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Oh, hipsters. What are we to do with you? Well it’s hard to say, mostly because “hipster” is one of those chronically undefinable words. Not because the people in the group are impossible to define, but because everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a hipster. I’ve decided to break down the people who are traditionally assailed with the hipster moniker into five different groups. These separations will likely only hold true for a few more years until the whole zeitgeist shifts again, but they’ll work for now.
1. Trendsters
This right here is the group that envelops the vast majority of people who have ever been called hipsters by another person. Just like there’s a lot of shitty assumptions made about those of us who like to dress like dads, there are just as many about supposed “hipsters.” Slim jeans are not hipster. Large frame glasses are not hipster. Wearing a pair of brown oxfords with jeans cuffed at the ankle is not hipster. These things all just happen to be in style. Hipsterism is by definition a very small group of people within a culture, it always has been. So it doesn’t make sense that the look many average people ascribe to hipsters is a look that your average person in their 20s living in a large city with a disposable income is currently wearing. I don’t have a problem with people who dress with the trends, hell, a lot of my friends do. However, I do find it funny that they’ll sometimes look at themselves as somehow fashion superior to other people, when they’re the kind of people who will be looking back at pictures 10 years from now, saying “oh my god, I can’t believe I wore THAT.” Whereas me and my Levi jeans, khaki shorts, button up shirts, and brown loafers will be lounging around laughing at them, because I’m still wearing the same shit I wore then.
2. Irony Hounds
Look, I won’t lie. I like wolf-themed airbrushed tees. They crack me up. Ever since I saw one for the first time in a truck stop in Oklahoma when I was probably five years old, I thought they were hilarious. They’re so fucking serious with their airbrushing and majestic poses. So I get the attraction to irony. I really do. But I don’t understand people who make it the central focus of their lives. Everything has to be kitsch. A pastiche. Girls with apartments that look like they were curated by their grandmothers. Dudes riding bikes that could be described by no word other than, “uncomfortable” just because they have a certain weird aesthetic. It’s not logical, and it’s honestly downright dumb.
3. Literates
Ah, the wistful thinking for the grand old days of the Beat Generation. It would have been so perfect to live among the beatniks, and just drink, do drugs, fuck, hitchhike, live in urban decay, and write self-indulgent books with those intellectual greats. Nevermind that for every Kerouac and Ginsberg, you had a hundred worthless people who somehow believed that because they were also highly educated, but lived in squalor, that alone made them geniuses as well. Of course, just like every other self-important movement, they were quickly co-opted by Madison Avenue, because as everyone knows, it’s easier to wear a turtleneck and beret than it is to be self-reflective, honest, and actually put real effort into your writing. Thankfully, the literati of the hipster culture now are much more blatant in their consumerism. They might live in shitty apartments, decorated to be specifically bohemian, but they all have iPhones, and modern literature degrees from expensive, but not impressive private colleges. Thank god they were born into the upper-middle class, otherwise they might have to actually DO something right now. James Franco might be one of you, but at least he’s funny, and actually works hard.
4. Scenesters
People associate the term “scene” with “scene kids,” those of the swept over hair, eyeliner, and shitty taste in music. Think Gor-Don from those fucking retina assaulting Sprint Framily Plan commercials. But really, scene kids are just that. Kids that belong to the prevalent scene at the time. The emo scene is basically gone. The scenesters I refer to are those that style themselves after the music culture they reside in. Every decade has a scene or two. From jazz all the way to hair metal, fashion and lifestyle tend to follow the music, and the grand summation of it is the scene. Now the scene is indie rock, and the fashion is a compilation of juxtapositions. Grandmother glasses with gauged ears. Cardigans rolled up to reveal sleeve tattoos. This group of hipsters dresses this way for one reason, and one reason only, because that’s how people in the scene dress.
5. Normcore
This trend is…I can’t even explain it. Literally, every time I attempt to explain normcore to people, I get so incensed that I can’t even speak. It’s the literal height of pretension. I’ll just link this here and let you see for yourself.
I need a fucking drink.
Respond
Can someone explain to me what’s up with the one-arm-missing-from-my-glasses look I see a bunch of these fuckin’ clowns doing? The fuck’s up with that?
I hate them all equally.
Some visual representations: http://www.dobi.nu/yourscenesucks/
There is another category:
The Cutting Edge Hipster
And not cutting edge in a good way, like medicine, or new sexual positions. But they will tell you that Breaking Bad was only good in the first few episodes before the rest of society caught onto how amazing it was, then it starting “pandering to the masses”. Or that Spaceballs isn’t one of the most hilarious movies ever made because it’s “so mainstream”, and they’ll quote some bullshit art house comedy that is as funny as AIDs.
Fuck I hate hipsters.