What is a hipster?

[Dida]

And obligatory empty frame large glasses, but that's becoming a bit too mainstream nowadays I feel. And that's also gigantic with the asian community recently, and surely very few of them are "hipsters" (especially the studious asian teens as opposed to the skinny jean cigarette smoking asians).

post contains massive stereotypes, but I'm all for talking stereotypes.

The Asian nerds may have obligatory glasses, but they usually neither large nor empty frame. In the case of the Asians the glasses actually serve a function.

 

[Traitorfish]

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I like your comic Traitorfish But I have to add - I have a certain dislike for those male scarf-worshipers.
And on authenticity - in this context it to me means to not be stuck in any kind of group/non-group - thinking. Including being stuck in the opinion that one isn't stuck in such.

 

[Tahuti]

But wait, if hipster means liking alternative rock and indepedent cinema, doesn't that mean most of CFC are hipsters as well?

 

[MilesGregarius]

And obligatory empty frame large glasses...

Is that happening elsewhere as well? I teach high school English in Korea and see more and more of my students wearing frames sans lenses. I had assumed it was a Korean phenomenon, but Westerners doing it too?

 

[RobAnybody]

But wait, if hipster means liking alternative rock and indepedent cinema, doesn't that mean most of CFC are hipsters as well?

No, you can like alternative rock & independent cinema if you actually like it. It's only if you like it *because* it's alternative rock & independent cinema that you might be a hipster. If you don't like mainstream stuff *because* it's mainstream, you're probably a hipster.

It's the whole "different, like everyone else I know" mindset that causes hipsterdom. Also, scarves.

 

[Traitorfish]

No, you can like alternative rock & independent cinema if you actually like it. It's only if you like it *because* it's alternative rock & independent cinema that you might be a hipster. If you don't like mainstream stuff *because* it's mainstream, you're probably a hipster.

Then half the metal fans I've ever met are "hipsters".

 

[Ergo Sum]

Wikipedia sums some pretty interesting analyses which are more critically minded than this thread/what you hear most people say about hipsters:

...in order to segment and co-opt the indie marketplace, mass media and marketers have engaged in commercial "mythmaking" and contributed to the formation of the contemporary discourse about hipsters.[4] [the authors] substantiate this argument using a historical discourse analysis of the term and its use in the popular culture, based on Arsel's dissertation that was published in 2007. Their argument is that the contemporary depiction of hipster is generated through mass media narratives with different commercial and ideological interests. In other words, hipster is less of an objective category, and more of a culturally- and ideologically-shaped and mass-mediated modern mythology that appropriates the indie consumption field and eventually turns into a form of stigma. Arsel and Thompson also interview participants of the indie culture (DJs, designers, writers) to better understand how they feel about being labeled as one. Their findings demonstrate three strategies for dissociation from the hipster stereotype: aesthetic discrimination, symbolic demarcation, and proclaiming sovereignty. These strategies, empowered by one's status in the indie field (or their cultural capital) enable these individuals to defend their field dependent cultural investments and tastes from devaluating hipster mythology. Their work explains why people who are ostensibly fitting the hipster stereotype profusely deny being one: hipster mythology devaluates their tastes and interests and thus they have to socially distinguish themselves from this cultural category and defend their tastes from devaluation. To succeed in denying being a hipster, while looking, acting, and consuming like one, these individuals demythologize their existing consumption practices by engaging in rhetorics and practices that symbolically differentiate their actions from the hipster stigma.[4]

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Interesting stuff, goes well with Traitorfish's cartoon.
And let's all those hipsters-haters look like idiots.

 

[Quackers]

Hipster haters look like idiots how?

 

[Traitorfish]

If "hipsters" are something that exist only insofar as they are denigrated- if the hipster is by definition a reviled being- then "hipsters" are basically a grandiose strawman. And people who get worked up about strawmen are generally idiots.

 

[Quackers]

..they are not a strawman though are they? Anyway I don't think many people properly "hate" hipsters, only in internet land. I do think their whole fashion stuff looks crap tho

 

[Tahuti]

..they are not a strawman though are they? Anyway I don't think many people properly "hate" hipsters, only in internet land. I do think their whole fashion stuff looks crap tho

They are. I mean, how are you going to distingiuish those who wear scarves, listen to alt. rock and watch independent cinema because they sincerely like these from those who like these to be cool?

 

[Ergo Sum]

They are. I mean, how are you going to distingiuish those who wear scarves, listen to alt. rock and watch independent cinema because they sincerely like these from those who like these to be cool?

How do you even separate those two notions? I don't think it's at all clear that human action is either 'genuine' or 'fake', because human reasoning is clouded by all sorts of social phenomena. The consumption of certain kinds of cinema or music simply cannot be taken out of the cultural milieu in which it's situated, and we can't help but make decisions knowing the social meaning of our actions. Whether what you're doing is fashionable or unfashionable you're taking account of others' opinions in your consumption habits.

 

[Algeroth]

They are. I mean, how are you going to distingiuish those who wear scarves, listen to alt. rock and watch independent cinema because they sincerely like these from those who like these to be cool?

Talk to them for ten minutes?

 

[aronnax]

Last week, I saw a man wearing thick framed glasses, a fedora, completely decked out in winter overcoat and scarf.

I live in the TROPICS.
How much of an attention 'horse' do you have to be do that?

 

[Traitorfish]

How do you even separate those two notions? I don't think it's at all clear that human action is either 'genuine' or 'fake', because human reasoning is clouded by all sorts of social phenomena. The consumption of certain kinds of cinema or music simply cannot be taken out of the cultural milieu in which it's situated, and we can't help but make decisions knowing the social meaning of our actions. Whether what you're doing is fashionable or unfashionable you're taking account of others' opinions in your consumption habits.

All that demonstrates is that the hipster is not only a nonsense in its positive form, as the pretentious, irony-laden snob, but in its negative form, as the opponent of the authentic, unselfconsciousness appreciator. The two, if you'll permit the Hegelianism, are a totality; neither exists, can exist, without the other. And as you imply, neither exists. So where does that leave us?

 

[Ergo Sum]

All that demonstrates is that the hipster is not only a nonsense in its positive form, as the pretentious, irony-laden snob, but in its negative form, as the opponent of the authentic, unselfconsciousness appreciator. The two, if you'll permit the Hegelianism, are a totality; neither exists, can exist, without the other. And as you imply, neither exists. So where does that leave us?

Well both negative and positive forms of the hipster exist to the extent that people lend these ideas credence, and perpetuate cultural-economic trends while deluding themselves into a false sense of authenticity, in so far as 'authenticity' has the same Hegelian existence as 'hipster.' Authenticity as a cultural currency has been unmoored from any self-conscious aesthetic or ideological movement, which in the past defined itself by exclusion (punk vs. mainstream, hippies vs. silent majority, etc.).

In the past the production of authenticity passed from the countercultural object (ex: black working class) to counterculture participant (ex: beatnik) to commercialized counterculture (ex: beatnik/hippy fashions marketed in the 60s and 70s). Nowadays the production of authenticity is reversed: commercial capital constructs the notion of the hipster from the ambient culture to market their new fashions and aesthetics; the countercultural participant amply partakes in the consumption patterns dictated by commercial capital, and become the hipsters we see walking down the street; and the countercultural object, wider society, takes offense at these 'hipsters' for 'bastardizing' authentic culture, i.e. that which belongs to them. The hipster is indicative of the wider trends of the estrangement of production from the subject in postindustrial, or, to use a similarly ridiculed word, postmodern, Western society.

 

[mayor]

I became a hipster when it became mainstream

 

[Kennigit]

The Asian nerds may have obligatory glasses, but they usually neither large nor empty frame. In the case of the Asians the glasses actually serve a function.

I should clarify not empty framed; but I see plenty of people my age/enrolled in my university with large square filled frames (not necessarily the ridiculously large square frames, and they are used as actual glasses, but it's more fashionable). It's not just large glasses like 70's style, and it's distinctly square.

it'd be like this:

Spoiler guy in middle :

[korean starcraft 1 players]

Spoiler girl version; not actually square glasses :

this is empty framed I think

as opposed to:

Spoiler "70s" :

Both those examples are koreans in South Korea, but I see enough similar-type in my classes/around my campus.

Is that happening elsewhere as well? I teach high school English in Korea and see more and more of my students wearing frames sans lenses. I had assumed it was a Korean phenomenon, but Westerners doing it too?

It's mainly just large square glasses of various [asian] students at my university, who probably need glasses and the fashion is changing a bit. Many people at my school are either foreign born or have lived abroad some, so it's not really westerners with the fashion. Plus I'm actually biased since I see consume some korean media, and know koreans who watch korean tv shows.