What is a hipster?

[Terxpahseyton]

I think the start may have been people who are extraordinarily devoted to setting trends rather than following them. So they are not really against popular culture (like some hippies or other "alternatives"). They wanted no fundamental alternative. Rather, they wanted to create their own popular culture. In part, by being ironic about existing popular culture (mustache, weird looks). In part, by just being creative (weird looks). In part by being just non-mainstream (bands no one knows).
And when this took off - more people joined it and muddled until it was just one of those youth trends.

That said, I never met anyone who fits this stereo-type. I only know them from the Internet. Not saying that I have not encountered the usage of the word in RL. But I did so in a different sense. From my own experience, there is this fun stereo-type of the hipster and then there is calling actual people hipster which just connotes that such people are overtly style-orientated or overtly focused on seeming cool.
And then hipster also seems to just mean a colorful stylistic retro look (hipster glasses).

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well, that isn't really a definition.

What do you make of my claim that they can't be defined (in themselves), and only exist as one (non-substantive) node in a system of mutual disparagement?

 

[Traitorfish]

Interesting, but doesn't resolve the issue of why Pabst Blue Ribbon, pseudo-working class apparel and fixed gear bicycles are identified more specifically the stereotype of the "hipster".

 

[Farm Boy]

Isn't there a 'keepin it real undertone frequently present? As in, I can be stylish no matter what crap I'm drinking or whatever cheap clothes I put on? That, given the 'ironic' vibe in tandem, is possibly one of the reasons people who drink relatively cheap beer(which now costs more than it did) and shop at the Salvation Army as a matter of course find 'hipsters' to be such enormous jackarses?

 

[Kyriakos]