me of early grime, but also how much it seems to be an adult take on a similar sound palette.

Funky MCs aren't chatting endless gun bars looking for reloads, they aren't killing each other over bullshit. No one has gotten murdered over making Funky House yet.

You can't say the same thing about grime.
 

mms

sometimes
Basically, I get the impression that hipsterism is seen as not just unpleasant because of its perceived shallowness but also because it is nakedly competitive and thus unfriendly.

now that seems like something very true to me.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Interesting...

Fundamentally, hipsters are people who look interesting, but aren't. So they waste everyone's time. Which makes them naff.

But is this not this privileging of the culturally interesting over other possible human or aesthetic concerns a) the very critique which is being made of hipsters and b) therefore highly suspect and open to question, on the grounds I've suggested.

But the (stereotype of the) hipster approach is more than not/liking cake. It is all about discovering cake first and then getting into lasagne and then getting into fasting and then getting into pork pies, all the while slagging off people who are still into cake, lasagne, fasting or whatever.

It seems to me that the likes can only exist alongside dismissals of what other, less hip, people like.
Yet the irony is that the critique of hipster ultimately curls right back into exactly the same place, only with the order of terms slightly rejigged... now the idea is that people have not spent long enough with cake, or whatever...

Let me put it like this: What if it was equally true that nerd, or geeks, people deeply committed to engaging, critiquing, etc, can only exist alongside the dismissals of shallow hipster proclivity? I submit that either this is indeed the case, in which case we are indeed in exactly the same formal space as the hipsterism which is being criticized, as I've suggested, or else it is not the case - in which case hipsters are fundamentally irrelevent as a cultural issue.

Finally, I wonder whether people would agree or disagree with the following line: The image and role of the hipster - I mean, the hipster as a more-or-less imaginary figure who exists only really, or at least most fully, in Discourse World as a figure eternally being criticized, denigrated, and so on - is more interesting as a topic then actual hipsters, if they indeed exist (and I claim they do not).

The question I'm personally really interested in is: Why does it seems as if so much of contemporary culture - especially that which cannot stop declaring its disdain for hipsters - nonetheless feels that it has define itself against hipsters, and what hipsters represent?
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Let me put it like this: What if it was equally true that nerd, or geeks, people deeply committed to engaging, critiquing, etc, can only exist alongside the dismissals of shallow hipster proclivity? I submit that either this is indeed the case, in which case we are indeed in exactly the same formal space as the hipsterism which is being criticized, as I've suggested, or else it is not the case - in which case hipsters are fundamentally irrelevent as a cultural issue.
This "ah but isn't it the same thing on some level" approach seems like a rather lazy and reductive viewpoint, though. Surely there's more to it than being in the same 'formal space'.

And just because people are capable of being deeply engaed with a given form of music and culture without needing to dismiss people who aren't (which I'd say is true), why would that make hipsterism irrelevant as a cultural issue? Can't we aspire to an analysis of social / cultural trends that is independent of where we stand ourselves, or at least which isn't a neccessary part of how we engage with culture ourselves?
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
This "ah but isn't it the same thing on some level" approach seems like a rather lazy and reductive viewpoint, though. Surely there's more to it than being in the same 'formal space'.

Perhaps I could clarify. At heart, what I'm saying is that the compulsion to compare and contrast oneself against hipsters, in a more-or-less tacit play for prestige, is "the hipster position" - whether one believes oneself to be hipster or don't. Most do not.

If you say, "I have a deep appreciation of something, whereas hipsters only have a superficial appreciation" this is a status game... the same status game which hipsters are being accused of playing.

Now, this doesn't mean that everything you do is automatically enveloped in this same hipster trap. What it means instead, I think, is:

a) No consumption - including the consumption of particular signs - is any authentic, or real, then any other kind.
b) Authenticity doesn't mean shit, and neither does depth: all signs are signs.
c) Forming judgments based upon perceived cultural status is always a bottomless pit. Let's all be indifferent!

But perhaps I am wrong about all of these.

And just because people are capable of being deeply engaed with a given form of music and culture without needing to dismiss people who aren't (which I'd say is true), why would that make hipsterism irrelevant as a cultural issue? Can't we aspire to an analysis of social / cultural trends that is independent of where we stand ourselves, or at least which isn't a neccessary part of how we engage with culture ourselves?

Good question. I'd say two things a) cultural analysis is always at the same time an engagement with cultural, and this should be acknowledged, and b) Personally, I don't think its possible to analyze anything completely dispassionately, but I think perhaps it is more or less possible, so long as we acknowledge that our viewpoints are skewed by own position and projects... Which is, now that I think about it, maybe the essence of what an independent analysis would be: this is to say, an analysis of the way our own perspectives are skewed. But perhaps this all getting rather abstract...
 
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