I own a fixed gear bicycle. I collect and play vinyl records. My fashion sense could be described variably as either eccentric or metrosexual. I even work for a student newspaper. Am I a hipster?
This is a question I’ve asked myself since I was first referred to as one in my junior year of High School. According to some of my friends I am one, and according to others I am not. But what even is a hipster?
I sat down earlier today with some of the girls of Tri-Delta Sorority and asked them what a hipster was. Initially, it was hard to nail down what exactly the concept was. One girl thought they were related to hippies or drug culture. Eventually they were able to pin down a consensus; hipsters are people who listened to cooler music than you, dressed differently and in general were condescending.
According to Google’s dictionary a hipster is: “a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream.”
In regards to both definitions, the concept of a hipster is something applicable to any period of history. From Macaronis to Beatniks, “hipness”, the essence of hipsterdom, has always existed as a subculture.
But what’s the reason for the scorn and negativity associated with modern hipsterdom?
It all comes down to a sense of superiority. Hipsters, in the sense of the loosely defined meme floating around in the heads of Millennials, are associated with a greater socioeconomic status. Keeping up with trends, and involvement in obscure and oftentimes expensive hobbies, necessitates the need for a high level of disposable income.
People generally don’t take offense to those with disposable income if they’ve personally earned it. It’s difficult to believe that Joe Hipster wearing a beat-up Goodwill hoodie, a Pokemon backpack with arms bedecked in Spongebob tattoos or other obscure pop culture memorabilia could be a contributing member of society. A handlebar mustache doesn’t exactly scream fiscal responsibility or upper management. For many of these hipsters, their style and image is that of contrived poverty while at the same time possessing a decidedly unhip parental safety net or trust fund.
But what happens when the hip become mainstream?
Craft beer, vinyl and beards have all benefitted from an unforeseen explosion of interest. College students ride to class in their skinny jeans on their fixed gear bicycles as their messenger bags swing gleefully in the wind. Retro haircuts have become popular again, and 80s party vomit colors now adorn everything from clothing to iPhone cases.
Some of the most popular media consumed by college students are TV shows that are essentially case studies of hipsterdom. HBO’s Girls, IFC’s Portlandia and Comedy Central’s Broad City fill the collective conscious with images of so-uncool-they’re-cool celebrities. People revel in the irony, joblessness and all around apathetic refusal to comply with societal expectations.
Despite these shows utilizing hipsters as their focus, the same complaints associated with hipsters are also associated with Millennials as a whole. Our generation believes it has been screwed out of opportunities by parents, government or what have you, and utilizes this as a crutch and means to justify non-achievement. The internet-obsessiveness and neurosis regarding peer perception exhibited by these main characters reflect the unique and unprecedented social pressures put upon our generation by advent of constantly connected media and a wealth of freely available information. In our age, where anyone can buy anything, learn anything and talk to anyone, having an obscure or little known hobby lends a greater sense of identity compared to simply being one of the millions of nearly identical American college students.
Hipsterdom is dying. The activities associated with it have now become cornerstones and identifiers of Milennial culture. With this merger, it’s important to see most parts of hipsterdom as a reflection of our generation; our fears and phobias, and also our strengths. Hipsterdom is an abstraction of what it means to grow up in the first truly online generation.
There will always be those who exist on the fringes of society, and use their obscure knowledge and interests to justify a sense of superiority. Perhaps in a few years time, the term hipster will fade away completely, and the smug ones will once again be called what people have known them as for centuries; Assholes.
