3 ms·

My use of the word "irony" referred, in particular, to the hipster phenomenon and the general "fuck it" attitude toward life and other people. I'm in the midst

by unalone 18y ago

My use of the word "irony" referred, in particular, to the hipster phenomenon and the general "fuck it" attitude toward life and other people. I'm in the midst of hipster friends. That's not how it works. First off, the "fuck it" attitude stems from nihilism. Some people are nihilist, some are idealist, some are a mix. Nihilism has existed for a while: see Sex Pistols for an instance of great art stemming from nihilism, and that was before the 80s. The idea of "hipster irony" comes not from jerkoffirony, but from a real dislike of social norms. I dunno if I've seen this stated before online, but this is how it works. You get very standard attitudes towards things. Liking Power Rangers becomes lame once you're in, say, middle school. Or listening to ABBA. At some point, a certain sort of person (I tend to identify it as the thespian crowd) decides you're allowed to say you like whatever you want. Some people get inspired by this to be honest to themselves. Other people do it ironically. It's like the punk movement was. Then, people ripped clothes and lived like animals to oppose society. Now punk is an accepted means, and hipsterism becomes the rejection of typical bounds. That's why hipster bands so often are acoustic or electronic in callback to the 80s, why many hipster artists sound really awful (Kimya Dawson, f'rinstance). It's because 80s sounds, while lame, still sound really catchy, and sometimes a bad singer fits the song. So think of it as new-generation punk. Hipsters wear t-shirts because they like the slogans on them. Eventually people do it just to look hip and so it becomes lame and overused, but the intent is to just do what you want to do. People miss that just like they missed what punk was about until it was accepted. So my friends wear corduroy pants and t-shirts and big jackets and listen to Fleet Foxes and the Decemberists and even read Pitchfork. We all occasionally say things ironically. It's not this wide circlejerk. It's a bunch of smart, witty people who think it's more fun to constantly be verbally dueling than it is to spout movie quotes like the Monty Pythonites do, and who like a wide variety of stuff because it all sounds good. Hipsters are good fun people who aren't ruining society. They also have less casual sex, so that's a good thing!

yters 18y ago
If its about just doing what you want to do, why are people who want to be like their friends mocked? That's all hipsters are doing to, its just more convoluted.
- unalone 18y ago
  If its about just doing what you want to do, why are people who want to be like their friends mocked? That's something every movement has done. Thinking musically, there've been "fake rockers" and "fake punkers" and "fake rappers". In high school society there are the poser cheerleaders and the poser emo kids and the poser writers and on and on. Hipsters mock everything. For every hipster I know, there's a great deal of cutting conversations. When I first met the group of hipsters I eventually friended, in sophomore year, I got insulted constantly and told to shut the fuck up after essentially everything I said, because I wasn't "saying the right things." Hipsters tend to always have the most comfortable niche of friends. The group I'm referring to has remained the exact same since 8th grade, adding a few people and losing practically nobody. I became "part of the group" my senior year; now I'm sitting in class next to one of those kids, and I'll likely keep in touch for a long, long time. Hipsterism is founded on diversity of interest and wit, and once those people find each other it's hard to separate them. On the flip side of that, it means they're very unwilling to expand their group, because it takes a very particular sort of person. And because their method of conversation is constantly nitpicking and criticizing, it comes across as mockery pretty easily. "Doing what you want to do" has limitations, as does everything. It's okay to say that you cried when you read the diary of Anne Frank. It's not okay to be against homosexuality; that implies a closed mind. It's okay to be religious, not okay to be preachy about it. You can't be boring; you can't be tasteless. Taste is the tricky thing. You're allowed to be awkward, or act different from what's expected - you can cry, for instance - but you can't like bands that demonstrate tastelessness in music. (Pachebel and Nickleback are both bad.) You can't like bad movies (Plan 9 is allowed, because it's fun to watch, Mac & Me is great, but Epic Movie is a no). And while in a lot of groups taste is semi-required, in hipsterism it's all that matters. That kinda rambled, so a summary: any hipster group is going to be closed to most outsiders, but the hipster scene is allowed to be nice and sensitive, which is a good thing. The problem is that a lot of fakester hipsters exist, too, and it's kind of hard to tell which is which. A former friend of mine falls into the latter scene: he deliberately avoids popular music to seem edgy, insults people just to sound insulting, and wears odd clothing for no reason. The general rule of law is that if you call yourself hipster, you aren't. The people I'd call hipsters are all defined by how unhipster they are. They avoid the cliché of hipsterism. That's the point of the whole movement: you're supposed to just be yourself and do what you want, and the minute you start following trends just to be hip, you aren't. So there's where some of the mockery comes from. It's kind of like how the punks were all passionate, but their music all sounded very different. The "punk" sound really isn't. It's a washed-up, generic rip-off that ignores the rule of "be yourself." Hipsterism works the same way: the more generic it sounds, the less hip it is; the movement is about avoiding a generic center.
time_management 18y ago
Good post. I feel like I put one in the failbox by using the word "hipster", which is vague and poorly defined. It's obvious that we're talking about different phenomena. In New York, hipster has a pejorative connotation that goes beyond a fashion movement. It often describes jobless, parentally-funded young people who indulge in copious drugs and casual sex, usually "colonizing" formerly ethnic, working-class neighborhoods and displacing the locals with their trust funds. I'm find with hipster fashion and music tastes. I'm actually much more "hipster" than most people my age in this regard. I just don't like the decadence that I've come to associate with the word having lived in New York. If you live on your own steam and contribute to society, I've no problem with you.

by unalone 18y ago

yters 18y ago

If its about just doing what you want to do, why are people who want to be like their friends mocked? That's all hipsters are doing to, its just more convoluted.

unalone 18y ago
If its about just doing what you want to do, why are people who want to be like their friends mocked? That's something every movement has done. Thinking musically, there've been "fake rockers" and "fake punkers" and "fake rappers". In high school society there are the poser cheerleaders and the poser emo kids and the poser writers and on and on. Hipsters mock everything. For every hipster I know, there's a great deal of cutting conversations. When I first met the group of hipsters I eventually friended, in sophomore year, I got insulted constantly and told to shut the fuck up after essentially everything I said, because I wasn't "saying the right things." Hipsters tend to always have the most comfortable niche of friends. The group I'm referring to has remained the exact same since 8th grade, adding a few people and losing practically nobody. I became "part of the group" my senior year; now I'm sitting in class next to one of those kids, and I'll likely keep in touch for a long, long time. Hipsterism is founded on diversity of interest and wit, and once those people find each other it's hard to separate them. On the flip side of that, it means they're very unwilling to expand their group, because it takes a very particular sort of person. And because their method of conversation is constantly nitpicking and criticizing, it comes across as mockery pretty easily. "Doing what you want to do" has limitations, as does everything. It's okay to say that you cried when you read the diary of Anne Frank. It's not okay to be against homosexuality; that implies a closed mind. It's okay to be religious, not okay to be preachy about it. You can't be boring; you can't be tasteless. Taste is the tricky thing. You're allowed to be awkward, or act different from what's expected - you can cry, for instance - but you can't like bands that demonstrate tastelessness in music. (Pachebel and Nickleback are both bad.) You can't like bad movies (Plan 9 is allowed, because it's fun to watch, Mac & Me is great, but Epic Movie is a no). And while in a lot of groups taste is semi-required, in hipsterism it's all that matters. That kinda rambled, so a summary: any hipster group is going to be closed to most outsiders, but the hipster scene is allowed to be nice and sensitive, which is a good thing. The problem is that a lot of fakester hipsters exist, too, and it's kind of hard to tell which is which. A former friend of mine falls into the latter scene: he deliberately avoids popular music to seem edgy, insults people just to sound insulting, and wears odd clothing for no reason. The general rule of law is that if you call yourself hipster, you aren't. The people I'd call hipsters are all defined by how unhipster they are. They avoid the cliché of hipsterism. That's the point of the whole movement: you're supposed to just be yourself and do what you want, and the minute you start following trends just to be hip, you aren't. So there's where some of the mockery comes from. It's kind of like how the punks were all passionate, but their music all sounded very different. The "punk" sound really isn't. It's a washed-up, generic rip-off that ignores the rule of "be yourself." Hipsterism works the same way: the more generic it sounds, the less hip it is; the movement is about avoiding a generic center.

time_management 18y ago

Good post. I feel like I put one in the failbox by using the word "hipster", which is vague and poorly defined. It's obvious that we're talking about different phenomena. In New York, hipster has a pejorative connotation that goes beyond a fashion movement. It often describes jobless, parentally-funded young people who indulge in copious drugs and casual sex, usually "colonizing" formerly ethnic, working-class neighborhoods and displacing the locals with their trust funds. I'm find with hipster fashion and music tastes. I'm actually much more "hipster" than most people my age in this regard. I just don't like the decadence that I've come to associate with the word having lived in New York. If you live on your own steam and contribute to society, I've no problem with you.