[unalone]

I don't like the word "hipster". It's meaningless. It really is.

I don't care who uses it. What I care about is that it exists. There's a special quality to Polaroid photos that I'd hate to see go, even if I'd understand if it did.

[falsestprophet]

I think we have outed a hipster.

[unalone]

What the fuck does that even mean? My saying I don't think hipster is really a meaningful term, that makes me a hipster? Because hating hipsters makes you a hipster, too. Hipsters hate hipsters. But if I liked hipsters, then I'd have to be a hipster, because hipsters are so loathsome that only a hipster would love a hipster. It's a derivative and pathetic version of the Red Scare.

[lionhearted]

> What the fuck does that even mean?

As hilarious as I find this whole exchange to be, I think hipster generally means someone who rebels against the mainstream fads by adopting alternative fads, which is somewhat ironic to non-hipsters.

So the hipster looks at mainstream people wearing abercrombie and says, "Blech!", talks about how bourgeois and uncultured those people are, and then play into the same sort of thing with horn-rimmed glasses and 1920's vintage clothing, or whatever the counterculture-du-jour is that season.

People knock hipsters because of a general sense of irony and hypocrisy of people who put down trend-followers by following different trends, and then being elitist about it.

Me? I don't rightly care. Live and let live and what not. But I can see how the sense of elitism expressed by doing the same general thing would be offputting to some people.

[unalone]

I know, I know. It just irritates me. More negativity comes out of the people dissing hipsters than comes from the so-called hipsters to begin with.

Perhaps it's because I'm inside the "hipster age bracket" and go to school with a lot of the people that get called Fucking Hipsters, but I really do believe that most of the people calling the name out don't know what they're talking about. A lot of the scary fashion trends that get labelled together have nothing to do with one another; ironically, the fact that a lot of the people in the hipster bubble aren't judgmental is what gives the impression that they so readily judge on people.

I mean, I go to class with a girl who dyes her hair three colors and wears sweaters, another guy who owns a purple-and-black striped hoodie and has thick glasses, and another girl who wears dresses that are slightly out there. Take any one of those people in isolation, and you have a separate clique: Punker, media geek, foreign student. But when those three people like each other despite having different tastes in clothing, suddenly together they're not individuals, they're part of Hipster.

The great thing is that no matter what you wear it's part of being hipster. When I wear a button-down shirt it's Hipster. When I wear a poncho it's Hipster. Unless I'm wearing the exact same clothing as the people all around me, it's Hipster because obviously there's no such thing as nonconformity. If I'm hanging around people that aren't carbon copies of myself, we're conforming to the standard of not looking the same.

It pisses me off, because everything I like has been at some point attributed to Hipsterism. When I discovered why's Poignant Guide to Ruby and started tinkering with Ruby and having a lot of fun, I found that if I mentioned _why on Hacker News somebody would jump up and call me a hipster. When I mention listening to Joanna Newsom or the Arcade Fire on /r/music on Reddit, I'm called a hipster. But, of course, if I listen to the Beatles and the Zombies I'm a hipster because hipsters listen to 60s music. Or if I listen to Mozart or Liszt, that's hipster because hipsters listen to classical music. It's frustrating because of how bloody obvious it is that hipsters don't actually exist. A hipster is somebody who does what they want and explores what they find interesting; other people who think that person's doing something interesting follow along; people see those people having fun and decide it must be an elitist hipster thing that's excluding other people, and they start slinging words around.

Then there's this "anti-antielitist" accusation, where people get mad at hipsters for getting mad at things they like going mainstream because it dilutes the focus, like that's such an unusual thing. If I like something, and I like the small community of like-minded people that surround that something, then when that thing gets huge and suddenly it's swarmed by a lot of people that kill that original community feel, I'm a hipster for disliking the death of the community. By that sense, any of us that complain about Hacker News slowly deteriorating in quality, we're hipsters too. But let's not point that out because of course we're not hipsters because we hate fucking hipsters. Stupid motherfucking hipsters.

I have fond memories of Polaroid, going back just two years. At a reunion of a group I'm a part of, one girl brought a Polaroid camera to snap pictures with. I've got a handful of pictures of us all lying around my bedroom with inked comments in that lower white flap, with that washed-out Polaroid Picture look that speaks of so much nostalgia, and I love it because it's a nostalgic memory for me.

So obviously I only love the idea of Polaroids because hipsters don't like modern technology and because I lack any sort of personal connection to the idea of Polaroid that would make me wish Polaroid could stay in business and find a niche market for its wares, and obviously the only reason to want a fucking Polaroid camera is because I so lack a soul that I'd hoist it around my neck to look cool because looking cool is wearing a camera around your neck, not at all because maybe, just fucking maybe, it's pretty goddamn awesome to have a Polaroid camera because then you can take goddamn Polaroids and pass them out to people and that's a pretty goddamn fun way to spend a day.

_____

I've noticed something about the people I've met in person who don't like hipsters. By the way, this stereotype of hipsters being people that hate hipsters is just as stupid as all the other stereotypes. I've hung out with people who flippantly joke about being "authentic hipster". It's tongue-in-cheek, of course, because tongue-in-cheek is a lot of fun, and when people say things like that the rest of us take it as the joke it is, and go about having fun.

The people who dislike hipsters, I've found, are the people who are "on the outs" in groups. Somebody's hanging out with a guy and meets his friends and they're all reciting inside jokes, or talking about bands that guy's never heard of, or quoting movie lines he doesn't know, and he feels isolated because he doesn't understand the culture that those people are a part of. His defense is to write them off, and write all their favorite things, off, as being hipster, because then it's not him on the outs, it's them. Anti-hipsterism is aloof isolationism. It's about dismissing people that're having a fun time because you're not a part of them.

I'm not saying that just to blatantly hate on people that dislike that sort of person, because I find myself in the same scenario pretty often. I sort of hover between a few different worlds of people, so I know a little bit about hacking and a little bit about literature and movies and music and industrial design and all the other things I get into at my leisure. So no matter what group I'm a part of, I feel to some degree like an outsider. And it's really tempting to write off the people I meet for not liking what I like, because it sometimes feels really icky not to completely be at the center of people's interests, but it's not fair to them or to you. It's just blind dislike without a real motive other than awkwardness and alienation.

That's why I find that I get really irritated at people who hate on hipsters, as opposed to people who hate politics or religion or operating systems. I can forgive people who get mad at something because they like something more and get defensive. But I can't readily forgive people who's only reason for hating something is that they don't understand it. That's what most hipster hate is. It's disliking a culture solely because you're not a part of it, magnified because rather than there being a "hipster culture" there are a hundred small cultures that are mistaken for one entity on quick glance.

It's hatred that reeks of ignorance and I really find it off-putting.

[RK]

A hipster is somebody who does what they want and explores what they find interesting

This is the opposite of hipsterism. Hipsterism is about trend following and that is what people find humorous about it, because the people associated with it generally express a disdain for trend following.

It's no different than what happened in high school with the cookie cutter "non-conformists" (goths and punks were examples when I was in high school). The difference is that hipsters often carry that on long after high school.

[unalone]

That's the cliche, but that's not how it works. I'm in the middle of so-called hipster culture. There are no trends and there isn't really a disregard for trend following. There's more an apathy toward the entire concept of trends. There's also not much self-obsession, either: My friends who wear obnoxiously oversized glasses usually bought them with other friends and wear them because they think it's funny. It's not a nonconforming thing and it's not a trend. If anything it's more of an impulse.

[lionhearted]

Thanks for sharing that - it gave me a lot more perspective. I've spent a lot of the last three years out of the States, and it was quite insightful.

Just pondering now, but I think it might come down to a couple things -

First, a lot of people take anything different than them as a threat to them. So if you don't blend in, they might not like you even though you're just doing your own thing, enjoying your life, dressing in a way that appeals to you, and so on. People sometimes take that as a threat simply because it's different.

But there's also a second kind of thing, where the people who are rejecting the mainstream do it in a haughty way - so it's not so much the taste in music, as it is the way you present the taste in music. As if someone who doesn't know isn't the club - intentionally exclusionary. (Also, I remember this kind somewhat commonly in some New York City circles - there's some people with this insufferable "oh you don't know about abc? I seeee, hmmm...." I haven't seen it so much elsewhere)

So whenever someone feels excluded, they usually wind up disliking whoever they feel excluded by. Sometimes it's intentional and elitist, but I think most of the time it isn't:

Hearkening back 10 years or so, I remember when other kids were talking about music I didn't know, I'd always feel kind of shy and left out. Nowadays, I'll say, "Wait - I don't know that one. Any good?" And then five seconds later, "Ok - and I don't know that one. Any good?" And if it happens a third time, "Hmm, I don't know much about this genre - it's all going over my head. Could you explain the basics to me, how it started, who is important, what I'd want to listen to to get started?"

Like, I like the Beatles. Great stuff. But I'll ask people, "Did you ever play any of their albums straight through? What songs have you heard?" If I just start saying that Revolver's first two tracks might be the best two in a row on any Beatles album, but that Sgt. Pepper's plays much better all the way through, it'd lose people, and most people are too shy to speak up. So they'd feel left out, and then maybe they'd kind of project that outwards and dislike me.

So you've got two genuinely different kinds of people - the kind that want to exclude and make people feel left out, and the people who are doing their own thing who are very nice and would happily welcome with you if you could get into a good chat with them.

Something to think about. Thanks for taking the time to elaborate and explain what's going on, I learned quite a bit from it.

[unalone]

Like, I like the Beatles. Great stuff. But I'll ask people, "Did you ever play any of their albums straight through? What songs have you heard?" If I just start saying that Revolver's first two tracks might be the best two in a row on any Beatles album, but that Sgt. Pepper's plays much better all the way through, it'd lose people, and most people are too shy to speak up. So they'd feel left out, and then maybe they'd kind of project that outwards and dislike me.

Funny you mention the Beatles. This argument inspired me to start writing a post about hipsterism, and I open with the argument that the Beatles were the most hipster band of all time. I mean, naming an album after an old-timey 20s pastiche, singing songs about carnivals and India, and did you see what they were wearing? Totally inauthentic hipster garb, that. ;-)