Hipster backlash

[Fido]

I was walking down some street in NYC today and passed a newsstand that posted an ad for TimeOut NY, the magazine.  The magazine cover in the ad showed a cover story called something like "Kill the Hipsters."  (I'm not sure it actually "kill them," but it was some similar anti-hipster headline.)  I have not read this TimeOut story, so I may be missing the point.

I thought to myself, what is the source of all this anti-hipster rage?  When and why did it become fashionable to rail against hipsters?  It seems like a kind of backlash -- but is it backlash against people who have cool haircuts, wear white belts and "vintage" tshirts or, a couple of years ago, trucker hats?  Or is hipster in this case a sensibility -- anything avant-garde and cool, including indie rock, indie movies and "hipster lit" (whatever that might be exactly), even expensive liberal arts colleges and cool urban "hipster" neighborhoods? 

I'm not as hip as I used to be, I'm pushing 40, and I don't dress the part of a hipster for sure, and I don't think I ever have.  Somehow, when I see hipster-bashing in the media, I still can't help feel like they're talking about people like me, and a sensibility I share with people who might take a certain pride in that label.  I admit to reading through "The Hipster Handbook" a couple of years ago and getting a few good laughs out of it, but also feeling like that book was a tongue-in-cheek description of people like me in certain respects.  And more than a few FOTs, for example.  I won't name any names, however.

Is there a class element to this anti-hipster sentiment?  An anti-intellectual quality to it?  Or neither of these at all?  At some point, it became a label that one might not want to be stuck with, and I'm wondering exactly why that happened. 

Somehow, this phenomenon reminds me of the time about 27 years ago that there was a kind of backlash against disco.  It was a swift but unmistakable development that in retrospect seems to have been led by white male rock-and-rollers who saw something in the enormous popularity of disco at the time that they just couldn't stand, e.g. the "disco demolition" rallies at Comiskey Park in Chicago.  This analogy might be reaching a bit, but I remember it well, and I was only in grade school then. 

I'm really curious if anyone on the board has similar thoughts, or feels that I'm all wrong about this. 

[Sarah]

So, Fido, you were Chris A. on the old board, yes?  If so or if not, someone using that moniker accused me of being a hipster there and then apologized when I didn't cotton to the label.  Indeed, an apology was later tendered in the chat.  So clearly this antihipster campaign has been irking you or someone for a while. 

I have to say, it doesn't bother me as much as it does you, largely because it feels so alien to me (my bridling at being called a hipster on the old board had more to do with surprise than offense, so far removed from that world do I feel).  But your discomfort reminds me of mine in the face of the universal hippy hatred that still reigns supreme.  I was never a hippy; in fact, back when they were actually admired, many found me rather square, since I dressed neatly, tucked my shirts into my trousers, and liked to wear a belt (all the better for whipping, you know).  But I do share some characteristics with the breed, and a part of me takes it rather more personally than I realize when universal contempt seems to be their only due.  And you seem to be suffering from a similar sensitivity.  Which I understand.

For me, I guess the word "hipster" evokes the image of someone deeply attached to his/her sense of distance and quick to make fun of people who don't recognize the god of irony.  By which definition, I am a hipster, I guess.  And so, I also guess, encountering hipster hate might make me feel a little defensive, too.

Luckily for me, it rarely crops in Lubec.

[Sploops]

[erika]

what is the source of all this anti-hipster rage? 

skinny jeans.

[Dan B]

hipsters hate being hipsters. which is weird.  so you're a hipster if you're above being a hipster basically.

[Fido]

But your discomfort reminds me of mine in the face of the universal hippy hatred that still reigns supreme.  I was never a hippy; in fact, back when they were actually admired, many found me rather square, since I dressed neatly, tucked my shirts into my trousers, and liked to wear a belt (all the better for whipping, you know).  But I do share some characteristics with the breed, and a part of me takes it rather more personally than I realize when universal contempt seems to be their only due.  And you seem to be suffering from a similar sensitivity.  Which I understand.

For me, I guess the word "hipster" evokes the image of someone deeply attached to his/her sense of distance and quick to make fun of people who don't recognize the god of irony.  By which definition, I am a hipster, I guess. 

Yup, I did post that comment.  I'm glad to see you weren't offended, because I meant it in jest, but for all I knew, you might be the total hipster package (whatever that might mean anyway).  In any event, it was all meant in fun.  

If hipster connotes "someone attached to his or her sense of distance and quick to make fun of people who don't recognize irony," then I stand accused as well, even though I don't manifest any of the outward signs of hipsterdom.  

I think you're on to something with the hippie analogy.  Anti-hippie sentiment does still persist, and I believe it's visible in the conservative/evangelical Christian narrative about perceived excesses of the 60s/70s era.  

[Gregory]

What bums me out about "hipsters" right now, and I tihnk what generates the hate, is their willingness to jump aboard any and every bandwagon, and then as soon as what they were "totally into" turns uncool, they're the first to denounce and make fun of it.

[bookem_dan-o]

I thought to myself, what is the source of all this anti-hipster rage?  When and why did it become fashionable to rail against hipsters?

What? You didn't know about this until now?!?

Sheesh...

[Sarah]

What bums me out about "hipsters" right now, and I tihnk what generates the hate, is their willingness to jump aboard any and every bandwagon, and then as soon as what they were "totally into" turns uncool, they're the first to denounce and make fun of it.

Isn't that funny.  In my definition--which is uncertain (see above), idiosyncratic, and no doubt wrong--a hipster would be more likely to see a bandwagon, pointedly refuse to board it, and sneer at anyone who doesn't do the same.  But maybe you're talking about very special, obscure bandwagons that give the illusion of limited seating; I could see hipsters clamoring to hop on those.

[John Junk]

When I was in NYC in 2002/2003 this phenomena seemed to reach its zenith/nadir with http://www.hipstersareannoying.com which is a blog devoted exclusively to cataloguing things you don't like about "hipsters".  The zeal of the anti-hipster sentiment is so strong it's almost disturbing.  Were hipsterism not such an amorphous and bullshit category, it would maybe be scary, like a blog devoted to exactly what someone doesn't like about gays or mexicans or something.  The real kicker of this website (which I've never really been able to read an entire page of) is the specifity of things that belies that the actual website, if not written by hipsters themselves, is certainly written by someone with an all-access-hipster-culture pass.  So are they a mole or do they really hate their friends and themselves that much?  Sightings at Enids, rooftops in Greenpoint, etc.---hey, if you're not a hipster, what are you doing on a rooftop in greenpoint?  Tarring it?

There's often two or three elements to hipster backlash.  Maybe four.  I'll try and list some:

1) Resentment by lower income families/people who hipsters supplant in the community.

2) Self-hatred by hipsters in denial that they are hipsters

3) Resentment by the higher income folks coming to supplant the lower income folks AND the hipsters, and who can't be seen to resent poor people and so take out their aggression on the middle-tier hipsters.

4) Resentment of aging hipsters who see their dumber/more attractive selves in the goofballs running drunk through the streets of the neighborhood they're trying to gentrify in a respectful matter (I think I'm heading toward this category myself).

Am I right?

[scotttsss]

For me (living in Oklahoma City) there's of course not a huge hipster "scene", but I too read the Hipster Handbook and found a lot of it funny.  It was clear that the book was written by people who would probably be classified as hipsters themselves, and I suppose that I too might have been lumped into that category when I was 18 or 19, as well as my friends...  I think that for me, what I find annoying about "hipsters" is the (as defined in the book) "Trust Fund Hipster"...  the guy or gal who goes to college or design school for more than a decade, drinking their morning coffee at 3 in the afternoon with bloodshot eyes, thinking about the troubled (jobless) life they lead on their parents' dime, apparently oblivious to the increasing number of degrees and or careers their friends have managed to obtain after working their way through school.  20 year old hipsters are just that, hip by default...shouldn't be blamed for that.   It's those who somehow manage to stay locked in a 20 year old mind frame well into their 30's, due to a (as Tom would say) "Richie Rich" background, who don't vote in elections, presidential or local, and who throw away empty organic milk cartons rather than recycling them, who get my ire up.  That and boycotting Wal Mart and Starbucks but shopping at Super Target as if their Chinese imports are more acceptable.. 

The reaction to hipsters is not an anti intellectual thing I think, it's an anti-cookie cutter, anti poseur thing.  It's like my reaction to This American Life... I like a lot of the content, but the way all their voices are the same ...it's unnerving.  The danger is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, similar to the anti Hippie sentiment, which is much more concrete and pervasive throughout the general culture, isn't it.  It's worse to stop recycling and stop supporting your local organic farmer because you don't like patchouli oil and there was once a hippie who stole your shoes at a party, than it is to stop listening to the Flaming Lips due to your disdain for trust fund hipsters...(that's what that anti-hipster website seems to be advocating, they're indeed intense haters...)

I think those of us who are annoyed by hipsters are generally annoyed by anyone unthinkingly fitting themselves into a typical standard of conduct.  We see in certain "hipsters" the same thing we see in the grinning Oprah audience, but in hipsters there's an even stranger obliviousness to how mainstream they truly are.  Like in 92' when I was 12 and bought a flannel shirt like Kurt Cobain had...  yeah well, I took it off when before I was 16, realizing my folly, seeing the prepackaged anti-establishment sentiment as silly..  so those of us who stopped being silly should give everyone else a chance too.  till they're 30 or more. come on guys.. 

[JP]

I like the hipsters because I am not afraid I am going to get beat up by them.

JP

[Laurie]

I like the hipsters because I am not afraid I am going to get beat up by them.

JP

Oh yeah? Ask Tom's grandma...

BIKE CULTURE NOT FOR SALE.

[Jason]

[youtube=425,350]lhAr_UeroCk[/youtube].

[Susannah]

Nathan Barley!!!!