Yesterday I made my solo on-air debut on Radio Student. I prepared a show about the word "hipster", and had the thing down pat... in my head. Nerves got the best of me, and some things didn't come out as clear as I would have liked. So, without further ado, a written summary of what I was trying to say.
It is impossible to define the word "hipster" by looking for a common trait among all phenomena to which the word could be attached, as they are too numerous and diverse and, as the word could shows, no one phenomenon can be unequivocally described with the word "hipster" every single time it appears. It follows that to get to the bottom of this now-common word, it would be a good idea to start by considering literature on the subject.
The relevant literature can be broken down into two groups: satirical or humorous works and negative/academic works. The former - The Hipster Handbook, Stuff White People Like, and the Do's and Don't's column of Vice magazine - are comical in nature. While they provide much interesting information on the subject and, each in its own way, plenty of insight, they are ultimately the product of a rich tradition of self-deprecating humour (they are written by self-proclaimed hipsters/white people), which itself has nothing to do with hipsters as such. They must be understood in this light.
The second group encompasses both lay critiques of hipsterism, such as internet content like Supernews' Hipsters in Space Cartoon and other purely negative outsider depictions, and academic criticism, which, with little exception, is almost entirely negative. Various academic works on the subject of the hipster have focused on: gentrification, class prejudice, the inability of today's youth to produce a real or viable culture, political apathy, a naive view of the past, etc. Most of these claims can be easily refuted.
One work that, in contrast to those listed above, is actually fairly helpful in understanding the hipster is Gavin McInnes' essay for the website Taki's Magazine. I perhaps should have pointed out that while I strongly suggest everyone read said essay, and I generally greatly enjoy the author's insights, I in no way agree with or endorse any of his political beliefs or social prejudices (slovenec, ki bo še naprej raziskoval dela tega avtorja, bo hitro naletel na skrajno desničarske ideje). Mr. McInnes' work is basically a summary of a conference he attended at UCLA on the subject of youth culture. He bases the essay around the assumption, almost universally voiced at the conference, that "today more than ever, youth is wasted on the young," an assumption he completely rejects. The part of the essay which seems key to me in understanding the hipster is where he points out how, thanks to the internet, young people today operate outside the system to create with greater freedom than ever before. In doing so, he claims, they are not "ripping off" the culture or style of underprivileged groups (as several academics had claimed), but are rather themselves constituting a DIY culture of their own similar to that once typical of poor or underprivileged groups, in particular blacks.
The two key points Mr. McInnes is trying to make draw us nearer to an understanding of this phenomenon. First, the almost universal negativity surrounding hipsters and young people which serves as a framework for his essay. This is in fact the one universal trait of all accounts of hipsters. In the satirical works listed above, this can be easily explained, as I have shown, by the fact that these works draw on a tradition of self-deprecating humor, and that it is this, and not any "information" they may provide on "hipsters", that makes them noteworthy. Of course, this hasn't stopped serious criticism from using these works as hard evidence. Although the accounts of serious criticism use a number of very different points of departure, and may ultimately take the form of a Marxist, aesthetic, ethical, etc. critique, the one thing they all have in common is that, in the final instance, they attribute to hipsters, as individuals and not as a group, general bad manners.
The second point Mr. McInnes makes is the connection between "hipsters" and engagement in non-mainstream, alternative forms of consumerism.
I tie the two together and add a third element that to date has been entirely absent from the discourse on hipsters: the incredible expansion, roughly in the middle of the previous decade, that is at about the same time the hipster took shape, of the media to appeal to include wide range of perspectives and to include a very wide range of groups. I illustrate this using TV, although I believe that this observation applies to the entire world of consumerism. Whereas TV was once considered both an opiate for the masses and an ideological apparatus in the way it excluded certain groups and behaviours, today, TV has both widespread intellectual appeal, largely due to premium cable dramas, and is extremely inclusive, as evidenced by the once invisible groups who today have a significant presence on television: turbofolk culture in Jersey Shore, nerd culture in Big Bang Theory, G4, and "cult movies" based around nerd culture.
This shift has, however, meant that in it's efforts to provide an all-encompassing representation of the cultural sphere, TV specifically and consumer culture in general has had to forfeit its moral imperative; the sphere of mainstream consumerism is no longer a reflection of broader societal norms and morals. Whereas those who were once forced to create a culture on the fringes of the mainstream media that excluded them could be easily labelled morally questionable (all rap or RnB as "gangster rap", heavy metal culture as satanic, mods and rockers as a moral threat to the nation, etc.), today, the diversity of the media and consumerism makes this impossible.
"Hipsters" or, more accurately, young people, still continue to partake in forms of consumerism on the fringes of the mainstream. Even though ideological limitations and the exclusivist nature of the media have disappeared, the limitation created by the fact that "the media" and "consumerism" are in fact publicly traded companies with a commitment to create value for shareholders remains as strong as ever. When they engage in non-mainstream forms of consumerism or non-mainstream media, young people do so for a wide variety of reasons. Although a desire to set oneself apart (which, I also note, is more typical of certain age groups, eg. late high school, college students) by choosing an obscure or uncommon or non-mainstream product could be a factor in this engagement, it is only one of many factors. By choosing to eat organic, one could be exhibiting "snobbish" behaviour; however, it is equally likely that the person in question simply does not want to eat genetically modified slop (and if said person has used the internet to do a little research, this explanation is even more plausible), and the real answer could be a combination of both factors. Another example, which I wish I would have thought of when I was on the air: Ariel Pink, one of the few indie musicians I'd swear by, is often said to pursue a lo-fi, cheap-sounding aesthetic in his music, ostensibly for the sake of distancing himself from a mainstream, polished sound. He counters these claims by saying that this is reading too much into his music, and that for him as a musician, lo-fi elements are merely a tool, something I feel is clearly borne out in his music. (Again, I borrowed this general observation from Gavin McInnes).
We can therefore conclude that "hipsters" can be broadly compared to past cultural movements in the way that they participate in forms that are not part of mainstream, big money, corporate consumerism. Gavin McInnes is even of the view that today's young people are much better at it than any previous generation of young people. However, as I have pointed out, the way the media now accommodates (as a viable profit-making strategy) a vast spectrum of cultural and moral views makes it considerably more difficult to portray the culture of young people as a moral threat. It follows that the only way that remains to discredit those who, even momentarily, partake in non-mainstream forms, is by attributing to individuals not socially dangerous attitudes, but generally harmless character flaws: egoism, narcissism, bad manners, etc.*
We can therefore conclude that when someone who has been labeled a hipster says "I'm NOT a hipster," nine times out of ten, all the person in question is trying to say is "I'm not an anti-social, narcissistic asshole."
And most people who could be reasonably labelled hipsters are in fact not anti-social, narcissistic assholes.
Regarding the last part of the show, I greatly miscalculated the time I would need to present my thoughts. I now realise that even if I would have had the 20 or 25 minutes I had originally planned instead of the 10 or so minutes I got, it would have been insufficient. I plan on preparing a show dedicated to this topic sometime in the near future. In the meantime, you can find some of my thoughts on it in this short blog post.
* This may sound greatly exaggerated. But to take one example that is in line with my observations about organic food as a part of "hipster" culture: The Simpsons episode where Lisa decides to become a vegetarian (The Simpsons played a big part in the shift that occurred in the media, among other things, by poking fun at staid moral attitudes). Lisa appears at a family barbecue with a large bowl of red liquid and says "I've made enough gespacho for all, now you don't have to eat meat!" The guests laugh loudly, and Barney Gumble (the town drunk) tells her to "Go back to Russia!" Which is to say only a Communist would be a vegetarian. I am aware I previously advised against using humor as hard evidence, but one need but read official documents on Satanic ritual abuse to see that, as an expression of a general attitude, this "joke" was not far from the truth.
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