What is a hipster?

[Traitorfish]

(All these political threads are getting me down, so let's bicker about something good and frivolous instead.)

We're all familiar with the term "hipster". Most of us probably have some sense of what it means, but can we translate this into a clear definition? We can describe characteristics which we associate with hipsters, stereotypical hipster pastimes or affectations, but what makes these indicative of hispsterism, or even just hipsterishness?

Many of the most prominent stereotypes aren't unique to hipsters, and are traditionally associated with other subcultural groups- punks love obscure bands, hippies are vegan, classic rock fans insist upon the superiority of vinyl- but are taken as solid proof of hipsterism, provided we believe that their practitioner is already a hipster.

What prompts me to ask is that I recently hear somebody complain about "Starbucks hipsters", which puzzled me. Surely "[major chain shop]" and "hipster" are contradictions in terms? But perhaps not everybody has that understanding of "hipster"?

I leave it to the floor.

 

[ParkCungHee]

(All these political threads are getting me down, so let's bicker about something good and frivolous instead.)

We're all familiar with the term "hipster". Most of us probably have some sense of what it means, but can we translate this into a clear definition? We can describe characteristics which we associate with hipsters, stereotypical hipster pastimes or affectations, but what makes these indicative of hispsterism, or even just hipsterishness?

The most concise definition I've been able to come up with is a hipster is someone who believes culture is a finite resource.

 

[Kyriakos]

 

[Cheetah]

Didn't we have a thread like this earlier?

Anyway, I didn't get very enlightened by that one, and I don't think I'll be very enlightened by this one either. It appears to me that we can no more define 'hipster' than we can define 'race'... It always seems to end up in some type of 'true Scotsman' fallacy.

 

[Kyriakos]

'True scotsman' is a hipster expression.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Yeah. Back in the day, fourscore and a half, we used "no true Roman". But now ya'all are derailing this.

 

[NovaKart]

I think it's like pornography; hard to define but you know it when you see it.

 

[Old Hippy]

"I was drinking starbucks coffee before it existed"

 

[downtown]

This picture usually enters the discussion:

 

[Mise]

Link to video.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I don't know how to define one, but I have it on good authority that there's nothing so pathetic as an aging one.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I have this suspicion that the hipster-phenomena is related to male fashion moving closer to the complexity of female fashion (case in point: scarfs) while fashion in general gets more "sophisticated" (just look at pics from the recent past).
But because not everyone follows this trend to the same length - if at all - the style and fashion universe becomes a bigger continuum of different levels of sophistication/complexity.

And this larger continuum gives rise to the "hipster relativity" effects as described in downtown's post.

 

[Mise]

Also, Nathan Barley. If you can find the Charlie Brooker fake reviews of fake Nathan Barley's fake TV show (the name of which I can't post as it is widely regarded as the most offensive 4 letter word in the English language), then you're in for a treat.

 

[Old Hippy]

I don't know how to define one, but I have it on good authority that there's nothing so pathetic as an aging one.

oh so true

 

[Kyriakos]

This picture usually enters the discussion:

That was excellent.

I only wish i knew who the capped and pipe-smoking unicorn called a hipster.

 

[Gori the Grey]

By the way, I think the comic should work in reverse too. One element of hipsterism is assuming an air of haughty superiority (like the meme-guy who knows the Greek word for schadenfreude), a one-ups-manship regarding what's really cool.

All the people in the line should be facing the opposite direction, and their captions should read "hipster? <scoff>"

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Link to video.

Great one.

 

[Kyriakos]

Jaden Smith, known philosopher and actor, against nepotism.

 

[Borachio]

To like something because you like
it is commonsense.

To like something because other people like it is following the fashion. (Possibly because you don't know what you like.)

To like something because other people don't like it (or to dislike things simply because they're popular) is what a hipster does.

(This is old hat. Probably a fedora/trilby.)

Hipsters think they have "taste".

(I'm guessing really. The original hipster, to my mind, was Lord Buckley, but this isn't anything to do with the modern sense of the word. And no one else seems to have heard of him.)


Link to video.

Yay! Here come the Nazz! Cool as anyone you ever seen. The sweetest, gonest, wailinest cat that ever stomped on this sweet, swingin' sphere.

A most immaculately hip aristocrat, Lord Buckley was the epitome of comedy cool; a one-time vaudeville performer and a hulking ex-lumberjack, he was a comic philosopher, a bop monologuist whose vocalese fused the rhythms and patois of the street with the arch sophistication of the British upper crust to create verbal symphonies unparalleled in their intricacy and dexterity. A comedian who didn't tell jokes and a word-jazz virtuoso riffing madly on the English language, Buckley combined the frenetic intensity of Beat poetry with the lessons and moral heft of Biblical tales and historical discourse; holding court over the hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies of the postwar era, he was a true visionary, the original rapper.

 

[Samson]

The way it was explained to me was it was people with the social responsibility / environmental awareness of yuppies and the personal grooming standards of hippies.