Adbusters has a *scathing* piece this month on hipster culture, citing is a "suicidal" and evidence of an American culture "lost in the superficiality of its past." It was when I moved to San Francisco in 2005 that I first got my taste of this thing called "hipster," a nebulous term indeed, but it generally seemed to be an attempt at ironic skewering of pop culture.
Unfortunately, in my experience, hipster "scenes" tend to reproduce all the nasty things that made them hate pop culture in the first place: exclusionary practices, pretention, and egomania. Most of them are the losers and nerds from high school (my people), intent on getting a piece of the popularity pie in college and beyond. But at some point along the way, they forget just how it awful it felt to be constantly looked down on in primary school, and wind up doing exactly the same thing to others. It's like bitchy gay boys. Same thing.
Now, this of course is not all hipsterfolk. There are many kind / generous / thoughful / intelligent / politically savvy people who would be labelled for style of dress as a "hipster." Many of my friends in SF might be categorized under that label (though of course they probably would not identify as such). And many of the most scenestery, pretentious hipster-looking boys and girls are probably incredibly wonderful people outside the scene, one-on-one. But the scene is awful. It kills. The beady-eyed, foamy-mouthed glee for outrageosly clever irony must end. Counter-culture, it is not.
Here's a few choice words from Adbusters:
An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
[snip]
The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.
This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.
Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.
(Via KnuckleCrack)
