"Hipster" as pejorative.

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haha gareth that "jealousy" argument is bullshit and you know it

i havent been associated with my hips so much since i've stopped dancing

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:34 (10 years ago) Permalink

I think JtN was using it in the arms war sense. Constantly having an ear to what the guys who thinks they're cool are saying and doing repetitively and staying one step ahead. Avoiding clichéd opinions and tastes. But this itself becomes a kind of cliché.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:35 (10 years ago) Permalink

yeah, what is a hipster - someone who is clued up? cynical or too self aware? fakery? trendy?

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:35 (10 years ago) Permalink

thinks = think

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:36 (10 years ago) Permalink

i am never sure what is meant by the word, especially since "hipster" musical taste and the musical tastes here overlap a bit, even if we aren't all hipsters here. for example, in the usa, "original pirate material" was released by Vice and it has been listed as a cd that hipsters listen to. but i have the album, and i don't think i am a hipster. actually, i am pretty sure i am not.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:36 (10 years ago) Permalink

Must consult lyrics to Zero. BRB.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:36 (10 years ago) Permalink

nope no insight in Zero, sorry.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:38 (10 years ago) Permalink

In the UK at least, The Streets are now far too '12 CD owner' to be a hipster thing. And the Garage for indie kids jibe has stuck.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:40 (10 years ago) Permalink

no one would ever admit to being one, though we'd all like for others to think of us as one

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:43 (10 years ago) Permalink

hipster (1941) "person who is keenly aware of the new and stylish," from hip "up-to-date," attested from 1904 in black slang, probably a variant of hep, though it is recorded four years earlier.

From Online Etymology Dictionary.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:43 (10 years ago) Permalink

So in the context of prewar black culture, would "hipster" have been used in the pejorative?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:44 (10 years ago) Permalink

yes the streets are most certainly not hipster!

ok, i was talking with an ilx on aim about this the other week, and i think we both agreed that, for us at least, there was a simultaneous disparagement of the seemingly closed world of the hipster, with a desire to live a similar life, to be in williamsburg or whatever, because it seems different to what we have, but then a realisation that we couldnt be one, because we couldnt be like those lipstickandcigarettes.com people even if we tried. but why couldnt we?

also...

http://www.norfolkwindmills.com/nathan.html (written back in 2000, so excuse the rubbishness)

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:45 (10 years ago) Permalink

Let's get past the contemporary usage of "hipster" for a moment and think historically.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:46 (10 years ago) Permalink

i am moving to greenpoint so that i can tell everyone that williamsburg is for poseurs. then i will be a hipper hipster than other hipsters. it will be grebt. if greenpoin is lame by the time that i move to the city then i will got to bushwick or east flatbush...

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:48 (10 years ago) Permalink

though we'd all like for others to think of us as one

I wouldn't. Cause most people who use the term either misunderstand the nature of a hipster or else understand it only too well (the former = most people in the media, the latter = Jerry the Nipper).

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:49 (10 years ago) Permalink

The problem with using the term "hipster" (contemporary, sorry A) is that it carries with it the implication that the people are only hip because they aspire to be -- that they forced and elevated themselves into a social category by adapting and doing the "right" things. But this simply isn't always true: on some level loads of them are doing whatever it is they're doing because they actually like it, and reducing the whole thing to sneering at "hipsters" is basically the equivalent of the whole "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" complaint.

What tends to bother me is when people act intimidated by "hipsters" (e.g. "Boy, I feel really uncool in this crowd," a comment I heard from two different people last night). So I was thinking about this quite a bit: anyone can be or at least come off as a hipster (this is the whole sneering complaint, right -- that it can be earned, that it's something one works toward or aspires to?), and if you don't, well ... that's not a failure in some hip sweepstakes but a set of simple decisions about what you like and who you want to be. So I'd prefer to see people who don't consider themselves hipsters stand up for those choices -- not cave and say "these people are cooler than me."

This is also why I'm amused by people who always use the sneery-pejorative "hipster" -- on some level it says you believe these people actually are cooler than you and that you're bothered by that!

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:54 (10 years ago) Permalink

But obviously the root of all that is the sense that "hipsters" are forever looking down on everyone else for being not-hip. So why are so many people so affected by that potential looking-down? Why does it have any purchase whatsoever?

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:56 (10 years ago) Permalink

"HIPSTER" comes from the Opium dens of yore, where customers would lie on their hips. No bull.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:57 (10 years ago) Permalink

(Okay, three posts in I see what I'm getting at: people actively defer to hipsters in matters of taste, and thus they prize and fear the hipsters' opinions about them. They should stop that.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:58 (10 years ago) Permalink

Actually I think there is a talent to being trendy (in the non-pejorative sense of "following trends, staying up-to-date") that I can admire without irony. I'd like to believe, but don't actually, that it's just a matter of choices I've made that I am not a hipster.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:59 (10 years ago) Permalink

This is also why I'm amused by people who always use the sneery-pejorative "hipster" -- on some level it says you believe these people actually are cooler than you and that you're bothered by that!

A lot of people think 'cool' is shallow and thus to be mistrusted (but maybe resented too).

Differences between being 'cool', 'trendy', 'hip' and 'a hipster'?

I get intimidated sometimes in Hoxton bars or whatever where the clientele look trendier and more confident than I do, but I know that they mostly would be v.uncool if you actually talked to them. Certainly not hipsters anyway. Hipsters have to know stuff. Though I'm not you could be one and look a total state. Maybe, though.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:59 (10 years ago) Permalink

Ah, but the importance of staying up to date style-wise is arguably important, as Billy Joel once croaked:

"And if you can't understand why your world is so dead,
why you've got to keep in style and feed your head
Well you're 21 and still your mother makes your bed,
And that's too long"

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:03 (10 years ago) Permalink

Amateurist you are a hipster. Everyone ever on ILX apart from maybe GALE is a hipster.

It's one of those things like "middle class" -- everyone thinks they're pretty hip but not an actualy HIPSTER like THOSE people over there. Those people, in turn, think the same damn thing right up through supermodel egomaniacs, who are in thrall to the ultra-square and their ability to live normal rational lives.

But by any serious measure of "hipster," pretty much everyone here is one.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:05 (10 years ago) Permalink

I refuse to waste any precious time figuring out what is 'fresh' 'new' or 'hot', as in a year's time or less it will be 'stale' 'old' or 'cold'. If no one's wearing, buying, reading, listening, or watching something in 5 years time, doesn't it show a lack of quality (whatever that is)

― Oops (Oops), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:07 (10 years ago) Permalink

what about monSTERS?
Oooh, they're worse than hipSTERS

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:07 (10 years ago) Permalink

Amateurist you are a hipster. Everyone ever on ILX apart from maybe GALE is a hipster.

No, I'm just a weirdo.

― Christine "Green Leafy Dragon" Indigo (cindigo), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:12 (10 years ago) Permalink

i agree with nabiscos first 3 posts, as usual he got it down EXACT

not so sure about the 'everyone here is a hipster' thing, but "i dont care about whats cool right now etc etc" is usually the hipsters trademark, because, like, if you were a hipster you wouldnt admit to that right?

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:13 (10 years ago) Permalink

No, it's just that you're likely to have different criteria for 'cool' than they do.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:15 (10 years ago) Permalink

I guess it depends on whether you're obeying a widely shared idea of what's cool or whether that idea is more hermetic. Is hipsterism a social quality or is there a such thing as Platonic hipsterism?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:16 (10 years ago) Permalink

Kismet N. + Amateurist!

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:16 (10 years ago) Permalink

My grammar was not cool.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:17 (10 years ago) Permalink

is it possible to be a populist hipster?

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:19 (10 years ago) Permalink

Hefner?
Or is he just cool and not hip? I really need to think this through

― Oops (Oops), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:22 (10 years ago) Permalink

i always thought/used hipster as a patronising synonym of trendy, ie a follower, someone who is up to date but only looking at other people's clocks, y'know topshop without the kokosolaki endorsement

the most agreeable aspect of this used is that while said victim would still dislike being defined as cool maan (keep yr guard up) he/she might slightly prefer being called a hipster than a trendy... thus confirming their hipsterness!!!

― zemko (bob), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:22 (10 years ago) Permalink

Of course, jess! (that's what ILM used to be about, isn't it?)

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:22 (10 years ago) Permalink

zing!

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:23 (10 years ago) Permalink

hoho the joke's on him not me! sigh

― zemko (bob), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:23 (10 years ago) Permalink

this is like one of those "atom in the tail of a dog" things isnt it?

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:25 (10 years ago) Permalink

anyway basically the hipster level is nowhere near the top. it's gola shoes and airport bags ― zemko (bob), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:25 (10 years ago) Permalink

uhoh i didn't close somehting

― zemko (bob), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:26 (10 years ago) Permalink

s'ok

― zemko (bob), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:26 (10 years ago) Permalink

So...Hipster= shallowness, fashion-obsessed, focuses on appearances

― Oops (Oops), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:29 (10 years ago) Permalink

but not very good at it

― zemko (bob), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:38 (10 years ago) Permalink

so, oops, what you're saying is the hipsterism is anti-rockism then?

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:40 (10 years ago) Permalink

don't know what anti-rockism is, but we seem to be saying that hipsters are into a 'scene' more than music. Their whole lifestyle (what they do, eat, read, listen to, etc.) is just a fashion statement.

― Oops (Oops), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:49 (10 years ago) Permalink

To me "hip" is kind of all right, that just means you know how to have fun and you're not overly populist about it and you're also not too concerned with trends either...you just like what you like, basically. So what if something is deemed "rockist," that's just someone trying to impose their tastes on you, to cut you down to size. To be hip is to be relaxed about what you like and to not take it too seriously, it's just popular music anyway. But being a hipster is making a cult out of it, and unless you're really a musician who gets obsessed with certain things for the purpose of understanding it--doing it--being obsessive about it beyond your own personal enjoyment of it is a drag, which is not hip. I know I'm stating the obvious and I risk being branded not hip to say it...so maybe I'm not hip after all...

― Edd Hurt (delta ed), Monday, 10 February 2003 19:03 (10 years ago) Permalink

*Ahem* Was "hipster" coined as a pejorative?

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 10 February 2003 19:07 (10 years ago) Permalink

More like a fashion agreement...

I don't think there's any correlation with being "cool" and being a "hipster".

Does discussing the definition of hipster qualify you as one? Not me, I'm here for scholarly purposes only.

What do people who are overly populist about having fun do for fun?

I don't know if you're hip or not, Edd, but you're definitely OTM.

― Stuart, Monday, 10 February 2003 19:08 (10 years ago) Permalink

No, Amateurist.
Hipster was a pretty groovy thing to be. This was before there were alternatives to alternative lifestyles and before there was 5000 magazines and websites telling you their opinion of cool. Almost anyone who wasn't mainstream and 'square' was a hipster. Dig it.

Digable Planets used it positively as recently as 1993.

― Oops (Oops), Monday, 10 February 2003 19:11 (10 years ago) Permalink

amateurist i think it was probbly coined as a positive word — ppl who are in the know — but IMMEDIATELY INSTANTLY also became a diss

the word "hipicat" means something relevant in wolof: sadly i forget what

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 10 February 2003 19:12 (10 years ago) Permalink

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haha that jacobin article, unsurprisingly, again protests too much.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:16 (1 week ago) Permalink

it reminds me exactly of the argument they had with the baffler all anxious b/c it said something about grad students and theory.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:17 (1 week ago) Permalink

its a pretty spectacular historical naiveté w/r/t the notion that the sort of things playing out might be related to experiences from the past in useful ways.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Saturday, 11 May 2013 17:19 (1 week ago) Permalink

I wish that article was about a real resistance movement and its mediatic portrayal, instead of the usual 'aw man stop talking about the hipsters' which is really the snake biting its own tail afaic.

― Van Horn Street, Saturday, 11 May 2013 19:53 (1 week ago) Permalink

i think they are right that "hipsters" are a smokescreen that people use in order to avoid talking about actual economic and cultural realities relating to the increasing stratification of wealth in america.

― use the word "thing" to make your writing sound more conversational (Treeship), Saturday, 11 May 2013 23:38 (1 week ago) Permalink

you should keep thinking

― Lamp, Saturday, 11 May 2013 23:39 (1 week ago) Permalink

i talked to a hipster at the record store yesterday. he had a striped shirt (like a frenchman!) and told me the new kurt vile record is good.

― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 May 2013 00:15 (1 week ago) Permalink

i think hipsters are just basically french

― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 May 2013 00:15 (1 week ago) Permalink

all hipsters aren't french but all french people are hipsters iirc

― Treeship, Sunday, 12 May 2013 00:18 (1 week ago) Permalink

― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 May 2013 00:32 (1 week ago) Permalink

― use the word "thing" to make your writing sound more conversational (Treeship), Saturday, May 11, 2013 7:38 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah and also I think they are correct that at least when the professional class talks about hipsters they are masking anxiety about people living their lives in a different way. Obviously this is only one of many groups of people who uses the word "hipster" in many different ways, but I think the article is right on that point.

― THIS IS NOT A BENGHAZI T-SHIRT (Hurting 2), Sunday, 12 May 2013 00:40 (1 week ago) Permalink

a shocking number of people who can afford 2k a month brooklyn apartments and cool glasses are actually in the professional class

― iatee, Sunday, 12 May 2013 01:15 (1 week ago) Permalink

okay, when squares sneer at hipsters, they're expressing anxiety about difference

when hipsters sneer at hipsters, they're just being hipsters

― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 May 2013 01:30 (1 week ago) Permalink

expressing anxiety about sameness, w/e

― controversial vegan pregnancy (contenderizer), Sunday, 12 May 2013 01:30 (1 week ago) Permalink

they put salmon in the fish tacos, hank! SAL-MON!

― Philip Nunez, Sunday, 12 May 2013 01:54 (1 week ago) Permalink

xp aren't we back to sneering at gentrifying yuppies again? i feel like sneering at hipsters is more a thing to do during an economic downturn

― You must be very cold in the sack. (sarahell), Sunday, 12 May 2013 03:23 (1 week ago) Permalink

but... the gentrifying yuppies are hipsters this time around.

― Philip Nunez, Sunday, 12 May 2013 05:41 (1 week ago) Permalink

anti-hipsters = yuppies = hipsters = anti-hipsters

― Treeship, Sunday, 12 May 2013 06:03 (1 week ago) Permalink

xposts I asked a french guy why was it that I didn't see any hipsters in Paris and he replied that they don't have hipsters, they have bobos (bourgeois boheme) and that *they existed since way longer*.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, 12 May 2013 11:58 (1 week ago) Permalink

my username is an anagram for Hipsteer

― human after y'all (Treeship), Sunday, 12 May 2013 14:25 (1 week ago) Permalink

i mean its not anxiety abou difference. its projection and jealousy and desire. i mean when i see a couple of kids and guess he's fucking her and she's taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, i know this is paradise. everyone old has dreamed all their lives -- bonds and gestures pushed to one side like an outdated combine harvester, and everyone young going down the long slide.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Sunday, 12 May 2013 14:53 (1 week ago) Permalink

is nonreproductive sexual intercourse a hipster class trait

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:12 (1 week ago) Permalink

is youth/being a 'kid' a hipster class trait

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:14 (1 week ago) Permalink

can u have a family and still be a hipster

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:15 (1 week ago) Permalink

what if it's an "ironic family"

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:17 (1 week ago) Permalink

what if you "suck" as a parent but do so "on purpose"

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:17 (1 week ago) Permalink

that's exactly how I got my hipster cred, my son is so proud

― Moodles, Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:41 (1 week ago) Permalink

Totally against the idea that "hipsters articles" are a smokescreen in order to avoid talking about economic problems. Heck it feels 80% of media only talks about how terrible the economy is everywhere and those "hipsters articles" is the stuff only NYT, the New Yorker and N+1 care about. If one is interrested in the economy he will be able to find his way quite easily without having to naviguate the treacherous sea of anti-hipsterism.

tbs, I agree with Hurting that a lot of anti-hipsterism is anxiety. Most of anti-something is anxiety.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:42 (1 week ago) Permalink

I was about about to read Krugman's book and aww crap it was only N+1's article about Pitchfork, shoulda known better!

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:43 (1 week ago) Permalink

lol

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 15:49 (1 week ago) Permalink

I asked a french guy why was it that I didn't see any hipsters in Paris and he replied that they don't have hipsters, they have bobos (bourgeois boheme)

The French read David Brooks?

― i, norbit (jaymc), Sunday, 12 May 2013 16:45 (1 week ago) Permalink

yeah. they just call him "le grand philosophe" over there.

― Treeship, Sunday, 12 May 2013 16:57 (1 week ago) Permalink

it's been said a million times but the anti-hipster thing surely falls under the scrutiny of "taste" identified by Bourdieu et al. Anti-hipsterism is probably explained best by the same thing that explains hipsterism. Maybe it's all accelerated by an absence of agreed upon standards and traditions of taste, which only makes the need for careful discrimination that much more important. but you can accept a standard or reject it now and defend your "taste" in either case.

― ryan, Sunday, 12 May 2013 17:11 (1 week ago) Permalink

Dans les pays anglo-saxons, le terme d'« Hipster » est plus couramment utilisé pour désigner les codes culturels volontairement éclectiques et superficiels (mêlant des éléments de culture de masse à des éléments de contre-culture ainsi plus ou moins dépolitisés) de cette catégorie sociale plutôt issue des couches supérieures des classes moyennes. Il existe également de nombreuses variantes relativement proches : champagne socialist, neiman marxist, limousine liberal, DINKS (Double Income, No KidS, "Deux revenus et pas d'enfants".)

― Euler, Sunday, 12 May 2013 18:49 (1 week ago) Permalink

wuzzat, french wiki? and where are they getting the "radical leftist" part of their caricature?

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 21:46 (1 week ago) Permalink

(cf. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/september/9.24.html )

― Excelsior twilight. Harpsichord wind through the trees. (bernard snowy), Sunday, 12 May 2013 21:47 (1 week ago) Permalink

had somehow never heard "neiman marxist"

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Sunday, 12 May 2013 22:14 (1 week ago) Permalink

limousine liberal?

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, 12 May 2013 22:55 (1 week ago) Permalink

neiman marxist is so much better than limousine liberal. i object to the phrase anyway, on the ground that it is impossible to live outside the capitalist system so all of its critics will be stained, somehow, by hypocrisy. it's just too easy an attack to lob at someone.

― Treeship, Sunday, 12 May 2013 22:59 (1 week ago) Permalink

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/13/us-public-policy-polling-hipster

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Wednesday, 15 May 2013 00:02 (1 week ago) Permalink

― shit, cat shit, cat shit, cat shit, cat shit, cat shit, cat shit, cat (zachlyon), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 05:26 (2 days ago) Permalink

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