There are many blogs with themes surrounding what I’m about to talk about. It being a subject that is so intertwinned with blogging and social media itself, to the point of convolution. But in an attempt to gain objectity while talking about a cultural phenomena that people love to hate, I’ll give my take on it based on what I’ve learned in this class. Hipsters in and of themselves are not the issue, the reasoning for the antimosity is the hypocrisy; how a cultural group supposedly abhors the mainstream and patriarchy of corperate culture and lives in a green friendy way, but recives most of it’s enjoyment out of “things”, and any identifier of a hipster includes having in their possession Starbucks, Apple products and any other myriad of status symbols that people use that are in fact master symbols by the re-use of them re-enforcing their legimacy.
As I discussed in the previous blog that referenced yuppies from the 80′s and their life being a dedication to capitalism and concumer patterns being almost one and the same with their identity formation, it is important to note that every generation has had some sort of “hip” group of people. From the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, rich offspring of the Edwardian era with a lust for the avant garde, to the beatniks of the 1950s, the playing out of identity as a show is nothing new. The difference is that instead of “doing art” the cool kids are now, in Mark Greif’s words “doing products”. As a New York English professor he had analyzed hipsters and post 2000 culture on many levels. He states that the “hip consumer”: the smart shopper, is one who understands that some consumer purchases, such as the right vintage T-shirt, might even be regarded as a form of art. They even split the term, drawing a distinction between the trucker-cap-wearing New Yorkers of 1999-2003, and a more recent type of cool kid, keen on such low-tech status symbols as typewriters, fixed-wheel bikes, and the kind of outdated instrumentation used on records by Arcade Fire, Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear.
“What is meaningful about the hipster moment, 1999 and after,” says Greif, “is that it seems to be an effort to live a life that retains the coolness in believing that you belong to a counter-culture, where the substance of the rebellion has become pro-commerce.”
“In the 50s and 60s, there are five people at the centre working very hard, miserably trying to write a book and around them there are 95 people more or less having fun,” Greif explains. “In the hipster culture the people at that centre aren’t necessarily producing art, they’re actually working in advertising, marketing and product placement. These were once embarrassing jobs. Now it’s meaningful in this world to say that you sell sneakers, at a high level.”
Part of why this cultural cliche is different is based on the facade of bohemian but this is facilitated by proper and careful of certain fashion following, opinion sharing and conduction of your life in a way congruent to the style. The evolution of hipster from 1999 onward follows an interlaced trend with the unfolding of new media. Perhaps it’s the natural evolution on narcism. The more connected, knowledgeable, having the look, and being know you are, most specifically while making it seem like you spend no effort, and most specifically, like you don’t care, the more you are regarded. The ability to say i’m better than you is still there, just for different reasons.
References:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/14/hate-hipsters-blogs
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