The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same

by p4bl0 • 12 years ago

77 54 12 years ago

I find that this often comes from a very shallow understanding of a deep issue. This ardent noncomformity seems to occur when a problem is discovered, no one knows what to do about it, and it becomes "cool" to take an antithetical stance to its superficial faults.

For example, it's now "cool" to hate suburbia. Most of the kids in Williamsburg go on about how much they hate the suburban environment they grew up in. Now, there's a lot to dislike about the typical suburb: whether it's the low-quality and unattractive housing, the racism and classism behind it, the restructuring of life around child-raising that (paradoxically) results in it being done poorly-- kids are better socialized if their parents have adult friends who aren't all parents-- and finally the expensive environmental catastrophe of billions of unnecessary, pointless driving miles. And yet... hating suburbia is about as "suburban", in the negative sense, as it gets.

The hipsters are rebelling against middle-class conformity and insularity by taking attitudes and tastes from the lower and upper classes, often haphazardly without knowing what they're doing. It's a vote of no confidence in the old, mostly suburban, middle class... maybe it's also a bet on peak oil, and the unwinding of car culture is one thing I really like (but you don't need to be a hipster to ride a bike) but... mostly it's about class. The problem is that this rebellion strengthens many of the bad things that it seems to be fighting. Jersey suburbs may be out of style, but Williamsburg landlords are making out like bandits. No real change. On the whole, most of what's billed as "hipster culture" is just lame Cali suburb culture in an urban environment.

Retric• 12 years ago

Even in the 1950's plenty of people hated the suburbs. But when looking at larger trends you need to consider larger changes that made city living much more pleasant in comparison.

First a dramatic drop in crime. In many ways there were similar rates of criminals in the suburbs, but the lower density defused their impact. EX: Kids throwing rocks through car windows spend more time walking and less time destroying things in the suburbs. But the same applies to pickpockets or home invasions etc. Coupled with local reporting looking at the absolute numbers of crimes vs and ignoring the rate of said crime. (That's 5 blocks from here fells vary different than that's 20 miles from here.)

Second, dramatically increased air quality due to the loss of the manufacturing sector and improved pollution controls on cars.

PS: One of the more interesting ideas on urban renewal basically goes like this. The Gay community does not care about local schools and is willing to trade poor schools for cheaper housing. They raise the rates slightly and push out the poor population. Fewer kids and higher property taxes improve schools which attracts young people who further drive up rents pushing out the Gay community who don't care about schools. And the cycle continues. Crime rates can be dramatically different over just a few blocks, but having a stable buffer zone is very important. (You can substitute young people without kids in the model they serve the same function but they tend to spread out more diffusing the impact.)

coldtea2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure you got that right. Tons of hipsters in Sheattle, Portland (Portlandia, duh!), Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, etc. As in, downtown. And of course tons of them in London, Paris, Barcelona, Denmark, etc.

So why there might be suburban hipsters, hipsterism itself has nothing specific to do with the suburbs.

gohrt3• 12 years ago

Parent poster didn't say hipters live in suburbs. He said hipsters have a "suburban" mindset.

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

As in, downtown.

As in, not from here but moved here within the past few years from a comfortable middle-class existence in the suburbs or some small town, in the case of Chicago at least. Chicago has always been this way, though; any hip cultural history that it has had in the past 40 years was produced by people not from here (like New York.)

What's the most obvious indication that someone is not from Chicago? A tattoo of the Chicago flag.

azinman22• 12 years ago

Hipster is so overused that it's essentially meaningless at this point.

morley• 12 years ago

While the first part of your assertion is almost certainly true, I don't agree with the second part. The name explains what it is. A hipster is a person who's concerned with being hip.

thekingofspain• 12 years ago

I mean, that SOUNDS reasonable, but I can guarantee that that's not the definition that most people operate by. Which in turn seems to support the idea that the name is meaningless.

azinman22• 12 years ago

That's so inexact I still don't know if I should bother continuing this reply. So would a popular 8 year old who is into Paris Hilton be called a hipster? Is each of the real housewives a 'hipster'?

The term originated in the 40s in a very specific subculture, and of recent years has re-emerged with a new subculture that particularly originated out of New York. Wikipedia does an ok job [1] but obviously like any actual subculture entire books are written on it and even still won't fully capture the meaning the same as being integrated into it socially and authentically.

Hipsters themselves wouldn't consider themselves seeking to be hip -- that's something that an outside person such as yourself is labeling. In fact the hipster subculture is anathema against 'trying' to be 'anything.'

I'm remarking that at this point the term blends beyond the actual subculture so much that this random physics paper is using it to describe anything that isn't mainstream, as if hipster is the only subculture that exists outside of mainstream.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subcultur...

twic• 12 years ago

This is a brilliant theoretical advance. But it will remain a purely paper discovery until the experimentalists can confirm it. Accordingly, it is imperative that we immediately start construction of a high-energy hipster collider.

VLM• 12 years ago

"high-energy hipster collider"

We already have apple stores but we need data scientists to analyze the results. Perhaps a nosql database would help. Or a tattoo.

shitehawk2• 12 years ago

No one is going to think you are hip for having an iPhone, it is practically the default. A hipster needs to be different and possibly incur some difficulty, like wearing clogs, so Android is more appropriate.

JonnieCache2• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_derby

aepearson• 12 years ago

Just about spit my lunch out on the screen @ that. HAHAHAHAHA

stevewilhelm• 12 years ago

Burning Man?

guard-of-terra• 12 years ago

I think that hipsters are not about nonconformism but about being new normal. Old normal is boring and stupid but new normal is nice. Explains all the same look.

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

Exactly. The characterization of 'hipsters' as nonconformists ruins the mathematical metaphor for me. 'Hipsters' are simply conforming to a more attractive group, filled with better looking, younger people, more attuned to their own concerns, that are more interesting to them than their parents.

Actual nonconformists are both common and very dissimilar to each other. Most people know a few. They rarely take pride in their lack of conformity, but just can't seem to pick up on the music that everyone else is dancing to.

e40• 12 years ago

Bingo! Every generation needs to find their "thing" and this is theirs.

ctdonath• 12 years ago

Live long enough and you'll observe that "new normal" isn't new.

kelvin0• 12 years ago

For what it's worth, there is also a hilarious sample of the 'hipster' population in this Youtube video (Jimmy Kimmel 0:53 mark) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frjaQ17yAww Of course interviewees in this video are probably paid actors playing dumb, but boy it doesn't the stereotype ...

Isamu• 12 years ago

Actually the seeming paradox of nonconformity is because the term is misapplied.

It is mostly a rejection of the mainstream tribe, not all possible tribes. One is choosing not to conform with the mainstream, and so chooses some smaller niche.

It's not like they are trying to signal their otherness to every group they come across - this is how they signal their self-selected group.

And the term "hipster" is another "not my tribe" label.

gohrt3• 12 years ago

And in the modern Internet-driven society, with unlimited diversity of music, TV, entertainment, and games, there really isn't a "mainstream" culture any more.

Exenith• 12 years ago

Mainstream culture doesn't exist? That's hilariously wrong. Kanye West would like you to twerk to some Hunger Games and The Hobbit, and take a selfie on Snapchat while #hashtagging about it on Twitter. Just don't take a naked one like Jennifer Lawrence. And don't forget to catch The Big Bang Theory next Sunday! Isn't the Harlem Shake so last year? And Psy, oh my God, who listens to Gangnam Style anymore?

If you think mainstream culture doesn't exist, you're probably stuck right inside it -- or so far from it that you don't even realize it's there. Oh well, back to playing some CS:GO.

unitygain• 12 years ago

Agreed, and if we can also agree that there are likely varying amounts of cultural involvement and self-awareness in any broadly painted group of humans, I think this follows:

It seems the root cause and motivation of many people who get classified as "hipster," who aren't simply reacting to or against whatever is the prevalent culture around them, comes directly from this Internet-driven, information-saturated, always-on media environment. It also directly results from how identity politics and marketing are dovetailing to constrain peoples' ideas of self-agency. People performing whatever actions are considered "hipster" are doing so from a position of ambivalence toward being constrained in such a way. They are resisting categorization, specifically because 1) it seems to immediately lead to someone trying to sell you something based on limited or superficial evidence, and 2) because, like the above commenter mentions, there is no longer a "mainstream". It's dissolved into countless iterations of pastiche. The people who have seen this all happening have determined that they'd rather select from the detritus of cultures past, as it's all being recycled anyway, and not subscribe to ideologies beyond what interests them in the moment.

All this also comes off as quite superficial and easily derided. But beneath the derision, I think the loudest anti-hipster voices are upset that this kind of person doesn't seem to attach themselves to an Ideology. This must terrify some people.

wldcordeiro• 12 years ago

There still is a mainstream, it's the old vanguard. Things like the Billboard list artists, TV networks and pop culture celebrities (think Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Jay Z, Beyonce) are all part of what is considered mainstream. It may not be as culturally dominant as it was in the past but it does still exist.

typedweb• 12 years ago

I think it was in 'The Century for the Self' that described research in the 70's regarding the counter culture movements of the 60's. What they found was that there were a number of alternative cultures that the people not following the standard culture would adopt into (hippies, outdoorsy people, etc) to find like minded alternative individuals. They called each of these alt-cultures 'lifestyles' and found that although a majority of people claimed to be counter culture, there was only a small set of about 12 or so lifestyles that most of these people fit into.

I think 'hipster' is just one lifestyle under the above criteria.

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

I think hipster, at least in the modern sense, is an umbrella term for people who don't subscribe to the standard mainstream culture. There are outdoorsy hipsters, with expensive bikes and their own lingo, that are just as pretentious as the typical urban hipster with his fixie.

I tend not to equate the two, myself. In my mind a proper subculture differs from a lifestyle in that, typically, a lifestyle comes from above. A lifestyle tends to be given to us by Madison avenue. The outdoorsy guy gets his opinions from magazines and buys super expensive toys from mainstream sporting goods with large advertising budgets.

The urban hipster we usually decry, picks up fashion at the thrift store, whose second hand sale does nothing for Madison avenue's masters. Music choices, reading, etc comes from the trenches of like minded fans. Politics comes from, typically, marginalized outlets via books easily had at the library or second-hand book store. There's a real crowdsourcing element to traditional hipsterism. Sure, they're all wearing black and listening to the same 50 or so indie bands, but the crowd made that happen, not marketers. I think there's a real value there and this type of person is really the only socially acceptable avenue to curb, what I consider, mindless consumerism.

If anything, the internet and its ability to tie us all together has made us all urban hipsters to some extent. Now we're getting opinions from 1,000 people on goodreads, not the NYTimes reviewer.

trhway2• 12 years ago

hipster, at least in the modern sense, is an umbrella term for people who don't subscribe to the standard mainstream culture.

hipster is the standard mainstream culture today. Just look around.

the typical urban hipster with his fixie.

"i was biking fixie way before it was cool". 30 years ago in USSR the geared bikes were much less available even if you had money for it - it costs 130 rubles - 2/3 of an engineer's monthly salary vs. fixie costing "only" 64 rubles. Going uphill on a fixie i dreamed about unreachable gears :) With wide availability of geared bikes here biking a fixie in SF is a cool way to beat those self-whipping monks.

Another bunch of urban hipsters on fixies feeling cool :) http://english.people.com.cn/mediafile/200906/08/F2009060815...

jrs99• 12 years ago

do hipsters wear all black?

thecoffman• 12 years ago

I think you're overestimating the organic nature of "urban hipster" culture quite a bit. Its determined largely in a top-down manner like the other examples you've cited, just via different avenues. I would cite the rise of PBR[1] as an example.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2010/10/how-pbr-co...

johnchristopher• 12 years ago

Do `hipsters` claim themselves to be `hipster` ? So far it looks like, to me, from western europe, as a derogatory term for people seeking attention and following the beard-flanelle-piercing-glasses trend.

I can spot people following that trend on the street but I can't tell if they'd label themselves as hipsters.

Hippies, grunge, punks claim to be hippies, grunge or punks.

gaius• 12 years ago

Hipsters are people who appropriate bits of other subcultures, without paying their dues in those subcultures. A guy who went to art school supported by wealthy parents and now works in an office designing brand logos, will grow a beard and get sailor tattoos and wear the clothes of a manual worker, and he'll claim this makes him "authentic" - to anyone who'll listen, with the clear implication that he is superior to them in some inexplicable way.

That's why people hate hipsters - what they call irony is actually "being an asshole".

imgabe• 12 years ago

Hipster - noun, a fashionable person you dislike.

corysama• 12 years ago

They then used those classifications to market to people who were explicitly anti-consumerism. For example: Don't market cars, market jeeps. Cars are for squares who need to go to work for the man. When you get a jeep, you aren't buying into the system, man. You are attaining the freedom to get back into nature!

'The Century of the Self' is excellent. It explained to me how my commune-dwelling, sandals-made-from-old-tires wearing parents were converted back into happy consumers. It also cleared up a few other questions like: Why was the V-Chip was such a huge deal and then was suddenly forgotten?

Pay for it http://www.amazon.com/Century-Curtis-producer-Power-Nightmar...

Or not... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD989035A4E8883D

33W• 12 years ago

Or all in one go: http://vimeo.com/91200667

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

Many counter-culture folk are not seeking to be different for difference's sake. Counter-culture means against the dominant culture, not against all culture.

There are people who primarily seek to be different, and that can devolve into self-parody, but that is not the only kind of member of counter-culture.

bengarvey• 12 years ago

Anti-conformists aren't trying to be unique, they're trying to be different from you.

baldfat• 12 years ago

AS a former record label owner and recording studio of mostly Punk and hardcore music I say 100% it wasn't different. It was for the majority of people the desire of the same and acceptance.

Acceptance is the reason why anyone dresses (99% of the time) so if you dress this way to make certain people mad your doing it to be accepted by the people who are happy you did.

I just wore plain Levi's, Doc Martin shoes (Still do) and polo shirts. I stood out in the crowd and the pit as "The Old Guy". I was accepted by the tattooed and the pierced just the same as accepted by the main stream. Point being everyone just ends up fitting in somewhere that will accept them.

That's the reason people dress as "Nerds" and coders dress as coders and CEOs as CEOs.

DINKDINK• 12 years ago

These articles miss the point of "hipsters" being anticonformist in that "hipsters" aren't anticonformist, they are merely alternative. Meaning they're ok with someone having tatoos and giving you legal advice, that you can look atypical and not be a boogie-person.

It seems that either writers tend to ignore the rich history of counter-culture movements in the society (the beats, hippies, off-griders, Latter Day Saints, MOVE, Black Panthers, goths, punks, anarchists) or are simply ignorant of them.

eevilspock• 12 years ago

Quite right. Hipsters are far from genuine counter-culture.

Adbusters (the mag that sparked Occupy Wall Street) has a great piece on this: Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization. It's subtitle is Counterculture has mutated into a self-obsessed aesthetic vacuum, stripped of its subversion and originality.

https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

chrisBob• 12 years ago

I have always heard that no one self identifies as a hipster. Is there anyone here who can tell me how someone riding a fixie and wearing a hipster hat describes themselves?

JonnieCache2• 12 years ago

Thats the thing: everyone thinks of themselves as an individual, and others as types.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

To the extent I think the label means anything, my definition of it includes not being very thoughtful.

So there is a sense where following a trend is less thoughtful than doing something you like (but I also think pretending that you can know this when you see it is the worse thing).

So my usage of it wouldn't really expect self identification, it would be a (slightly) negative judgement of the person.

DubiousPusher• 12 years ago

Hipsters avoid labels and being labeled. However, they all dress the same and act the same and conform in their non-conformity. Doesn't the fact that there is a hip- ster look go against all hipster beliefs?

Wow, begging the question much?

justaman• 12 years ago

"Obey"

The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same

Related Stories