Postmodern irony and the subversion of the mainstream

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-EDIT:Deleted because it was too meta for its own good-

Last edited by Ectryon on 03 Sep 2014, 5:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

To clarify who thinks that hipsterism is actually a genuine form of self expression. Personally I think its just narcissism and egotism but thats me

It's not just you, it seems to be the prevalent meme.

I think that hipsterism is a genuine form of self expression that is maligned for reasons not entirely clear to me. I've read sarcastic takedowns of hipsters. I've read the mocking blogs. But I haven't seen a good explanation of [/i]why[/i] their particular form of expression is so objectionable.

The disclaimer "I am totally NOT a hipster" is the norm. Being a hipster is considered so objectionable that seemingly nobody will cop to it. I am used to inter-culture jabs. Culture X will always make nasty comments about culture Y and vice versa. But being a Hipster is apparently so awful that literally nobody will say "I am a hipster" even if they tick all the boxes. And that mystifies me.

Steampunk victoriana meets tribal elder ticks the hipster boxes. Yet you insist you are not one. Why? Why is it so terrible?

Lol I was joking. The whole post is me pretending to be a hipster. Ironic no?

No steampunk victoriana then? Ah well.

But I am still left wondering why hipsters are so reviled that no one will say they are one. Other groups have been reviled in the past, from hepcats to juggalos. But with all the other reviled groups, the people within them proudly say "I am this!! !". I think juggalos look ridiculous but they they are proud to belong to that group.

But nobody proudly says "I am a hipster". Even people who really are into steampunk victoriana crossed with tribal elder won't say it. Instead, they will find some nitpicky reason why they don't belong in the group. What is it that is making it impossible for anybody to claim this as group identity even as the rest of the world says "you belong in this group".?

There seem to be more satires of hipster culture than there is actual hipster culture. What I am interested in is why it is only ever satitrized but never defended. And it isn't indefensible. Hipster culture brings arcane crafts and art up to the surface and I think that is valuable. But it is only ever mocked.*

*edited to add: after writing this post I decided to google if anybody ever defends hipsters. And somebody did.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/com ... ipsters-2/

so I was wrong about them never being defended. But it is interesting that the article starts with the observation that mocking and satirizing them is far more common.

This is why hipsters arent really liked all that much. They wont admit to being hipsters because to do so would be to become mainstream. The whole thing is impressively "ironic" I suppose. They're a movement without a name with no official adherents. Theyre a movement who happen to be linked by this vacuous self conscious irony which cannot be defined.

Basically a hipster will dress up in Steampunk Victoriana because its not mainstream. They will then find something ethnic and wear that to make a statement. Everything they do is contrived to make a statement. I suppose alot of modern artists are hipsters and always have been. You could say that modern artists were hipsters before the name was invented. Hipsters would appreciate artworks such as a toilet on a restaurant table because its an "ironic juxtaposition of the two universal bodily functions"

Theyre cultural magpies, dipping their fingers into every conceivable cultural niche without understanding or even admiring any of it. The sole purpose of it all is irony. They like artists such as James Blake not because he's an imaginative artist but because its ironic that he's a songwriter who combines acoustic and electronica.

The main gripe with hipsters is that they are a symptom of our shallow culture where we consume everything and understand nothing.

yuzu introduced me to these guys (thank you yuzu!), they're hilarious:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of9cwFiX8Ps&list=EL4xeB_muwhDY&index=6[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZGc5lm1dk0&list=EL4xeB_muwhDY&index=31[/youtube]

I often say that I was a hipster "before it was cool". Now, the term "hipster" is actually quite old, as it dates back to at least the early 20th century, but as far as the modern-day definition goes, I was enjoying obscure things and rejecting trendy things before it became the definition of "hipsterism", if that makes any sense. I find the modern-day trend of hipsterism to be quite silly, but as I was already sort of participating in it before it became popular, I started practicing certain aspects of the new subculture ironically, which in itself is a very hipsterish thing to do, so I sort of became a meta-hipster if you will. I'm a hipster about being a hipster, and part of this even includes doing very non-hipsterish things, like enjoying things that are popular among normal, "non-hipsters".

I was a hipster before it was cool, I am more of a hipster than the people who started calling themselves hipsters, and as a result I am the god of hipsterism. All hipsters shall bow down to me.

Has anyone actually met a hipster? I wonder if the archetype was invented by some social engineer as a method to encourage the vilification of people who are in some way shape or form against what someone in authority wants people to think is the "mainstream".

Last edited by Stannis on 04 Sep 2014, 8:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ive personally never actually met a "hipster" but I have met pretentious art school types. Hipsters are just holding a mirror up to our consumption oriented materialistic self obsessed arrogant society. We dont like seeing our flaws so luridly displayed. I do wonder whether the whole hipster trend was an invention. It is extremely "meta" the ironies flock in too thick and fast for it to be an accident. Someone coined the term hipster knowing that it was actually the term for jazzheads back in the 70's era. Someone thought up the idea of this movement which noone would admit to being a member of and thus which officially has no name. Someone thought up the idea of a movement which is basically modern society only a little more narcissistic and self conscious. The whole thing almost reeks of a social experiment.

Ive personally never actually met a "hipster" but I have met pretentious art school types. Hipsters are just holding a mirror up to our consumption oriented materialistic self obsessed arrogant society. We dont like seeing our flaws so luridly displayed. I do wonder whether the whole hipster trend was an invention. It is extremely "meta" the ironies flock in too thick and fast for it to be an accident. Someone coined the term hipster knowing that it was actually the term for jazzheads back in the 70's era. Someone thought up the idea of this movement which noone would admit to being a member of and thus which officially has no name. Someone thought up the idea of a movement which is basically modern society only a little more narcissistic and self conscious. The whole thing almost reeks of a social experiment.

/\ So, it might be about encouraging conformity within an ideology that serves the ruling class, by constructing fake countercultural mythologies to make it seem appealing?

I think that hipsters have existed as a distinct subset of the population for much longer than the name itself. They really are the quintessential art school types who breath rarefied air. I think that whoever created the term hipster probably really hated the behaviour of these types and decided to codify it into a counterculture. Hipsters really make the ultimate statement by their very existence.They are the "embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics."

I think the coinagde of the term probably focused what waas just disaffected yuppies rebelling with tofu and belle and sebastian. It then became just another counterculture cliche



jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster-racism

This is not a sentence.

Not sure exact definition of a hipster but I have been called one by a friend and heard a random comment in public about how I looked like one....And admittedly I do listen to non-mainstream music, since most popular music of today is garbage lots of good bands outside of that though so I listen to those basically a lot of psychedelic sort of rock, metal and I do like some industrial as well as electronic stuff but kinda picky about that. I also like vinyls, cassette, tapes, VHS's and have the means to play them on. I wear skinny jeans(with patterns) much of the time, or random vintage pants like the camoflauge ones I got from a thrift store, in fact I've gotten lots of clothes at those....I like band t-shirts, comfortable sweaters, stuff with weird trippy sort of designs or plaid is good....I also smoke cannabis and cigarettes, and smoke american spirit cigarettes.

From what I understand those things are somewhat associated with the term so yeah, guess maybe I am....but I did all that stuff before it was cool lol. I have never called myself one though, apparently a lot of people say they're pretentious and what not and I don;t really feel I am I maen I tend to try and get along with most people, not really one to tray and start drama or conflicts or look down on people....so not sure if that part is true or if its just a negative stereotype about them, hell there are even negative stereotypes about metalheads that aren't nessisarily true so who knows.