"Why would they have "unambiguously" fallen into those categories? " Pragmatically, because they often _wanted_ to and designed their personas intentionally.

"Why would they have "unambiguously" fallen into those categories? " Pragmatically, because they often _wanted_ to and designed their personas intentionally. You seem to be arguing that visible signifiers of subcultures don't provide meaningful signal. I would disagree broadly, and specifically in that the I don't even consider "hipster" the "generic white dude." Beanies? plaid? At least where I grew up those were _very conscious statements_ and not just the median type of dress. As you say there are people who present as one thing who have tastes otherwise. I present nowadays as a metalhead but spend far more of my time listening to hip hop. But if someone called me a metalhead I'd probably go "there's some truth in that" and understand the connotations even if it's not 100%, and I see hipster similarly, whereas you seem to find it to have no signal whatsoever. The core of our difference seems to be whether "generic white dude" falls into hipster. I simply can't find that to be true. The aspects the wikipedia article call out, I've only found to be "norm" in places that would, again without malice, probably self-identify as "hipster", although there's a definite "grunge" overlap. (Seattle, Portland, Vermont, in my personal experience) My main point being, that does not even come close to describing the vast bulk of jeans wearing boring-tshirt-or-button down blue/white-collar loafer/sneaker wearing white dude that I've met over the course of my life. (And sanity checking myself with a glance down my 55 person teamroom :P) This may well end up being a "you live in a different bubble than I do" which I'm not about to argue or criticize. I just wanted to chime in from a music-nerd-often-accused-of-being-hipster's perspective; if only to speak for my friend group and myself, we find these terms to have inoffensive utility.