Hipster Straw Men

[28 September 2009]

While hipsters make an easy scapegoat for the trivialization of our culture, they are merely a symptom of a fractured, niched, and disjointed culture.

By Adam Clair

I get it. Hipsters are easy to pick on. It can be tough to look at someone wearing skinny jeans and a keffiyeh and not assume he’s vegan, owns a fixed-gear bike, and refreshes Pitchfork hourly. Such stereotypical hipsters, decried everywhere from Time to Time Out and lampooned regularly on blogs like Hipster Runoff and Look at This Fucking Hipster, are deplorable. They sneer and sardonically bemoan everything you hold dear without standing for anything themselves. They destroy culture. Et cetera. But they also probably don’t really exist.

The hipster archetype is at best a broad generalization and at worst a straw man for people to direct their own insecurities about being “cool.” I mean, come on.

But let’s talk about these people who meet some of the hipster criteria, which no doubt owe at least partially to reality: those who sip PBR at Wavves concerts, wearing their thrift-store flannel, discussing the latest Wes Anderson movie and why his earlier stuff is more authentic. None of these things are bad in the abstract. After all, everyone is entitled to personal taste.

What we find irksome about the people we imagine fit the stereotype is that they’re all so damn ironic.

The irony, intensified to such a volume, is so detrimental because it not only strips the meaning from the things we hold dear (by coopting and thereby mocking everything we value), it does nothing to offer an alternative. Hipsterdom is, in its purest form, harmful because of how acridly ironic it is, deconstructing not in a Dadaist attempt to make sense of things, but simply because it’s cheap. It’s so much easier to knock things down than to hold something up yourself.

But those who decry this hipster are guilty of the same thing: identifying problems without suggesting solutions. It’s iconoclasm at its worst. Tearing down elements of culture can be valuable, but the zeitgeist is not a zero-sum game; that is, countering the hipster critiques doesn’t cancel them out and in fact only intensifies the acrimony on both sides. Hipsters (among others) add to our cultures’ vapidity, but so do their critics.

And hipsters have plenty of critics—perhaps most of all their self-loathing selves. In addition to the aforementioned links, there is a ceaseless flow of poptimism plied by legions of Klostermanites and the Idolator set in direct response to the different-for-the-sake-of-it fetishizing of your everyday hipster, championing the opinion of the masses. These people are, for the most part, wrong. The monoculture is dying if not completely dead, and it’s becoming increasingly harder to track. Pop culture is simply too nuanced anymore to make any sort of broad analysis of how or why anything is popular, and for a variety of reasons, it’s become overwhelmingly difficult to even tell if anything is popular. Album sales and box office numbers indicate only how much money a record or movie brings in; given the myriad ways to get media without paying for it, these numbers indicate nothing culturally. For every person who bought a copy of the bestselling A Million Little Pieces, or the worse-selling A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez, another thousand knows who James Frey or Selena Roberts is.

That is, how many people pay for or own in some way a CD, movie, book or what have you is culturally less important than how many people simply know about it, and those numbers are decreasingly correlative. When everything is everywhere, there can be no dominant trends.

So without a monoculture, how can there be a counterculture? Counterculture is born out of the need for a minority to rise up against a dominant majority, and it cannot really function without an antithesis. With nothing to contradict, it seems empty. So the counterculture that exists today, if we can even call it that, has nothing against which to rebel: Our society is too fractured, niched, and disjointed to find any one thing that can be deemed truly significant. The cultural marketplace—and as important, the means for distribution—is oversaturated to the point that nothing can be truly pervasive.

Thus, everyone is in the minority, held down but without a monolithic scapegoat to blame. Everyone feels the need to criticize something, but they have no idea what that something is, or if there is a something at all. So the criticisms are hurled aimlessly, not at all curbed by the snarkosphere that is the internet, where only the rancor and virulence survive.

What we admit to liking is as important as what we actually like, and everyone secretly knows this. But the very social networks that offer to keep us connected simply build walls, contributing to a disconnectedness in which any sort of monoculture is impossible. Because of how much time we spend obfuscating ourselves from one another through the digital dressing screens of Facebook, Twitter, et al., we live in a world increasingly fraught with manipulation and interpersonal artifice. We all do it—it’s just that hipsters are among the most overt about this, outwardly and explicitly manipulating their image while few others are bold enough to acknowledge this.

Of course, the popist counter-counterculture is complicit in this too, which in turn sparks a counter-counter-counterculture (of which I suppose this piece is a part), and it quickly devolves into a fiat call-and-response recursivity that’s about as productive as the discourse found in YouTube comments. Everyone is mad at everyone but themselves, basically, so it makes sense that the harshest of criticism is hurled at those who often criticize the loudest.

We all feel like we’re being held down, and perhaps more importantly, we want to feel like we’re being held down, because it offers an excuse for our insufficiencies, our anxieties and our insecurities.

But we’re not being held down, really. And in realizing that these fetters are mostly imaginary, we can rise above the criticism levied by every other pseudo-imprisoned sucker with a laptop and actually create something new, as opposed to merely destroying the old. With how rapidly our culture is evolving, censure is a waste, since by the time your complaint is levied, it’s already an anachronism. Defining ourselves solely by what we’re against—be it inauthenticity or authenticity or something else entirely—is no definition at all.

 
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Comments

On the contrary, I am hyper-aware that the popular consciousness has fragmented to the point where no “pop” music is actually popular. (Not to accuse you of straw-manning, but, um, do you actually read the site? Because I tend to mention this point at least twice a day.) But I would much rather listen to a glossy pop track than a piece of music designed for the white / overeducated / urban knowldege-worker set.

Comment by maura — September 28, 2009 @ 6:50 am

Couple of comments: First, I think there’s an element of personal cowardice in the whole hipster stance—the “irony,” or I would say the universal unseriousness is just a way of shielding themselves from any enduring sort of moral, intellectual or aesthetic commitments. One of the things hipsters need to do is buck up and take the chance on being wrong about something.

The hipster phenomenon bears a lot of resemblance to the high school clique for a reason (the generalized hostility to outsiders, the bitchiness, the tight mutual support group)—because it is. Only there are thousands of them cut from the same cloth, more or less.

Second, the “vapidity” of out culture has been around for a long time. There really is no alternative. The flip side of having a culture that can tolerate a wide range of religious and cultural practices and assimilate people from all corners of the earth is having cultural with pretty minimal, mostly generic content.

What this culture does is to severely handicap medium-sized group identities, which are always either fraying badly at the edges or policed with ridiculous self-consciousness. Which makes these identities either disposable or pathological. This is more or less the “atomizing” effect so long observed by cultural critics—you are really thrown back on yourself.

Comment by Oran Kelley from 49684 — September 28, 2009 @ 7:18 am

It’s true that our culture is so highly fragmented and largely vapid that it’s hard to tell what’s “authentic” and what isn’t. Well-argued, I suppose. But the conclusion - get over yourself and “make something new” - seems to me naive and counter-intuitive, and maybe just foundational to the very cultural problem.

Is artistic creation really the answer? Is it even truly possible, in such a confused milieu? It seems to me that clinging to the holy idea that we’re all creating something or are at least capable of it (whether we’re hipsters, populists, or something in between) is precisely what pins us inescapably to the cultural downward spiral being decried here. On some certain level, we all have to find a way to justify our self-interested hedonism to others, if not also to ourselves. The idea that we’re all made to be artists or activists of some stripe by what we say and do is a pretty potent method of justification.

Of course, the obvious response to this is, “What’s your solution, then?” If I had one, I’d either be filthy rich (or just as poor and ignored as I currently am, more likely). I appreciate that after criticizing those without solutions that you felt compelled to provide one, but I’m just not sure it does much more than return us to the start of the race.

Comment by Ross — September 28, 2009 @ 10:03 am

Ehhh…  More of the same.  I think the bigger myth around hipsters and their critics is that the overwhelming majority of people care, or are even aware, of the whole ‘hipster situation’.  This “feud” and the myriad (and almost always overblown) claims about the meaning of hipsters and their impact on the world at large is the epitome of a small but vocal group of cultural mavens having a largely insular dialogue that they feel actually means much of anything to the vast majority of people in the country..  The third person inclusive ‘we’ is used a lot in this article, but I feel that the author’s claims are far more limited than that pronoun suggests.  I contend that the vast majority of people (‘we’) are far less concerned about our tastes and what they mean to others than Mr. Clair seems to realize.  I myself am completely open about my likes and dislikes, and even when I realize they may lack some sort of ‘coolness’,  I really don’t care.  Then again, I’m thirty-three: I have a strong enough sense of identity that I don’t feel the constant need to be the epitome of ‘cool’ at any given moment.  Judging by most people my age, I’m not alone.  Grown-ups simply have more important issues to worry about than how hip they are at all times, or whether others perceive them as too hip or not hip enough.  From my observations, the ‘hipster phenomenon’ (assuming there even is such a thing) is just a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings trying on new fashion styles and working out issues of self-identity, which is something young people have been doing for centuries.  However, in the internet age, new content must be discussed and written about with immediate speed, and as a result, bloggers and self-important pop culture critics (like Mr. Clair) have gotta find something to crank out.  Thus, we get a small group of people tearing out their hair in an attempt to ascertain the ‘meaning’ of the hipsters.  In a year, I’m guessing we’ll look back on this and laugh at what a waste of time, thought, and words it all was.

Comment by The Big Crunch from D.C. — September 28, 2009 @ 10:24 am

Don’t you think it is rather naive to assume that the “overwhelming majority of people” actually matter, when, by your own testimony, they are far too busy to do anything but lamely and disinterestedly follow along with whatever is laid out for them by some small group or other?

Witness: practically anything in pop culture, which thrives NOT because of its inherent interest of quality, but because the “overwhelming majority” perceive that the overwhelming majority are interested, and so they ought to be as well.

If it weren’t for interventions like this one, everyone would have gotten way too hip by now.

Comment by Oran Kelley from 49684 — September 28, 2009 @ 11:27 am

Hipsters, jeepsters, losers, weepers- they’re all just names we use to identify social trends and behaviors.

In the ‘40 and ‘50s, ‘hipster’ bore a positive connotation because those labeled were actively bridging differences between black and white. Today, ‘hipster’ bears a negative connotation because it stands for cultural posing at its most shallow.

In the ‘40s and ‘50s, people were proud to be hipsters. Today, people are not. And there’s the rub.

Like any group tagged with a negative term, those who are ‘hipsters’ feel that they must either a) deny they are hipsters, b) claim everyone is a hipster, or c) claim ‘hipsters’ don’t exist.

Let’s take this one by one:

A) Denial- Very simple. “I am not a hipster!” OK, you’re not. Good for you.

B) Everyone is a hipster- Least intelligent defense. 95% of America doesn’t know what a hipster is. Pretty hard for that many people to be something whose very characteristics they could not articulate.

C) ‘Hipsters’ don’t exist- can be easily refuted. Last Saturday night I went to the Death show at Empty Bottle. There was a noticeable percentage of people who all dressed and behaved very similarly. Sociologists group like individuals and label them. The label we as a society have come up with is ‘hipster’. If you don’t like the label, leave the group. Fairly simple.

Hipster (today)- 1. n. an individual who seeks to attain status by following indie culture trends closely in music, fashion, and technology while actively avoiding depth in any one topic. Their lives are lived in the immediate moment. Anything beyond their own life and experience is ignored. History, in their own terms, is ‘fail’.
2. n. copier of many, master of none.

Comment by Michael Brett from Evanston, IL — September 28, 2009 @ 11:30 am

Oh awesome, another one of these. Listen, I’ll be up front with you, I probably look like a classifiable hipster (as I’m sure a very large minority of popmatters readership does as well - wouldn’t at all be part of the reason for so many of these cultural exposes lately, no?) and yes, I would bristle at the word if it was applied to me. However, it doesn’t take a sociologist to realize that the “hipster” is certainly a definable social group that has sprung up over the past decade and a half.

Lets go over some of the basics that are often completely overlooked in these sort of articles.

1. “Hipster”, at least used in the past few decades, has almost always been applied pajoritively. Even before the modern-day hipster came about, the term was usually used to signify a try-hard or a goof. Who would ever embrace such a term for themselves? Even if it is not used or meant pajoritively, its basically staight-up admitting that you think you’re “cool”. Even my great grandmother knows the “cool” don’t admit to such things, they just are. She remembers James Dean.

Thus, it is no wonder that in the void created by the “hipsters” lack of a desire to apply a sociological name for their “group” (as that comes from a mostly genuine desire to reach a bit beyond easy categorizations), that others did so for them (and for a number of reasons, the name wasn’t going to be “the awesome kids”).

2. It seems obvious to me that many who bandy about the “hipster” term, use so to hide their own insecurity. We get it, you either weren’t invited or are ten years too old to be at the post-high school cool kid cafeteria table (or perhaps, hopefully, you didn’t care to sit there anyway). How dare these kids be young and self-consciously fabulous and good looking and doing drugs and enjoying their supposed prime of their lives! Listen, a tremendous amount of the criticism of these things is completely warranted, valid, reasonable etc…but lets be serious, a large strain of the loathing is your garden variety jealousy.

Comment by sean — September 28, 2009 @ 12:29 pm

It’s the unfriendliness that kills me, and when someone is wearing something cool, the unfriendliness automatically makes them appear self-righteous, financially supported by their parents, and not all that creative despite doing 10 creative things for a “living.”

Where does this stereotype come from? My own insecurities, or the nagging sense that no one in my generation actually gives a shiz about each other?

I mean, take shows, for example (who came up with that word?) People never seem to be having a good time at these things. Why? Are they sad they aren’t up there on the stage themselves? Do they have social anxiety disorders? Do they think it’s some kind of competition? I have no idea, but in the show setting and many others, it’s necessary to realize that the attitude is contagious. Act like a sulky Beacon’s Closet-hoarding biatch and you’ll be faced with none other than 1000 sulky Beacon’s Closet-hoarding biatches or dudes whose expressions seem to say, “I have back-end access to a secret Pitchfork sub-site where all the real opinions, grades and Best New Musics actually exist; the site is just a front to fool you all!”

Greet a stranger with a smile, on the other hand, and say, “Don’t you love this band?” and you might find you’ve dispelled the hipster myth in one fell swoop. Hipsters don’t really exist, but a certain aesthetic that can be called hipster does, and a certain attitude called self-preservation, shyness, or self-consciousness has too often been mistaken for snobbery, holier-than-thou scowls, and I-have-their-whole-back-catalog cold-shoulderisms.

Comment by Liz Colville from Brooklyn — September 28, 2009 @ 1:17 pm

The only thing that hipsters do that bothers me is how they all dress alike. You can’t step outdoors in NY without seeing a gaggle of them.

Comment by Bob — September 28, 2009 @ 1:34 pm

beyond the fashion aspect of “HIPSTERS”, anyone that can convince themselves that Wolf Parade are actually a decent band should check themselves.

Comment by laramee from saskatoon canada — September 28, 2009 @ 3:20 pm

Wow its interesting to have someone view the ‘hipster’ trend in a positive light. I might snicker from time to time at how over the top some people can get (I’m more of a hipster than you sort of deal) but for the most part I refrain for judgement. What I’m personally curious about is the reasoning and origins of this trend, its very different from anything I’ve seen… sort of seems like it has a bit of a punk background to it.

Comment by Kevin from Toronto ON — September 29, 2009 @ 6:55 pm

The “hipster doesn’t exist” argument is just as played out as the “I hate hipsters” argument. It’s a convenient rhetorical tactic to overlook some serious generational malaise. I guess all the irony and lack of self-awareness is a good way of keeping up appearances (and preventing people from starting riots).

Comment by Ethan Stanislawski from New York, NY — September 29, 2009 @ 11:56 pm

Really good article.  I’m going to go shoot a film now.  I think it’s going to turn out awesome.

Comment by august from los angeles, ca — October 1, 2009 @ 6:04 pm

<<Act like a sulky Beacon’s Closet-hoarding biatch and you’ll be faced with none other than 1000 sulky Beacon’s Closet-hoarding biatches or dudes whose expressions seem to say, “I have back-end access to a secret Pitchfork sub-site where all the real opinions, grades and Best New Musics actually exist; the site is just a front to fool you all!”>>

LOL. This is magnificent.

Comment by MURPH from DC — October 2, 2009 @ 9:35 am

Agreed and disagreed to a certain extent. While the idea of the hipster has certainly become a pejorative connotation to lay on someone, those of us who are/were involved in the indie community before it had “fans” who don’t make anything do tend to look at the indie followers in hipster garb with a jaded eye, much in the same way people in Seattle grew sick of seeing folks wearing flannel back in the 90s. It’s a case of people working hard to make something only to see it watered down. But products need consumers, so it’s not like a scene can build walls around itself. Subcultures aren’t fortresses and anyone is welcome, it’s just annoying that hipsters rarely give anything back but their money.

Comment by Kaya Oakes from Oakland, CA — October 3, 2009 @ 1:01 pm

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