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Rabbit

Was sent this by a friend--maybe one of the greatest blog posts I've read this year, spot-on. Kudos to you!

jz

Thank you for succinctly articulating what I suspect is the repeated theme of the n+1 book.

I agree with you: It's gonna be OK.

Did you see this piece in the awl?

http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/being-a-hipster-is-an-excellent-and-wonderful-thing

Brilliant!

Now let's move on to a deep discourse on the origins and effects of a lesser-studied but no less important subculture: the douchebag.

Greg

i friggin' hate hipsters. They always go to the gig and stand there immobile while the band is rocking out on stage.

Jody

Michael,

I don't think you've correctly identified the people who would spray paint "Die Hipster" as either people who rightly don't want to be pushed out of their neighborhoods or people for whom hipsters are "a living, breathing reminder that they are not totally hip (anymore)." I don't think people in either of these groups would go out spray painting. But there's another group of people. This group contains people who may appear to be hipsters, but upon closer inspection, are probably much dirtier than the hipster, and may be smiling. They have core values that aren't aligned with consumerism. The hipsters buy the interests and external trappings of this group. Hipsters are very, very clean (although their hair may not be), value design over fun, and don't like to make fools of themselves or mingle with people who aren't like them. I think these may be some of the big, but subtle to the naked eye, differences. FWIW. As to the question of whether the kids are alright... Always!

Jody

Michael Azerrad

Despite the placement of the photo near the text, I wasn't actually referring to the type of person who would spray paint "DIE HIPSTER" on a subway platform. Nonetheless, I think you're right, Jody.

Johnny Black

I rather like hipsters.

My son had a beard a few months back but it's gone now. Is he ahead of the curve? He usually is. He's a lot hipper than me, but then I'm an old geezer.

And, as such, I like hipsters but no longer care whether or not I am one.

I love it if some youngish person seems pleasantly startled by the kind of music I like, but I don't go out of my way to find the next hip band or singer-songwriter or whatever. I just stumble over them.

And if I don't stumble over them until they're passe, that doesn't matter. As my beloved Holy Modal Rounders once proclaimed, good taste is timeless. Greensleeves was a good song in the 16th century. It still is.

Clothes-wise I'm equally unhip. Black t-shirt, black trousers, black jacket has been my standard garb since 1976. The cheaper the better given my income.

At my age I've no need to be hip. I can just try to be me. Hell, that's more than hard enough.

Ultimately, of course, it all depends on how you define a hipster. I still think of a hipster as someone who keeps abreast of what's happening in any cultural activity.

I distinguish hipsters totally from scenesters which sounds to me like what a lot of people are actually objecting to.

Scenesters are people who only have enough wit to know what hipsters have recently cottoned onto. They're the ones who show up at gigs and gawp blankly. The ones that Robert Smith of The Cure always had trouble dealing with when the band breifly went mega.

My kind of hipsters certainly don't 'value fashion over fun' in Jody's words. That's what scenesters do.

I remember being with lots of people I'd have regarded as hipsters watching Jonathan Richman sing Ice Cream Man a capella in Hammersmith Odeon thirty odd years ago. Now that was fun.

I was similarly attracted to the people half my age watching Cancer Bats at T In the Park a cou7pkle of years ago while Faith No More (or was it Rage Against The Machine?)was on the main stage. The kids in the Cancer Bats tent - all fifty of them - were having a ton of fun.

I'll have a well-scripted zombie movie any day before The King's Speech. Is either of those hip? I don't know. Don't care. I still crack up every time I hear the line "Send more paramedics" in Return Of The Living Dead. Now that's funny.

Sorry. I'm rambling now, but it is very late at night and I'm old. Time for beddy byes.

jesse

you hint at towards the end but don't fully give credit to a third reason that people resent hipsters: the value of the whole enterprise of focusing so much on "being hip" is somewhat bankrupt. "yr so jealous" as an analysis is a bit thin, no? you rightly note that hipsters generally have a surfeit of time, and i think many wonder if said time could be used more productively to other ends. as lorentzen notes in that new york magazine piece, the hipster produces dj's, not songwriters; designers, not artists. there have been no great political or cultural movements produced by the current generation of hipsters. so perhaps they are resented for having the rather significant privileges (education, race, class) that help accord them their hipster status without using those privileges to do much more than *be* hipsters.

my granpda has a ton of free time - why would we think it was pathetic if he tried hard to be hip?

Bob the builder

I think I'm going to say one of the most stereotypical hipster things, but .... being in my late thirties and having spent the last decade living in remote Australia I think I get a free pass. I don't really know much what a hipster is or even if the term is used here, but in my brief forays into the cities I think I know what you're talking about.
My little group of reject friends 10+ years ago didn't have TVs, had beards (the men on faces, the women under arms), some had old vinyl and we rode everywhere (though not on fixies, the most idiotic fashion for a long while!), though didn't know our political-environmental choices would become so fashionable! If only I'd waited to be born a decade later, I could have got into all those kool clubs and hob-nobbed with the beautiful people!

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