What the blinkers is wrong with being a hipster?

[mistersloane]

I was in a restaurant in (clang) Mayfair recently and these two kinda horse dealer type gentlemen (real horses, not a euphemism) were talking on the next table. One was from out of town :

"What part of London are we in now?
"West London"
(Mayfair I don't count as west London, but I didn't interrupt)
"So this is quite well off?"
"Yes"
"and what part of town is it where, where the hippies live?"
"East London"
"Ay yes. East London, that's where they live"

And I thought, how lovely. How lovely that hippies still exist, somewhere, in a horse dealer from Southern Germany's mind.

 

[IdleRich]

"Oh, you mean a bit like how 'modernist' architecture doesn't mean architecture that's modern, but refers to architecture of the first 2/3 of the last century...sorta thing?"

Kind of the opposite of that I think in that modernist was meant to describe a certain style or at least a philosophy behind a style but some people confuse it to mean things that are recent and believe that it is or could be a word that is always describing the latest thing. Whereas hipsterdom was supposed to be constantly the latest thing but seems to have accidentally got stuck.

 

[Leo]

when i was a kid, i used to think modernism referred to whatever was new (it's modern!) at the time, more like contemporary art as opposed to a type of art from a specific period.

one thing that throws a monkey wrench into defining hipsterism, particularly in terms of things like fashion, music, TV, is a tendency of some toward always wanting to be a contrarian. they take the notion of something being so uncool that it's cool to the extreme, constantly gravitating towards whatever you think they would dislike in order to show they are really cool. does that make sense?

 

[comelately]

when i was a kid, i used to think modernism referred to whatever was new (it's modern!) at the time, more like contemporary art as opposed to a type of art from a specific period.

one thing that throws a monkey wrench into defining hipsterism, particularly in terms of things like fashion, music, TV, is a tendency of some toward always wanting to be a contrarian. they take the notion of something being so uncool that it's cool to the extreme, constantly gravitating towards whatever you think they would dislike in order to show they are really cool. does that make sense?

That's arguably one aspect of hipsterism, but it's probably not true of all 'hipsters'.

Hipster as insult I think has a lot to do with class, capitalism and privilege; things that we're definitely not allowed to talk about - so there's part of me that resists the drive to render it unsayable. "A hipster is a 'person who is having more fun than you'" is a counter not without validity, but what makes it so powerful is the inability of current discourse to grasp the underlying reasons why these people are having more fun or to discuss whether their fun is somehow an incursion on other people's fun. Some old guy is writing in the Mail about the feckless poor, meanwhile his son is writing on some website about how all this anti-hipster stuff is 'terribly tiresome'. It's all connected.

And to be fair, I have worked with people who are reasonably happy to self-identify as hipsters.

 

[baboon2004]

When did 'hipster' become a catch-all term in the UK? I'm sure I remember first hearing people here use it, and being confused/surprised as I'd always associated that word solely with the US. My memory is failing me though and I can't seem to recall the details of a pre-'hipster' world, or what word(s) would have been used instead.

 

[comelately]

'Shoreditch Twat' and 'Nathan (Barley)' were used in the first few years of the century. It's really around 2008/9 I think that the term 'hipster' caught fire.

 

[baboon2004]

sounds about right

"Hipster as insult I think has a lot to do with class, capitalism and privilege; things that we're definitely not allowed to talk about - so there's part of me that resists the drive to render it unsayable." i think there's definite truth in this. Also in a similar area of hipsterism and the unsayable, I was thinking tonight about how ironising things seems like a very primitive defence against shame - as in, I can never be made to feel ashamed, because I didn't really mean it. It's as if choosing this shame-free state above having passions/opinions for which people can criticise you/disagree with you.

 

[Slothrop]

Yeah, I think that something a lot of people miss about "ironic appreciation" of something is that it isn't (often) saying "I hate this but am going to listen to it and pretend to enjoy it to be ironic" but more often "I genuinely enjoy this but don't want to fully identify with it, so I'll distance myself from it with irony".

And also, yep, the reason for not wanting to fully identify with it is often bound up in race and class, although to be fair that's not neccessarily as simple as a straightforward lack of respect for the core audience - it could be about just not being comfortable crossing the cultural boundary, eg a remotely self-aware public schoolboy is going to know that trying to fully embrace dancehall culture is probably going to end up with him looking utterly ridiculous.

Also, I'm not sure that irony is the absolute distinguishing characteristic of hipsterdom so much as a sort of super dilettantism, with a tendency to go from not having heard of something to super clued up on it to bored with it and on to the next thing within the space of about a month...

 

[baboon2004]

Maybe the core need is not to be pinned down to investing in any one thing - ironic distance is just one mode through which this is achieved, and rapid changeover in the styles you like is another. I think what IdleRich was saying upthread is that eventually hipsterism has failed here in its attempt to always gravitate towards the new - it has become strictly identified with a set of tangible things/likes, and so has become just another fixed 'youth culture' that will itself be superseded by something else, rather than an endlessly mutating kind of metaculture that latches on to the latest trend and claims it as its own. I was thinking at the weekend, when sitting in some archetypally hipsterish cafe, that all this seems no different from how it would have been ten years ago (except more mainstream by virtue of there being more places exactly like it), and that surely there has to be a shift at some point to something...different.

 

[shiels]

Maybe the core need is not to be pinned down to investing in any one thing - ironic distance is just one mode through which this is achieved, and rapid changeover in the styles you like is another. I think what IdleRich was saying upthread is that eventually hipsterism has failed here in its attempt to always gravitate towards the new - it has become strictly identified with a set of tangible things/likes, and so has become just another fixed 'youth culture' that will itself be superseded by something else, rather than an endlessly mutating kind of metaculture that latches on to the latest trend and claims it as its own. I was thinking at the weekend, when sitting in some archetypally hipsterish cafe, that all this seems no different from how it would have been ten years ago (except more mainstream by virtue of there being more places exactly like it), and that surely there has to be a shift at some point to something...different.

is it fixed though? you'll get ten different definitions (with a lot of crossover) from ten different people when asked what a hipster is

on that other thread someone used the term "projected self-loathing" which i think is on point. With the internets etc we've become more conscious of cultural capital and it disgusts us a little..and also it's given us the perspective and info access to see youth subculture as often trivial collective hallucinations. Calling other people hipsters (as an insult) is this projected self loathing.. "My consumption is more authentic than yours!" and sometimes mixed with envy, they're cleverer/more superficial and expedient than me at appropriating & manipulating signifiers

it comes down to this idea of authenticity i think, this is what hipsters and are obsessed with and this is what hipster haters accuse hipsters of never being. globalisation & the internet can make us feel like overly self-aware imposters, but was the authentic culture really ever there? isnt the authentic creative self a myth in the first place? there is no "real trap shit".

The demand for commodified authenticity is an expression of consumers’ nostalgia for a never-existing time when one had total control over the development of one’s identity. That sort of authenticity has always been a fiction, but the very real existence of goods that signify authenticity masked that fact. Consuming authentically could seem to prove fidelity to our “real self.”

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/google-alert-for-the-soul/

 

[baboon2004]

I think its signifiers have become fixed to a certain extent, but that's just thinking about London.

The issue I've always had with what I perceived as hipsterism was its frequent contempt for those who other people who are not hipsters - although this isn't universally true and those hipsters who don't project contempt, I've had no problem with. I think the projections occur from both sides of the hipster divide.

I'll read that article, thanks - '“Becoming oneself” has turned into a crappy job — a compulsory low-paying, low-skill job' - that's nice

 

[comelately]

"The issue I've always had with what I perceived as hipsterism was its frequent contempt for those who other people who are not hipsters - although this isn't universally true and those hipsters who don't project contempt, I've had no problem with."

I largely agree with this - the idea that hipster hate is all one-way is inaccurate. Subcultures have always been somewhat elitist; what has perhaps changed is that they were usually created by misfits who had probably had a bad time at school. With hipsterism, the nerd glasses were appropriated by the school bully. Hipster subcultures reinforce class politics rather than oppose, transcend or at least complicate them.

"sometimes mixed with envy" - the politics of envy!

I came across this Lily Allen quote from 2007: "Just cause your mum was too lazy to get her fat ass off the sofa and make some cash. I shouldn’t be able to make tunes yeah?". That ties up my link between right-wing talking points and the anti-anti-hipster movement nicely

 

[IdleRich]

"I think what IdleRich was saying upthread is that eventually hipsterism has failed here in its attempt to always gravitate towards the new - it has become strictly identified with a set of tangible things/likes, and so has become just another fixed 'youth culture' that will itself be superseded by something else, rather than an endlessly mutating kind of metaculture that latches on to the latest trend and claims it as its own. I was thinking at the weekend, when sitting in some archetypally hipsterish cafe, that all this seems no different from how it would have been ten years ago (except more mainstream by virtue of there being more places exactly like it), and that surely there has to be a shift at some point to something...different."

Yeah, thanks. That's what I was trying to say but better put.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Subcultures have always been somewhat elitist; what has perhaps changed is that they were usually created by misfits who had probably had a bad time at school.

Can't say I agree with this at all. Goth, grunge, emo etc., fine - perhaps even punk, to an extent; but consider teds, mods, rockers, skins, soul boys/rudeboys, casuals, the '90s 'new lad', nu-metal/jock-rock...these are not the subcultures of delicate, tormented little souls.

With hipsterism, the nerd glasses were appropriated by the school bully.

You reckon? I wouldn't have thought this either, but then it's been a 15 years since I was at school. Even so, I'd have thought modern hipsterism, from a male POV anyway, was too far on the artistic/effeminate side of things to be something bullies would be into.

 

[hucks]

You reckon? I wouldn't have thought this either, but then it's been a 15 years since I was at school. Even so, I'd have thought modern hipsterism, from a male POV anyway, was too far on the artistic/effeminate side of things to be something bullies would be into.

I guess it's less the bullies, more the popular kids. It's mainstream culture believing it's a counter culture.

 

[droid]

But there is no counter culture anymore. It doesnt require any effort to investigate things that that are new or alternative. What once may have taken years of meeting people, going to clubs, tracking down artists from the liner notes on the backs of LP's, spending SAE's to weird record labels, reading fanzines etc.. is now as simple as deciding on which coat to wear.

 

[Mr. Tea]

...is now as simple as deciding on which coat to wear...

...which like as not can be bought from Topshop. Next to the Motorhead/Led Zep/Ramones T-shirts for teenage girls who probably think of the Arctic Monkeys as dad-rock.

This is not a new thing (consider Danny's great line in Withnail & I: "Vey're sellin' hippie wigs in Woolworf's, man!") and Camden Lock Market has always been a Mecca for people who like to look unconventional in the most conventional way possible. But it does seem to have exploded in the last decade or so. And if it's happened to 'hipsters', whatever they are exactly, then it's only because it was inevitable.

 

[shiels]

what has been lost?

 

[droid]

Im not decrying the loss of the authentic hipster, but presumably it was that process of discovery and investigation that gave hipsterism it's cachet to begin with. It would have taken genuine balls for white hipsters to head to downtown NY jazz clubs in the 40's/50's to 'discover' the newest thing, same with beatniks and proto-hippies in the 60's where dropping out or being 'on the scene' took a huge amount of commitment.

So obv, when being a hipster requires little or no effort and is commodified into a 'look' or a bunch of static social signifiers, the whole concept becomes meaningless.

 

[firefinga]

to confuse things even further

Of course, there is the classic definition of "hipster" that was positive and it's been mentioned in this thread already, yet I was confronted already with a slightly negative connotation of "Hipster" resp. "Hipsterism" in my teens (I am in my mid30s now, so my teens meaning the early-to-mid90s) a Hipster was a person, mainly a guy, who was always into the latest fad, yet never "real" hardcore meaning he picked up trends/fads of former "underground" styles/music in it's first steps outta the incrowd/hardcore circles. So he would appear "up to date" "always in synch with the latest" - but only to people outside of music cirlces, as in just plane normal folks.

But one of the most defining factors of that definition of hipsterdom was he never had any loyalty towards the things he considered "cool" at the moment. When the next thing got "hip" he abandoned ship at once and moved on to the next "Big Thing in-the-making" Prime examples: Guys all of a sudden into Jungle/Drum n Bass around 1995/6. OR a more recent case: Kid606 and his hipster following.

Only recently I got confronted with even another definition of being a "hipster" as in "hipster"="Hardcore". On discogs.com, some person called people bitching about Skrillex not being Dubstep "Hipsters". Possibly, it was even ment as a subsitute for "Hater".