The Last Hipster

I’m astounded that this subculture keeps building momentum — not just in size but in flamboyance. In case you’re new here:

By now, the traits of hipsterism are easily recognizable to culture vultures: Hipsters are white, urban, occasionally privileged, attitudinally earnest and functionally alternative. They live life at the intersection of Pabst Blue Ribbon and day-glo leggings—worn with irony, or maybe not. They listen to indie darlings like Pavement, or anthem rockers like Arcade Fire. Maybe even a little Wu-Tang. Everything obscure is good; a headband on some longhair of a man; a waifish girl sporting several thick gold chains.

The one trait I’d change is “white.” The hipster scene is remarkably non background-specific. It’s all mashed-up in more ways than one. In fact the above paragraph is lifted from an article at The Root about the rise of the black hipster (something I’ve been thinking about after turning into a late listener of TV On The Radio).

Now, I’m not about promoting hipster-hate. I’m fairly hipster-inclined myself (e.g. I own more Goodwill-bought than mall-bought clothes, unless you count white undershirts), and if I was a decade younger I might have been the kind of person caught on the ‘Look at this fucking hipster‘ blog (which is an amusing site but seems to be getting nastier). . 

I can’t help wonder if this is a kind of subculture-to-end-all-subcultures. In fact, the question of ‘what comes next?’ was the subject of a panel discussion a little while ago, put on by n + 1, and covered excellently by Rob Horning for PopMatters.

There have been “hipsters” for decades (remember where the term “hippie” came from): scenesters trying to keep up with every new wrinkle and nuance in complex cultural signals (aka being “hip” to something — knowing the right word, the right way to groom facial hair, or how baggy or tight your pants are supposed to be — things that might seems arbitrary and weird to people in the mainstream but are recognized as signals for “cool” by group insiders).

By the 90′s there wasn’t really anywhere else to go. “Retro” became cool. And then that ran out too.

Now just about every permutation of shirts, pants, jackets, hats, and shoes has been pushed by Gap and the other big mall retailers. Combine that with the fact that nothing can really be cool on the web…

• Everything that is cool is secret,
• nothing on the web is secret,
• everything is on the web,
• therefore nothing is cool.

… and this is what you end up with.

I don’t know if cool has anything to do with it anymore. Rebellion, yes. Cool, not so much. We still call them hipsters because we’ve lost track of what that even means.

Youth culture is itself a huge industry, and just like the auto and music industries, it is going through a fundamental transition — a reset. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that all of these industries have always gone hand-in-hand-in-hand.  

The basic laws of being young are going to change. Try to imagine a world without hip, a world without “cool.”

Further reading:

• Birth of Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde, Lewis McAdams
• The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, Thomas Frank
• The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t Be Jammed, Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter

More From the Archives:

• 05-24-2009 -- Hipsters and Signaling
• 01-31-2010 -- Why Would a Twenty-Something Stay in London?
• 05-23-2009 -- More on Hipsters

Tagged as: coolness, fashion, hipsters, rebel sell, subcultures, youth culture