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
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".
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".