"Hipster" as pejorative.

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Seconded.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 07:57 (10 years ago) Permalink

Ridicule!? I am not ridiculing anyone (except maybe that last guy, but only mildly, and certainly NOT because he's autistic)!
I should have made my point much less obliquely. I was thinking about myself (as I'm inclined to do) or other ILX people, and how a person with no real sense of style can accidentally (ie: by falling in w/you lot) develop a taste for music (for instance) that is, um, informed in some way, or something, without having the set of attributes one normally would need (like knowing a whole bunch of Cool People That Are Into Cool Things).

― Dan I., Tuesday, 11 February 2003 09:25 (10 years ago) Permalink

And then I found those first two kids, who I earnestly feel are incredibly cool (or at least those pics are cool).

I'm sorry I hijacked your thread! I didn't mean any harm to you or them or anyone, it was just a really bad combination of my eye happening to fall on something I thought was cool and me failing to realize that presenting it in a certain way could be construed in a way other than I intended.

again, I'm sorry, but also: look at those first two kids, is there any way I (or anyone) could have possibly have even suggested that they were anything other than very, very cool?

― Dan I., Tuesday, 11 February 2003 09:30 (10 years ago) Permalink

fuck, I'm such a dork. I'm going to go into lurk mode for penance for awhile.

― Dan I., Tuesday, 11 February 2003 09:37 (10 years ago) Permalink

'Hipster' is like 'cool': it's not something you can say of yourself for any reason, and its application to you by others always says more about them than you. But that's where the similarity stops. I wouldn't use the word 'hipster' to describe someone with an idiosyncratic/early adapter personal aesthetic, but I would say 'cool'.

TRENDY, by the way, is a bit of an insult in my books. But I prefer leading to following in terms of my aesthetic choices. I also do not abandon my aesthetic choices according to the whims of fashion (which is not the same as getting sick of a record or a skirt; my aesthetic will merely inform my next choice).

― suzy (suzy), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 09:45 (10 years ago) Permalink

I think it's quite a mild, friendly perjorative - more of "oh, those hipsters" than "those fucking hipsters".

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 10:20 (10 years ago) Permalink

perhaps more accurately it is seen as 'working at cool', where cool is seen as something supposedly effortless. if hipster is 'working towards' then it is intentional and conscious, thereby negating any cool that is accrued.

i suppose cool is like eccentric or diva. it cannot be self-bestowed.

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 10:27 (10 years ago) Permalink

i tend to sort of agree with gareth except for one thing... surely, some of being cool or hip depends on knowledge of obscure things, which takes work. i mean, nobody was born with the future discographies of german dub-house labels etched into their brains?
hipsterism = enlightened consumerism, and no creation. i would say that a hipster band is, instead of being a creative group, is one that is wholly dependent on the record collections of the players. this is not always a bad thing, mind.
lastly, everyone should just go and figure it out for themselves.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:27 (10 years ago) Permalink

My total: 17/30 (57%)

(See Nabisco!)

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:30 (10 years ago) Permalink

I got the same but it defined Nathan Barley as being the archetypal hipster, which is wrong.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:37 (10 years ago) Permalink

I agree w/ Sonic Youth - "Hip Not Cool"

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:54 (10 years ago) Permalink

I am 77% hipster but I think I should get extra points for concluding that whoever wrote that test is not really so hip. (I mean, Sarah Vowell? Dave Eggers? "Deck" over "cool boots?")

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:59 (10 years ago) Permalink

14/30 47%. this was very americentric. i have never heard the word 'deck' used this way. but i shall be sure to use it from now on!

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 20:08 (10 years ago) Permalink

ouch, 73% - I place the blame on the red-with-white-stripes sneakers that I'm wearing.

― lyra (lyra), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 20:40 (10 years ago) Permalink

I can't even find an answer for some of the questions, which as a middle-aged English guy is probably all the information needed.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 12:45 (10 years ago) Permalink

20/30(67%)...but that's got to be astonishingly hip for a Washingtonian, as we are supposedly the antithesis of hip.

― j.lu (j.lu), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 13:12 (10 years ago) Permalink

"awesome" 4ever, dude.

― g.cannon (gcannon), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 14:18 (10 years ago) Permalink

Nathan Barley=Jamie Oliver=current definition of hipster, no? Why so wrong, N.?

― SittingPretty (sittingpretty), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 14:59 (10 years ago) Permalink

63%, and I am a Washingtonian.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 15:14 (10 years ago) Permalink

Nathan Barley is hardly the same as Jamie Oliver. Jamie Oliver is a cook who worked his way up from kitchen staff and had a TV friendly manner. Nathan Barley is a trustafarian who never does anything much. Neither are hipsters. As I and other people said, hipsters know a lot stuff about music and whatever, and are concerned with having old records that no one else has etc. It's not about being invited to the right parties and having a mullet (*surely* people in Hoxton don't still have mullets - that started like 3 years ago or something?)

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 19:28 (10 years ago) Permalink

There needs to be much less use of this term in journalism. Especially in publications that consider themselves hip.

― Mary (Mary), Sunday, 16 February 2003 05:59 (10 years ago) Permalink

I think it should be used only in reference to apparel.

― Amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 16 February 2003 06:23 (10 years ago) Permalink

40%, because I love Redbook.

― rosemary (rosemary), Sunday, 16 February 2003 18:48 (10 years ago) Permalink

Good point, Tom -- it seems like only hipsters say "those fucking hipsters!" whereas someone like my mom or my more conservative friends would use it to mock gently or to tease.

― Clarke B., Sunday, 16 February 2003 19:23 (10 years ago) Permalink

2 years pass...

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Saturday, 23 July 2005 16:49 (7 years ago) Permalink

1 year passes...

Half of the threads on old-old-ILX were about hipsters and trucker hats. What happened? Have they disappeared? Have we stopped caring?

― baaderonixx, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 09:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

hipsters = the yuppies of the 00's

― m coleman, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 10:27 (6 years ago) Permalink

Simon Reynolds is pro-hipsters these days, which tells you all you need to know.

For me hipsters will never be anything more than crap pleated trousers in the Debenhams sale.

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 10:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

the word hipster is very very old, no? but the "hipsters" has somehow had the word attached to them. they don't really have a meaningful "thing" to differentiate them, musically or culturally.

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 10:33 (6 years ago) Permalink

Williamsburg author seeks hipster intern

― gabbneb, Friday, 16 March 2007 12:28 (6 years ago) Permalink

No Mailer mention yet?

In his notorious essay 'The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster' (1956) originally published in Dissent and reprinted in ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF (1959), Mailer examined violence, hysteria, crimes and confusion in American society through the fashionable existentialist framework, which owes much to Jean Genet. Mailer defined the hipster as a philosophical psychopath, and urban adventurer, who has adopted elements from black culture and could be called "a White Negro". To become a hipster is a conscious choice for members of the intellectual élite. However, the black man knows the art of the primitive "in the cells of his existence", and is forced to accepts the moral wilderness of civilized life, condemned by "the Square".

link

― G00blar, Friday, 16 March 2007 12:37 (6 years ago) Permalink

I revived this thread because I recently had a conversation about hipsters with a colleague, for whom the term was pretty positive, associated with beat anti-conformists and the like. Is that the original meeting of the word?

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 13:22 (6 years ago) Permalink

Hipster was always something to aim for...certainly upto and includng the 1960s.

Why/when did it become a pejorative? The growth in awareness and power of image a) by individuals (the hipsters themselves?), b) by companies (selling image back), the ability to play at being xyz rather than ACTUALLY being xyz, with the suspicion that image taking precedence over....what? Difficult to pin down, but hipster as pejorative=suspicion of image

Hipster=Image=FASHION=Transitory=Fake?
Anti-Hipster=For Real=Core=Permanent

Fashion by its very nature is evolving, predatory. Real scenes=Prey, consumed, discarded

Perhaps until the 1960s the hipsters and the 'for reals' were basically the same people (and visibility lower), and that after the 1960s the term hipster took on this more fashion oriented (and therefore 'lesser') position.

And after this time, people have gradually become 'young' for longer and longer periods, enuogh to go through various scenes, and the visibility of people that were one type of scene, and then 2 years later, another kind of scene, marking them out as somehow separate from both scenes, an interloper, and outsider, a colonizer, a hipster

― maricopa john, Friday, 16 March 2007 13:47 (6 years ago) Permalink

Who would have been an 80's hipster?

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 13:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

― G00blar, Friday, 16 March 2007 13:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

it's all context. When you're in the suburbs or Queens you're like, "Hey, cool, a hipster!" but when you're in Brooklyn or Manhattan you're like "oh fuck, a hipster."

― dan selzer, Friday, 16 March 2007 14:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

hipsters = the yuppies of the 00's

Surely those are bros, not hipsters. The yuppie of the 00's is Striped Shirt Golden Tee guy.

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 14:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

most people i know who complain about hipsters are actually complaining about people who are exactly like them moving in on their perceived territory.

― lauren, Friday, 16 March 2007 14:59 (6 years ago) Permalink

The original hipsters seem quaint and naive because they were only operating on three levels of irony instead of, like, 100, run in parallel.

Also, due to the nature of contemporary media, an idea transforms from underground to institution in less than 2.3 seconds, so in order to remain cutting-edge, one has to become a douchebag fashionista.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:01 (6 years ago) Permalink

i just found a book by Chandler Brossard callled Who Walk in Darkness from 1952,from th flyleaf.."this is a novel about "hipsters" and their girls in ny's greenwich village.here for the first time the new generation of american bohemians are presented in fiction-what is a "hipster"?the name derives from the jazz term "hip" and denotes a person who possesses "superior awareness".the "hipster" sees through the shams of conventional attitudes and morality:he patterns his life on a code of personal freedom which has something in common with that of the French Existentialist.Becaiuse hipsters are much too smart to work,they live by their wits in a kind of underground which lies halfway between neurosis and violence,they drift from tough bars to harlem dance halls,from private dope parties to prize fights,from one love affiar to another."

― danbunny, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:04 (6 years ago) Permalink

Oh yeah, THAT guy sounds like a winner.

― Laurel, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:10 (6 years ago) Permalink

"Because hipsters are much too smart to work, they live despite their wits in a media-saturated fog which lies halfway between neurosis and schizophrenia, and drift from one 'graphic design' job to the next."

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:10 (6 years ago) Permalink

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ginsberg's "angelheaded hipsters." The attitude toward them seems ambivalent, though.

― jaymc, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

i miss the hepcats :(

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

I'm not quite sure how to put this, but there's some kind of a nebulous thought spinning around my head that the view of hipsters changed when the idea stopped being about rebellion (i.e. 60's and before) and started to be about jumping on any bandwagon that the media portrayed as "cool". If I can refine what I think I'm on about a bit I will elucidate later, but don't hold your breath, obv.

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

NEVER BEEN IN A ZOOT SUIT RIOT!

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

Ok, so maybe not rebellion in that way, but anti-establishment, at least...

― peteR, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:27 (6 years ago) Permalink

in a small city like i reside in,th appearance of anyone in black frame glasses,band shirt and gf w bangs or funny hat is immediately filed away under "brooklyn hipster",but to me it's a good thing cuz they r th only ones who can truly appreciate my Big Eye Vietnam velvet art or Amon Duul records.Hopefully th true meaning will circle back around to Harlem music hall goers and troublemakers.

― danbunny, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:28 (6 years ago) Permalink

I have black frame glasses and am wearing a Miles Davis shirt. Can we be friends?

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:30 (6 years ago) Permalink

i'm just glad that the pressure to find at least one black guy willing to join yer ska revival band is off and there are people who will now pay me money for my horrible christian folk rekkerds on ebay.

― scott seward, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:31 (6 years ago) Permalink

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