Hipsterdom

constant escape

winter withered, warm
I'd be interested to hear thoughts, with surgical precision, on hipsters, hipsterdom, etc.

How has the label developed over the years? Was it originally a black american term (vaguely remember a mention of it in Mumbo Jumbo, but I could be mistaken), and has since been *ahem* broadened? What is the racial situation of the term "hipster"? It seems, to me, to be a term, today, applied mostly to white people - but I could be mistaken there as well.

There was some argument I heard a while back that hipsterdom, in its current manifestation, is an attempt to (re?)claim some white identity in a non bigoted way. Any validity to this? Don't know what to make of it, honestly.

Is there an inner circle to hipsterdom? Tiers? Initiation rites? Is it strictly, or at least primarily, bourgeois? What are the semantics?

Hipster

1941, "one who is hip;" from hip (adj.) + -ster. Meaning "low-rise" in reference to pants or a skirt is from 1962; so called because they ride on the hips rather than the waist (see hiphuggers). Related: Hipsters (1962, of waistlines).

Does the hipster inherit a tradition of counterculture? Or does the hipster mark the subsumption of the countercultural by the cultural?

Speaking as someone who enjoys IPAs and has been called a hipster, perhaps I can't claim an uninvolved or neutral stance here.

I suspect much of this will consist of sorting out terms/semantics. Maybe what I call hipster, you call "douche". Maybe what I call hipster, you call "college communist". Maybe what I call hipster, you call "peabrained cultural appropriator".
 
 
the hipster anxiety was / is a collective realisation of the impossibility of authenticity in late capitalism, projected onto and channelled through what is vaguely perceived as a distinct group but actually shifts quite a bit across time and in different subcultures
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
the hipster anxiety was / is a collective realisation of the impossibility of authenticity in late capitalism, projected onto and channelled through what is vaguely perceived as a distinct group but actually shifts quite a bit across time and in different subcultures
Yes. Gazing up from your halloumi burger at the other tables in the street food market and realising every cunt in there is the same as you and your mates. And you all hate each other even though you're the same person
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
the hipster anxiety was / is a collective realisation of the impossibility of authenticity in late capitalism, projected onto and channelled through what is vaguely perceived as a distinct group but actually shifts quite a bit across time and in different subcultures
Yep.

It reminds me of the bit in Club Cultures by Sarah Thornton where she points out the elusiveness of the mainstream: every group of clubbers considers a load of clubs that they don't like to be part of some monolithic "mainstream", but people in any given one of those clubs don't see themselves as having anything in common with the others, and no-one thinks the term applies to themselves.

"A hipster is someone you don't like who likes the same stuff that you do."
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Someone at work the other day complained that the food places by the station were all "hipster stuff". I got briefly excited, thinking there might be some kind of new-wave bibimbap joint that I'd missed or something, but it turned out that "hipster stuff" to him meant Wasabi, Pret and Café Nero.
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
A distinctly middle class trait too. Properly posh / upper class people actively seek out opportunities to be surrounded by people like them. They don't hate it, they wallow in it.

Is this proof that middle class people are uniquely, inherently irritating?
 
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yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
Yep.

It reminds me of the bit in Club Cultures by Sarah Thornton where she points out the elusiveness of the mainstream: every group of clubbers considers a load of clubs that they don't like to be part of some monolithic "mainstream", but people in any given one of those clubs don't see themselves as having anything in common with the others, and no-one thinks the term applies to themselves.

"A hipster is someone you don't like who likes the same stuff that you do."

but why would you go sit in a coffee place filled with people you don't like?
 

luka

Well-known member

 

luka

Well-known member

 

luka

Well-known member
you're definitely not a hipster. you are a hipster apologist. perhaps you are an aspiring hipster?
 
But by my own analysis of the I’m-not-a-hipster-everyone-else-is subject the apology makes me not a hipster and luka the actual hipster
 

luka

Well-known member
Honestly, when someone has An Opinion About Hipsters I think less of them. It's like QAnon for broadsheet columnists.

lol. i do have an opinion though. it was a real cultural phenomonen and worth asking what it was all about. it shocked and appalled people in the way people were shocked and appalled when rappers started wearing skinny jeans. it was the sign of a fundamental shift in the nature of things
 
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