On the hipster
This past Saturday I was having a conversation with a friend and remarked on somebody’s very tight jeans, awkwardly cut just below the knee. “Why would he do that?” I asked, to which he replied: “Whatever, he’s a hipster,” as if a single fashion choice were enough to apply the label and nothing more needed to be said. It was enough to make me spend the rest of the evening reading about hipsters and searching for the moment (if it exists) when the hipster brand lost connection with the ideology that spawned it. Not dressing in tight cutoffs or reading Pitchfork or Vice, I hadn’t a clue.
This confusion is the delight of the identity, which, in a paradox best held by self-conscious teenagers, defines itself by its difference from “everything else.”
I really enjoyed reading these three articles, which led me to a definition of hipster that's not just about fashion choices. I found it fascinating to me to think about the early hipster movement as commentary on having reached a cultural endpoint and awareness of the arbitrary construction of scene. Read on...
- Pop Matters - The Death of the Hipster
- Adbusters - Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
- Time Out New York - Why the Hipser Must Die
What do you think?