A hipster can be defined in many different ways. A hipster is a person who thinks they are too cool for everyone. In ordered to be cooler than everyone else they have to find things that no one else knows about. Eventually the hipster’s worst nightmare happens, the “cool” thing they found is now mainstreaming. All of their indie music is on the popular radio stations, and they have to fall onto plan b: Lil Wayne. A hipster will say Lil Wayne is cool because he is so popular and that is ironic. A hipster is ironic, wear vintage clothes, pretend their poor but live off of their parent’s money, and drink pabst blue ribbon.
When hipsters staring to emerge, everyone wanted to be a hipster. But the first rule of being a hipster is you can’t want to be one, and you can’t say you are one. Once hipsters became cool and well known many people started becoming one. After more people wanted to be a hipster, American Apparel along with Urban Outfitters emerged. All of a sudden there was a new type of hipster emerging. These types of hipster are known as poser hipsters. These people want more than anything to have the word hipster attached to them. Poser hipsters want to be viewed as a real hipster but they never will because they don’t give off the right vibe when they are wearing only Urban Outfitters or American Apparel. This new breed of hipster puts the real hipster in a dilemma. The original hipsters now have to try harder to find unique and ironic clothing, bands, and phrases to say.
For people who opt out of this culture they find it amusing to make fun of hipsters. People have created look at this fucking hipster where people post pictures of hipsters they see. The onion has also created articles about hipsters calling each other hipsters. This new age of people has created stores, websites, t-shirts, and much more.
I think a true hipster is someone who doesn’t have to try hard to be cool. They can roll out of bed and throw on old clothes and still look good. A hipster is someone who lives off of their parent’s money but pretend they don’t have a lot of money by wearing old vintage clothes. They drink pabst blue ribbon, are ironic, listen to popular music (it is so popular that it is ironic to listen to it) or indie music, hate mainstream culture, and can never call themselves a hipster. A poser hipster tries hard to become a “real” hipster but it will never happen because they are trying. A poser hipster wears too much American Apparel and/or Urban Outfitters and secretly is happy when someone calls them a hipster. Being a hipster is a way of life that only a few can truly acquire.
Do you want to know if you are a hipster? Just take this quiz!
Amelia,
ReplyDeleteI often see hipsters walking around and will often make fun of them with my friends. I always thought one would have to try so hard to be a hipster, trying to find new stuff that no one has ever heard of. But I guess if you had to try, you wouldn't be a hipster. I always thought that a hipster was just someone who follows trends, but from this, I am getting that a hipster is someone that makes the trends.
-Adela
Amelia,
ReplyDeleteI have always thought that being a hipster would be really cool, so I definitely understand this piece. I like how you identified how effortless being a hipster seems to be. However, this blog talks about how it really isn't that effortless because you have to try to be different then everyone else. Do you think that if a hipster tries to be different, he or she is a poser or do they just have to like what they like and stick to it to be a hipster?
Deema
Amelia, you've made a great point on what the true definition of a hipster is. Since there are so many "poser" hipsters out there I honestly feel as if the definition of a hipster is constantly changing because there are the people who are called hipsters and those that claim they are hipster. In my opinion, a poser hipster does not understand the real definition of a hipster.
ReplyDelete-Blair
Amelia,
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you on the wannabe hipsters part. I don't think that wannabe hipsters love to be called hipsters, I just don't think they pull it off as well. In a strange way, I think they are conforming to a seemingly noncomformist lifestyle. Does that make sense? I do agree that the "fail" and/or "poser" hipsters are annoying as shit, but I also think they aren't that easy to define. Overall, good job though. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one. BRB, gotta go listen to an underground band and kill them after so no one knows that they existed and I can be the only one that knew about them. BWAHAHAHA. Ok bye.
-Christian
Amelia, I feel like the dilemma is of poser hipsters than of the real hipsters. I know how it is frustrating to see people trying so hard to be called a hipster; I always think I'm the most frustrated by the people who wants to be so 'different' from others. There are naturally 'different' people from others, but I believe everyone are 'special'. I hope people realize that someday. That they are 'special' enough being themselves, they don't have to exert so hard to be 'different'. - Caelyn K
ReplyDeleteSo here's a question: aren't we all like these hipsters that you describe?! Isn't there a huge part of how our culture operates that you tend to want to find some way to assert your originality, without seeming like you are "trying too hard"?
ReplyDeleteYour definitions are interesting, and very thought-provoking. The role of IRONY in all of this really fascinates me, and seems to isolate people who strive toward hipsterdom in a weird way. People who operate with a strong sense of irony seem perpetually stick outside of this realm of being, constantly removed so that they can make fun of things, even as they are engaged in them. The curse of experience-based learning, or the anti-cruise in some ways...
That's related too to what you'd said about how hipsters or poser hipsters (or both) have to keep "trying harder" to find stuff - it seems like a lot of work. Why do people do this? Why is distinction so important to people? In what ways are we all a little bit like what is most 'hated' abut hipsters? In ways are you? And are you not?
Also - what perspectives have you found from 'hipsters' themselves on how they/you/we (?!) are perceived? I'm still confused about the role of self-proclamation (can you claim it as your own identity label? or is it "cooler" to have someone else identify you as a hipster?)
I'm SUPER interested in the tension between hipsters and "poser hipsters" - seems like hipsters wouldn't really have anything to show for them/your/ourselves if there weren't any poser-hipsters - if hipsterdom is all about distinction and being one cut above the rest in terms of originality. And then, if there is this constant competition (which is what it seems like), then aren't hipsters (or just poser-hipsters) just doomed to be in a cycle of striving-toward-true-hipsterdom that they will never achieve?! To me, the line between real hipsterdom and poser-hipsterdom is very, very fine...I am very curious to know what you think of that Amelia!
-Steph
ALSO - I love the question you posed in your title. I missed it the first time around, but clearly the way you articulated your ideas brought that question out loud and clear!
ReplyDeleteOne final question - an historian's question - when did this all come to be? I didn't learn about hipsterdom until undergrad, which is pretty recent - when did this term get coined? Historical roots of a phenomenon are always interesting - the HOW and WHY of how this picked up and got to be such common lingo and knowledge!
-Steph
in my opinion hipsters could be anybody, take the Beatles for instance which led the start to hippies with their ironic ideas, you could consider Pink Floyd to be hipsters or Led Zeppelin in that manner, as time went on the image change which you have guys like Kurt Cobain and a whole grunge scene, you could say those were the hipsters of the 90's now in days the hipsters look more like emo kids or scene kids or skaters, so this lifestyle has been around for more than half a century and nobody actually coined the name hipster until they got mainstream again lol but a real a hi trendingsn't have to try at all they literally grew up to avoid anything trending 30 years from now they're still going to be hipsters
DeletePeople have been wearing vintage clothes and listen to indie bands since the 80's; so how is it popular now? It's like any other trend through out the decade that which the media use it to make profit out of it and those who buy the product only because it's now a trend isn't really thinking for themselves while turning around calling themselves an indie hipster-that in it's self defeats being independent because indie is short for independent. There is no movement-there no such thing of an indie movement and even if there was no one would have care anyways or notice. I've been listening underground bands and stealing clothes from thrift stores for years but that dosn't make me a hipster. I also listen to mainstream bands such as the deftones and smashing pumpkins why because there still good music-underground and mainstream who cares good tunes is good tunes. I'm independent and I know where I stand and hipster is just a word to lable people thats all.
ReplyDeletePeople have been wearing vintage clothes and listen to indie bands since the 80's; so how is it popular now? It's like any other trend through out the decade that which the media use it to make profit out of it and those who buy the product only because it's now a trend isn't really thinking for themselves while turning around calling themselves an indie hipster-that in it's self defeats being independent because indie is short for independent. There is no movement-there no such thing of an indie movement and even if there was no one would have care anyways or notice. I've been listening underground bands and stealing clothes from thrift stores for years but that dosn't make me a hipster. I also listen to mainstream bands such as the deftones and smashing pumpkins why because there still good music-underground and mainstream who cares good tunes is good tunes. I'm independent and I know where I stand and hipster is just a word to lable people thats all.
ReplyDeletePeople have been wearing vintage clothes and listen to indie bands since the 80's; so how is it popular now? It's like any other trend through out the decade that which the media use it to make profit out of it and those who buy the product only because it's now a trend isn't really thinking for themselves while turning around calling themselves an indie hipster-that in it's self defeats being independent because indie is short for independent. There is no movement-there no such thing of an indie movement and even if there was no one would have care anyways or notice. I've been listening underground bands and stealing clothes from thrift stores for years but that dosn't make me a hipster. I also listen to mainstream bands such as the deftones and smashing pumpkins why because there still good music-underground and mainstream who cares good tunes is good tunes. I'm independent and I know where I stand and hipster is just a word to lable people thats all.
ReplyDeleteyou saved me from having to write a ton of stuff that would have turned out to be exactly what you say. I listen to Indie Music because I enjoy the sound but I listen to a ton of other genres as well. I do things, listen to things, watch things, wear things because it makes me happy not because it's the "in" thing to do. I'm really starting to hate how people do the "in" thing just to fit "in" rather than because they enjoy it.
Deletecan't people just like what they like without getting labeled..?
DeleteI found out about hipster culture accidentally. I was just fed up with mass marketing trying to make me feel inadequate unless I bought the new "whatever". Everywhere I went, I saw images of people that looked happier, richer and better than me. Of course those images were advertisements. And all around me I saw people bowing down to worship these images by spending their time, energy and money to look like and live the life of the people in the advertisements. So I went searching for a way out! I became a total non conformist. I stopped buying trendy stuff, I stopped doing trendy stuff. I wanted to be my own person based on what I thought and not what a tv ad said. Later on I found out we were called hipsters.
ReplyDeleteTo me, it just feels like hipster is another category of mainstream. Abercromie and rihanna may be considered mainstream but so is this new hipster genre. The true hipsters are... really just out of this world and they live on their own. They just have a taste so different that most people can't understand. But the new mainstream hipster people tend to search for a unique sound or a unique look but somehow all end up listening to the same band or buying the same brands. If not brands, they all go for this one type of fashion.
ReplyDeleteI'd never heard the term hipster until 2008, before that I just hung around with people into metal punk and noise and everyone who I knew was pretty socially isolated and really dedicated to weird music because they genuinely enjoyed it. You know weirdos wearing black. The idea that this made someone cool was never really in the equation. For me the underground was always more about isolation than posturing. So if you're wondering why old men in leather jackets frown at the whole hipster thing that's why. I just really feel like the idea that the underground and the mainstream need to somehow be in competition is missing the point completely.
ReplyDelete"Hipster" is simply a phase of youth for some people. Hopefully, they grow out of it and then can look back and laugh at themselves (ever seen an old hipster and felt sad for them? Ye, me too). Abit overly influenced by image instead of substance, poser hipsters and wanna be hipsters alike - however it is you describe one. Why not simply find something real, i.e. with substance, early on? That's the trick huh? One reason we disdain all hipsters - and it seems even hipsters disdain hipsters, unless they are bff's - is that they visualize to the world that they have found nothing "real". Just sayin..........
ReplyDelete