Ectryon wrote:
I could easily be called a hipster. I wear check flannel shirts slim jeans and converses. I listen to obscure artists and am constantly searching for more. I love to discover new cultures and new perspectives. I also find that irony can be an effective tool for parody and to create multilayered compositions.
What makes me different from the hipsters of today's pop culture is that I do all that sincerely. The above things inspire me and make me love life. A hipster on the other hand does the above for totally egotistical reasons. There's nothing beneath the appearance of depth.
That's what their detractors say about them but what evidence is there that it's true? There are countless satires and takedowns all claiming that the hipsters are faking their appreciation of the things they like (or "like"). You genuinely enjoy the things you have listed. I believe that. But what evidence is there that that other guy wearing the same clothes and listening to the same music
doesn't genuinely enjoy these artifacts and is just pretending to for show. I have wondered for a while why hipsters inspire so much hate, not the least from people doing identical things. I think your post finally sheds some light on this question. It isn't
what they enjoy per se but rather it's the assumption that they are faking that enjoyment for the sake of appearances. This explains better than anything why nobody identifies with the group while doing all the things that ought to make them a member. Who would want to be in a group that is identified by others as being inherently fake.
I suppose it was the irony. Once one thing has been done for irony (Pabst Blue Ribbon?), it is easy for detractors to say that literally everything is done for irony and nothing is authentic joy. So if a person drinks PBR ironically but authentically likes Charles Mingus (or whatever), it is easy to assume that the Charles Mingus is also being listened to ironically.
Back in my young adulthood I bought a bunch of LPs at a thrift store to play ironically at a party. I chose them entirely by their cheesy cover art. Almost all of them were terrible and I listened to them once after the party at most. But one of them turned out to be a pretty fantastic album by Sergio Mendes. I had no idea I liked Sergio Mendes and had never heard of him prior to buying the album ironically for its cheesy cover art. But I continued listening to it with great joy and still listen to it (since digitized) to this day. Since the Mendes album was first played ironically, an outside observer might conclude that all subsequent plays were also ironic. But they weren't. It's hard to do something ironically for a few days, let alone 25 years. It's no fun to do something you really don't enjoy over and over while pretending you enjoy it.
I wonder if something similar has happened with today's hipsters. They did various things ironically at first but then wound up either genuinely liking them or dropping them because doing something you don't like continuously isn't fun. I have no doubt that many drank PBR ironically. But it's no fun to keep drinking a beer you don't like night after night, especially when the beers you would prefer are sitting right there. Soon enough you will cave and order the beer you actually want.
I suspect that hipsters have enjoyment of things that is every bit as authentic as your own. The only thing keeping you out of the hipster box is authentic enjoyment. Which is why nobody claims to be in that group. Everybody else has authentic enjoyment too. You are looking at that guy buying old records while wearing connies (what we used to call them back then) and assuming he is just pretending to enjoy it for a facade. Meanwhile, he's probably assuming the same thing about you. Thus hipster is a group that only other people belong to. Everybody is on the outside of it while doing the things that ought to place one inside it.
Quote:
P.s of course hipsters exist but the problem is that the nature of their scattered fractured identity makes them hard to pin down. They're patchwork quilts of just about everything.
They are magpies for sure. But what kind of group identity is even possible when the main characteristic is just pretending to enjoy something? Anybody who actually does enjoy it will place themselves outside the group- as you did in the opening paragraph.
05 Sep 2014, 11:07 am
I preferred the dark black concert t-shirts,silver jewelry and Levi's.Put a blonde streak in my hair before it was cool.But I was sort of a weird hybrid,part nerd.In the TAG program and loved D&D . 
