On the hipster question

The jury is still out on the simple question what is a hipster? The question has suddenly become important after my move to Williamsburg has landed me smack in the middle of hipster Mecca. To further complicate the matter, a friend who I judge to be somewhat authoritative on hipsterish issues, as she was raised in Brooklyn, informed me that the definition of a hipster was not so straightforward but basically lumped together all sorts of alternative lifestyle elements, e.g., music, food, fashion, etc. Thus began my deliberation about what on earth could these people be who dressed so strange and seemed dominant in my new Williamsburg environs. One lead was provided by said friend, introducing two possible approaches to the question of hipsters:

A clean hippie?
Option a, while interesting for a moment’s consideration turns out to be a dead end. Although hipsters and hippies seem to share some attributes, such as challenging gender differences as well as the normative corporate culture through dress appearance and demeanor, the hippie movement was more substantial at the level of ideology. Hippies “sought to free themselves from societal restrictions, choose their own way, and find new meaning in life”. Moreover, hippie ideology has been described by some as a “gentle and nondoctrinaire ideology that favored peace, love and personal freedom”. Hipsters on the other hand would almost see such ideas as trite and would seek instead to move beyond ideological worldview, choosing instead to define themselves as counterculture and opposition to the norm as such. A hipster isn’t looking to transform anything, they seek only to be left alone to feel cooler than the rest of the population.

A grungy yuppie?
This brings us to the second possible definition, a grungy yuppie. Contrary to hippies, a yuppie is not defined by ideology or ultimate aim, a yuppie is defined by the transitory state of being young and professionally employed. So this definition would qualify certain yuppies with being somehow dissatisfied, maladjusted and having an attitude – as illustrated by the images of grunge, a loud fuzzy guitar sound and ingrained dirt or soot. This definition strikes truer to the mark in that it makes clear the distortive element at play in hipster culture. Hipsters aren’t a new current in values so much as a distortion and a specific interpretation on the same fundamental value and cultural dynamic which currently reigns American life: consumption as a way of life. The ethos of consumption is the fundamental mandate and enjoyment of living for yuppies as well as hipsters. Yet whereas yuppies will seek the obvious high-end brands associated with prestige and power, hipsters consume and enjoy the contrarian trinkets which are quaint and pretty but untarnished by the mark of the corporate empire which tentacled and prodding, feasts on the brains of yuppie drones all over. Through such consumption patterns, hipsters trumpet their spite for traditional social norms, notions of propriety and the corporate aesthetic. In its place hipsters celebrate their individual freedoms as made evident by contrarian fashion, and a systematic shunning of professional jobs for other lifestyle-focused occupations.

Thus, the chief characteristic of hipsters is not their counter-culture element, for all subcultures identify themselves against the norm – instead their refusal to articulate or embrace ideology is poignant. For this reason, hipsters are most often unable to really affirm the identity, and so I’ve heard it said that the mark of a true hipster is the total disavowal of the hipster identity. Now we can see why: standing for nothing, the malcontent yuppie who has patterned their personal consumption to affirm their spite for corporate culture cannot identify with a greater cause than this spite and the insistence that they derive enjoyment from skinny jeans over conventional jeans. When so articulated, the identify falls away from substance and spites itself.

Is being a hipster a copout?
In a sense hipsters represent a form of stylized refusal to compete with the social norms which structure power in American life. It’s not that yuppies stand for anything more substantial than hipsters – they don’t. Except perhaps an implicit affirmation of the American dream. However, yuppies must subordinate themselves within a tightly regimented hierarchy of values of American society. These values are largely dominated by income as an indicator of personal value and accomplishment, but they admit for other accomplishments such as degrees, publications etc. Hipsters on the other hand frown on such concrete form of competition, and therefore the allure of the hipster lifestyle is the eternal insistence that you aren’t trying in the first place, so there is no reason to be disappointed when you don’t win. That is a copout.

Are hipsters more enlightened than the majority?
In so far as hipsters recognize the fundamental emptiness of corporate and mainstream values, they are a step ahead of the great majority. They exemplify the great lie in the injunction to consume by living out alternative consumption. They prove the point that Lacoste is not necessary for style.

There are saving graces to this cultural phenomenon. As hipster culture rejects the glitz and faux-glamour of mainstream culture, it necessarily devalues the status of money and lavish spending vis-à-vis the majority. This opens up a space for appreciation of other activities usually taken for granted or overlooked by the mainstream masses. This includes a greater appreciation for visual arts, and an innovative indie music scene especially considering the lack of major funding which is quite necessary for the generation of mass-media phenomena, etc.

Transcending hipsterdom
Still, the hipster failure is that it does not go far enough. Hipster is a status not a movement. Hipsters fail to identify that the problem is being devoid of purpose—that stylized consumption, no matter how skinny the jeans, conforms to the great ravenous maw of American culture and fundamentally empowers the same structure which they scorn. To move beyond this impotence and avoid the trap of self-indulgent non-participation (perhaps out of fear of failure), an individual must transcend attitude and find a cause worth working for. Finding such a cause may or may not bring an individual full-circle—for in order to have impact and protect certain values in the grand circus of America, it is first necessary to obtain influence. And influence always requires accepting some basic rules of the game.