Search results for hipster

PJ Rey just posted a terrific reflection on hipsters and low-tech on this blog, and I just want to briefly respond, prod and disagree a little. This is a topic of great interest to me: I’ve written about low-tech “striving for authenticity” in my essay on The Faux-Vintage Photo, reflected on Instagrammed war photos, the presence of old-timey cameras at Occupy Wall Street, and the IRL Fetish that has people obsessing over “the real” in order to demonstrate just how special and unique they are.

While I appreciate PJ bringing in terrific new theorists to this discussion, linking authenticity and agency with hipsters and technology, I think he focuses too much on the technologies themselves and not enough on the processes of identity; too much on the signified and not where the real action is in our post-modern, consumer society: the signs and signifiers. more...

Hipsters have been much discussed on the Cyborgology blog (see: here, here, here, and here). Cyborgology authors have also talked about the fetishization of low-tech/analog media and devices (see: here and here). As David Paul Strohecker pointed out, these two issue interrelated: “hipsters are at the forefront of movements of nostalgic revivalism.” I want to pick up these threads and add a small observation.

Nathan Jurgenson and I were discussing why low-tech devices have a seductive quality. Consider the popularity of, for example, fixed-gear bicycles or vintage cameras (such as the Kodak Brownie or the Polaroid PX-70 [correction: SX-70]). Though I think this phenomenon is probably overdetermined (in the Freudian sense of having multiple sufficient causes), I came up with a theory that seems worth further consideration: namely, that hipsters’ obsession with antique devices reflects a desire to escape the complex and highly-interdependent socio-technical systems that characterize contemporary society and return to time in which technology appeared to be something that humans could master and, thus, use to affirm their individual agency. In short, the fetishization of low-tech is about the illusion of agency; it provides affirmation for the hipster whose identity is defined by the post-Modern imperative to be an individual, to be unique.

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Since Sarah posted on Kony yesterday, I though I would throw in my two cents on the matter. I would like to discuss claims that the Kony 2012 is a hipster movement.

Why are people claiming the movement against Kony is a hipster movement? I think it is because of three main reasons. 1) people are using social media to spread it; 2) Invisible children plays into the whole Toms shoes, suburban college student social justice movement; and 3) individuals are claiming allegiances to this social justice movement as a form of social distinction. more...

A few of us here at Cyborgology have a running joke going about #HipsterStudies, so I thought I would compile a couple comics that likewise intellectualize this subcultural movement. The first, sent in by reader Letta Wren Page, is a comic by Dustin Glick:

Dustin Glick's "Theory of Hipster Relativity"

This image does a great job illustrating the inherent relativity of the hipster label. That is, as a largely pejorative label, one can only be deemed a hipster by comparison. Much like Thornton (1996) discovered in her study of UK youth raves, where club kids used pejorative labels to denote the bounds of group membership, the hipster as label serves to undermine attempts to mimic subcultural forms (and hence, it serves as a way to deny these actors any semblance of subcultural capital). more...

Since these hipster blog posts are generating so much great discussion I thought I would bring you another example of the subculture. I came across this website after my girlfriend attempted to get me to listen to some folk bands or something that she liked. I can’t exactly recall how it happened, but I do recall her sending this website to me.

The entire website for Plan-It-X Records is a simple .jpg image seen above.

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This post is somewhat of a stretch, but I think it remains applicable nonetheless. Below I have embedded three video clips, each dealing with “the hipster” as a relatively recent subcultural form and social type.

First, we have the “Hipster Olympics,” a viral video that made the rounds a few years back. The video makes a parody of the hipster, mocking their supposed elitism, pretension, dependency on new technologies, and obsession with authenticity as a source of subcultural distinction (note the subtle play on Pabst Blue Ribbon).

Second, we have a short clip from the “2 Broke Girls” a new CBS television series focusing on the epicenter of the hipster subculture, the gentrified Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. In the clip we see the confluence of hipsters and homelessness, which ultimately serves to as a satire on the “Poor Chic” fashion trends of New York’s urban hipsters (Halnon 2002). We also notice the association between hipsters and personal hygiene (or lack thereof), a stereotype that has also been foisted upon the #Occupy protestors.

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I came across this post a couple weeks back about the “11 Sounds That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard” and it got me thinking about hipsters, nostalgic revivalism, and technological regression as a source of authenticity.

DC hipster shows off his ride at the 2011 Brightest Young Things Tweed Ride in Washington, DC.

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The following argument is as an elaboration upon and the second part of “The Ineluctable Politics of Doctor Who: Part 1.” In that piece, I present the television series Doctor Who as an artefact with ineluctable social-material significance and political implications. In so doing, I illustrate that the ostensibly playful, inconsequential spaces that celebrate beloved objects of fan entertainment never actually enact neutral positions. The text and fan pronouncements about the text exist, incontrovertibly, as partisan acts—even when enacting an ostensibly innocuous posture that seeks to avoid or negate polemical effects.

Here, in Part 2, I address the ways in which the show may and should take responsibility for its social-material effects—which, while demonstrating relevance for a general viewing audience, hold particular import for a diverse fan community. It is on this point of fan diversity that the present discussion locates sociological significance. Surely Doctor Who fans, as a group, constitute a wide range of varying demographic orientations. Such a pronouncement seems rather evident considering the fanbase spans cross-cultural contexts. more...

Protestors in Hamburg, Germany. July 7, 2017. Photo: Maya Ganesh

On July 6, 7, and 8 the police established a thick cordon around the Hamburg Messe and Congress where the G20 was taking place. It separated delegates from the thousands of protestors who had converged on the city.

From the distinctive, red Handmaid cloaks worn by Polish feminists, to Greenpeace in boats off the harbour, to radical and Left groups in Europe, the G20 brought together diverse communities of protest from around the world. Protestors were there to tell leaders of the world’s most powerful economies that they were doing a terrible job of running the planet.

Not all of the protests were peaceful. The violence by some protestors and by the police against them has formed a substantial part of the reportage about the G20. In this post, I share some experiences and insights from the protests and their mediation.

The anti-Trump protests, the anti-Caste discrimination movements and activism on Indian university campuses against the Modi government, the ‘Science March’, the Women’s Marches, protests against Michel Temer in Brazil, #FeesMustFall and its sister protests in South Africa, and the post-Brexit marches to name a few, have captured local and national attention.

These protests have generated discussion about the shifting dynamics of political participation, popular resistance, and media, from the documentation of clever signs, the transition of protest memes from the online to the offline and back again, to the inspirational images of Saffiyah Khan and Ieshia Evans confronting violence. more...

A review of Future Sex (2016) by Emily Witt.

Emily Witt’s (2016) book Future Sex chronicles her search for sexual self-realization as a New Yorker in her early 30s migrating to tech-centered San Francisco. The book is based both in interviews and personal experiences, stringing vignettes together into chapters with topics including polyamory, Orgasmic Meditation, Internet porn, and Burning Man. In this review, I highlight the chapter on her Cam sites experience.

But first, I will start with a broad overview. A major theme in the book is the kind of existential angst that comes from having too many choices. Witt feels daunted by her sexual freedom as a millennial—the limitless range of sexual partners and practices—first made possible by the sexual revolution, and then by the Internet. more...