Oh, hell no, I'm not a hipster

[Dalya]

Funny and awesome article about how hipster culture is the "dead end of western civilization" in AdBusters:

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

[squeezle]

i have that issue. and yes, you are.

[ChrisLovesYou]

There was a much less articulate article to this extent in the university newspaper. 'Fuck Hipsters' was the headline.

I wrote a letter to the editor about how great it is you can have 'fuck' in the headline in a student paper, since my pen name is Cuntrammer A. Hitler. It wasn't printed.

[Phyllis]

last time i was on a bike i nearly died.
but i do like american apparel. i guess i am a hipster now.

[roach]

kramer was a hipster dufus.

[Sybil]

If a "fixed-gear" bicycle is what I think it is, I was a hipster when I was seven.

Sybil

[katie]

no hipster THINKS they're a hipster, dalya.

[roach]

If a "fixed-gear" bicycle is what I think it is, I was a hipster when I was seven.

Sybil

no, you were just a kid with a fixed gear. it's all in the now.

i was drinking pbr 5 years ago because they were a dollar at dw but i wouldn't drink that shit now, it's not a dollar. in a year when budweiser is the new beer, it will be, then i'll have to make excuses.

[Dalya]

no hipster THINKS they're a hipster, dalya.

the point of the article, kay-tee. way to restate the thesis. *cough* didn't read! *cough*

[katie]

no hipster THINKS they're a hipster, dalya.

the point of the article, kay-tee. way to restate the thesis. *cough* didn't read! *cough*

i did read it. i was just pointing out that you're a hipster. burn.

ka"nice skinny jeans, hipster"tie

[Dalya]

Oh well. I could be worse. At least my glasses have a prescription in them. And I didn't match the two horse-face girls at barley house last night in identical flannel shirts.

[NerfHerder]

Christ. Ideologically, I guess I relate to hipsters more than I thought. As wise mothafuckas say all the time: "after darkness, light." Darker the dark, lighter the light, am i right? I mean I know my man Obama ain't sittin in the Oval Office yet but George W. Bush's shitty tenure has really got the momentum swinging back in a different direction.

So if the hipsters keep consuming and consuming until there's nothing left, there would have to be such a cultural explosion it would rival or surpass the Renaissance.

Gotta think long term, people. A second Renaissance is bigger than any of us. We must continue to rape history until our culture implodes.

[Dalya]

We must continue to rape history until our culture implodes.

By far the greatest thing you've ever said.

[Irock]

Katie's "elite hipster" comment in the Forever 21 thread spurred me to actually read this article.

So the professor I've most respected in my college career (who is too awesome for me to get into here) once said, "everyone's always declaring the end of hisory." And I think of that a lot when I read / listen to things proclaiming that such-and-such is Worse Than It's Ever Been Before. I realize that there are magazines that need to be published because writers need jobs and God knows the people trying to sell you stuff need places to advertise, but all this article is really saying it that most of our youth don't stand for anything. Well gee, most *people* don't stand for anything. We're Americans (or maybe I shoud say "Westerners," since the article makes a cursory but not well reasoned attempt to include European youth in its condemnation) - most of us more or less consume what's being sold to us, and what the rest of us are consuming. The whole reason revolutionaries / visionaries are valued is that it's rare, and most people *don't* get them.

Then there's this whole idea that cultural innovation can only come from youth, with I think is bs. Before the 60s there wasn't much of a "youth culture" anyway, twenty-somethings did not single-handedly produce the Renaissance.

Meh. You can call 'em hipsters, but they're just consumers.

i "kids today" rock

Or maybe the fact that I'm apathetic about hipsters make me some kinds of uber-hipster.

[Dalya]

I find the article to be a perfect description of "hipster culture" (eye rolling) but not a perfect explanation. Because the "this is funny/meaningful but YOU just don't GET it" thing has been around for a long time. How bout fucking Dadaism? If there's ever been a "movement" that's meaningless, that actually tries to be meaningless, it was Dada. What's the difference between an upside-down urinal and non-prescription nerd glasses? Not to mention the Beats, Surrealist film, etc etc etc...

Plus the article seems to contend that nothing comes out of "hipsterism", but it's producing music, film, and art right now. Thats not the only place they're coming from, but it's one of them. Fleet Foxes all wear matching plaid shirts and skinny jeans and have the same haircut and beard, but they made one of my favorite albums of 2008, so I suppose it can't completely suck out your soul to shop at Urban.