Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization

[ChrisCubasATX]

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

A selection from the linked article:

Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.

“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.

Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”

“Offensive?”

“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”

“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?”

“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”

[scamboogah]

I enjoyed that article right up until the very end, when the writer loses all the wry subtlety that he'd spend the whole piece building and goes for the over dramatic, "These kids are going to destroy the world" crap.

For the most part, I think he nails it, however. Right down to the fixed gear bikes.

[ChrisCubasATX]

I agree. It's such a jarring change in the tone from the rest of the piece that its almost ruins it.

Almost.

[pollymaepry]

Let's wear what we wanna wear and think what we think is right and do our best every day!

[Jenny]

But where else is there to go? All the other countercultures are basically dead. As for the destroying the world mentality, that's sort of the point of adbusters; to them, if it doesn't help propel the revolution, it's worthless.

[Keith Whitener]

So a hipster is a poseur? Seems like in the act of pretending to be something that they are not the hipster reveals what they truly are: nothing.

[smartbunny]

I was under the impression that "hipster" is a bad term when it refers to someone who tries to look thrift-store but has their rent paid my their parents. No?

Leggings and a flannel shirt sounds like 1991 Coffee Shop to me.

[FF Woodycooks]

I dunno, I get what the article is saying and the average "hipster" is as boring as the average stereotype of any social group including the ones they look down on, but I think it boils down to (what the guy from street carnage said) the fact that old people are always going to be jealous of young people having fun, going to parties, not really caring whether they are changing the face of contemporary culture and wearing weird clothes because they are hot enough to get away with it, and young enough to use their parent's money. Who wouldn't be jealous? Hence the sweeping generalizations about the death of culture. Everything apart from that is fine even though making fun of hipsters is kind of old news and also like shooting fish in a barrel. I'm not a fan of apathy or irony either but I don't think that attitude is contained to just hipsters.

[yumitree]

why do i always hate the lash AND the backlash?

[ragu sauce]

[Hated Milk Machine]

I'll take hipsters over this navel-gazing garbage any day of the fuckin' week.

[mediocre]

I spend a lot of time being annoyed with hipsters, so this is relevant to my interests.

It was a very good critique until the end with its melodramatic looking-into-the-sunset self indulgence..

I particularly like the idea of the hipster not being a definable subculture as much as a advertising demographic.

I loved the "The dance floor looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks" line..

[Hated Milk Machine]

I loved the "The dance floor looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks" line..

That line could be a fucking lyric on a Los Campesinos! album. In my experience, the people who complain about hipsters are usually people who wish they could be one, but are too fat to fit into the jeans.

[ChrisCubasATX]

That line could be a fucking lyric on a Los Campesinos! album. In my experience, the people who complain about hipsters are usually people who wish they could be one, but are too fat to fit into the jeans.

Hated Milk Machine wrote that line while looking at his monitor through non prescription glasses.

In the interest of full disclosure I am entirely too fat to fit into the jeans.

[CaptainBreakfast]

Hipsterdom has efficiently placed itself as the pinaccle of personal culture with the use of idea-sucking irony on every other counter-culture.
In a culture of people too afraid to be themselves, the pinnacle is where most everyone wants to be.
It is by no means the end; People will find hipsterdom to be empty just like most other CC's, and something new will arise. That, or 2012 will whisk everyone away in a suffocating hipster wave that the ancient Mayans predicted with their magical calendars.

p.s. I can fit in jeans.

[Jack]

That article is like a post modern Roger Kaputnik take on the world of youth.

[pollymaepry]

That line could be a fucking lyric on a Los Campesinos! album. In my experience, the people who complain about hipsters are usually people who wish they could be one, but are too fat to fit into the jeans.

Haha you feel called out upon and your comeback was "well...you're fat!"

[Hated Milk Machine]

Haha you feel called out upon and your comeback was "well...you're fat!"

I'm just as pasty as every other comedy nerd. But I think it's annoying that people get so worked up over other peoples' clothes. Especially when they say its destroying western civilization. What's next, "Hitler wore ironic T-shirts?" Who gives a shit?

[conun]

" Who gives a shit?

That's a classic "who gives a shit" argument.

Maybe hipsters aren't destroying western civilization, but they've destroyed Echo Park. Gentrified the neighborhood, drove up housing costs, AND they're douchebags.

[smartbunny]

I'm old and I would never be jealous of anyone that uses their parents' money.

Now, I am going to go make a ringer shirt that says "Who Gives A Shit, Fatty?"