Cross-posted at The Hipster Effect.
I know, I know – you hate hipsters. Maybe somebody called you one once, but they were clearly mixing you up with the real hipsters. You know the ones.
Hipsters have beards. Or mustaches. Or neither. They wear skinny jeans. Or maybe they don’t. They’ve got thick-rimmed glasses. Or sometimes not. You may not be able to describe one offhand, but you know one when you see one. Right?
As elusive as a unicorn yet as common as an ant, the hipster seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once. The only definite thing about a hipster is that nobody wants to be called one (yet pretty much all of us are guilty of having called other people hipsters). It’s become one of the worst insults you can bestow upon somebody (yet it’s also among the most common). If you want to completely discount a person and everything that they stand for, just break out the H-word and watch their credibility to go down the drain. Once you’ve been dubbed a hipster, you yourself become meaningless in that context. You become one of those people and we all know what those people are like.
Or do we?
The definition of a “hipster” is at best a collection of vague cultural artifacts that we associate with a certain set of personality traits, very few of which actually exist in tandem. The prototypical hipster is a trust-fund baby who spends his days talking about art projects that he never gets around to starting. He drinks the cheapest beer available even though he can afford better. He does this ironically, and he wears his clothes in the same way. He judges you, the non-hipster, based solely on your appearance, quickly dismissing you as a non-member of the hip elite. He listens to bands you’ve never heard of and thinks it’s sad that you can’t keep up with his cooler-than-cool musical tastes. In short, the prototypical hipster is an asshole – but for the most part, he doesn’t even exist.
In a way, we’ve vilified the hipster archetype as a way of dealing with our own insecurities. Being cool was something most people never worried about once they graduated high school. Our internet-fueled society has since changed that, bringing the hunt for the newest and most interesting things into our day-to-day lives. There is a burden to be cool that now follows you into your 20s and 30s and beyond, whereas before these things were safely relegated to lunchtime cafeterias and high school auditoriums. And with the internet now spitting out a different concept of cool with each and every day that goes by, it’s almost impossible to keep up. Eventually we throw up our hands in exasperation and, whenever we see somebody who looks like they’re trying harder than us, we spit out the word: hipster.
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Sophy Bot is the author of the forthcoming book, The Hipster Effect: How the Rising Tide of Individuality is Changing Everything We Know about Life, Work and the Pursuit of Happiness. Bot also runs The Hipster Effect blog, examining how identity, society and work have metamorphosed in the age of perpetual connectivity.
Comments 55
guest123457 — December 16, 2011
Sorry, I don't by the idea that hipsters don't exit. "Hipster" is the word that is now used to describe people who would have been considered "indie" in the 90's. Remember, in the 90's indie was a word that people applied to themselves to represent a positive rejection of mainstream culture. Hipster is just a pejorative that developed to criticize those who considered themselves indie.
anarres — December 16, 2011
The title of the second comic is wrong, it should be: "The theory of male hipster relativity".
Owly — December 16, 2011
I live in Austin and it's full of people that fit your description perfectly. In my demographic, at least (20-something college students).
Gilbert Pinfold — December 16, 2011
And the middle four in the cartoon are all hipsters, obviously.
GoBlue2002 — December 16, 2011
I honestly really don't know where all of this "Hipster has no meaning!" literature is coming from. Is Ann Arbor the only place in the US where people self-identify as hipsters?
Autumn — December 16, 2011
Using "hipster" in a derogatory sense only really happens in America... Maybe it's because in European countries, it's assumed that young adults will be on the edge of emerging trends, since populations there are more concentrated and urban, it's easier for this to happen.
It seems like America is one of the few places in the West where the majority of people in their early 20s are completely out of touch with what's really new and emerging art-wise and trend-wise. The internet has made it easier for people outside of urban areas to tune into trends, so that group has grown and it's intimidating, so a derogatory term was bound to emerge. I used to get called "creative" or "edgy," but now it's "hipster." It's a blanket term but its no more offensive to me than "edgy," really.
Andres — December 17, 2011
I completely agree with this post. Hipster is a totally meaningless and mean-spirit term. If somebody is acting condescending or (in one person's opinion) not contributing to society, then they should be called on their faults - not associated with some completely imaginary group of people.
Jacquelynjoan — December 17, 2011
Lol. I'm a hipster-wanna-be, but that's because I never bought the thing about them being jerks who make you feel bad about not being cool. I like this explanation though. (Agreed with those who commented that there were no lady-hipsters represented!)
Mara — December 17, 2011
For sure there is a lot of silly use of hipster as a derogative term going around. I have experienced people being called hipster for the weirdest of reasons. I have also seen it sometimes conflated with cis-sexist and straight up homofobic slurs.
But I do think it's possible to talk about the hipsters, as a social phenomenon, or maybe reference point. The more substantial critisism I have experienced, has been of the hipster as a person who is very keen on gaining cultural capital, but often does so through appropiating the norms or values of other, often more marginalized, groups. I have experienced counter-cultural and political projects being overrun by people, who do not participate in the mobilization, organizing or build-up of the community. People I would describe as hipsters, based on their use of cultural codes of 'being hip'.
As an example, last year I lived in a major city where critical mass - a form of bike demonstration to promote sustainable public transportation in the cities, typically held once a month - had become more of a fixed gearbike rally for white guys in their 20's. The community spirit and the political content suffered for it, and it had actually also become quite dangerous to participate in because of the 'alley cat' mentality. The original organizers withdrew from the project because of it.
I have seen the same thing with soup kitchens, old pubs who are suddenly trendy because they are working class, counter-cultural street parties which get their cultural signals appropiated by commercialized parties with entrance fees, gallery 'street artists' and the like. all this is very alienating, i think.
But I couldn't care less about their personal dress style or music taste. Whatever.
Joseph Kane — December 17, 2011
I mostly agree with this, but then how does one explain the strange hipster stomp "dancing?" Now I'm wondering if this "dance" is only performed in an ironic manner by "non-hipsters."
Leslee Beldotti — December 17, 2011
So... being an old fart who's completely out of touch (even though I live in Austin) am I to understand from this article that only MEN are hipsters?
The Elusive Hipster | Beyond The Zero — December 17, 2011
[...] is much accused and rarely admitted: The definition of a “hipster” is at best a collection of vague cultural artifacts that we [...]
Woz — December 17, 2011
What strikes me as humorously ironic about this article is that it reads like it was written by a hipster, with its condescending "you like to use this popular thing, but you shouldn't, because it's not very good." I mean, replace the term "hipster" in this article with any musical group and it reads like a Pitchfork article.
And besides, I was into not using the term hipster way before it was cool to call people out on the meaninglessness of the term...
Jessica Franken — December 17, 2011
So unicorns can be hipsters, but women can't. Got it.
Also, I'm far from convinced that 'hipster' is "one of the worst insults you can bestow upon somebody."
Anonymous — December 17, 2011
There is an actual definition of a hipster that has been around for decades. It's been diluted, sure, but a lot of the basics are the same. It came about to refer to young, relatively wealthy white people who were "into" black culture during the Harlem Rennaisance era, and often that let to things such as "black artists performing for all white audiences in racially segregated clubs, and not even being allowed to use the main entrances themselves." Hipsters have always been associated with appropriation of some sort. Back then, it was "oooohh black culture is so deep and soulful, but hell if I'm ever going to do anything about the injustice." Nowadays, what do people associate with hipsters (who are still overwhelmingly young, white, and from very privileged backgrounds)? Appropriation of Native American cultural icons, and white working class icons.
C. D. Leavitt — December 17, 2011
"It’s become one of the worst insults you can bestow upon somebody."
Hipster as one of the worst insults there is? Seriously? This guest blogger needs to get out more, or possibly graduate college.
Nasheen — December 17, 2011
This is exactly how I've always thought of the word slut, and why I don't use it. It's one of the most common insults for women, but what does it mean? Everyone seems to point at someone having that bit more sex than they are, or with that couple more casual partners, or some other criteria, just like in the strip. As a university students, I have many friends that have had casual sex and likely will again in the future, yet there are women that they call sluts. Definitely a comparative term, and definitely because of the users own insecurities
betsy santos — December 17, 2011
I've been gotten called a hipster because of the way I dress and the music I like. I don't particularly mind it. I mean, as long as I'm not being a pretentious asshole, appropriating a culture or gentrifying a neighbourhood, I don't see how the term could really antagonise me. Besides, denying it, of course, would sort of just confirm people's conceptions, riiiight? :)
Pfomby — December 17, 2011
At the bottom of the page where I could see a larger version of the hipster comic up close, there was an ad for LL Bean. That might have been the best starting point for measuring the absence of hipsterness!
Eric — December 18, 2011
WOW! It's been a whole 2.5 months since the last Sociological Images post on this topic!!! HOW HAS IT BEEN SO LONG?! Granted, this post has been outsourced to an outside blog, but still. I've been desperately waiting for more attempts to academicize this topic. Kudos!
Lala — December 18, 2011
It seems similar to what happened a few years ago in brazil with "Emos"
Doctress Ju'ulia — December 19, 2011
It's all about dudes... sigh, not interested...
Nlcqxlju — January 2, 2012
The picture has no Mexicans, no Asians! Can't read this crap! The author is clearly not only chauvanistic but also racist! Thus this has absolutely no scientific value, insofar as sociology is a science
Anonymous — January 3, 2012
I disagree to an extent on the idea that there was no burden on "being cool" into your twenties and thirties before the advent of the hipster. The idea of "being cool," at least from a male perspective, was tied into concepts of manhood (i.e. how much of a man are you?). So you still had men posturing and playing cool, but it was a very different image from what we see today. They were also doing it with a sincerity that's missing in many cases from the perception of the detached irony of the hipster. So these men sincerely embraced the masculine images of a John Wayne, if they were trying to feign tough, or a Cary Grant, if they were imitating suave, whereas today those two are still embraced but it's often done in an ironic and mocking manner (and deservedly so in the case of the Duke).
I think the problem with labeling anyone a hipster (stateside, at least) is that so much of American culture has been reliant on cultural appropriation that the hipster, in the American sense, isn't doing anything their relatives haven't done before. New age mysticism isn't unique to hipsters. It was being appropriated by Americans on a wide-scale as early as the 1950s (and in some cases earlier). And co-opting the cultures of its ethnic minority populations is something America has a fine history of doing almost since its inception.
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