ROLLING HIPSTER STUDIES 09

hadn't seen bernard's new dn til now and am actually ol lol'ing

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, November 18, 2010 1:43 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

its driving a vintage intl harvester thats on the new

http://www.vahistorical.org/sva2003/mccormick01b.jpg

in a bar somewhere in greenpoint, eating olive oil mashed potatoes, drinking craft beer

nyc would be such a great place IF IT WEREN'T FOR ALL THE HIPSTERS!!!

mr del plz maintain academic objectivity in this thread

my bad

wow the field of hipster studies has really taken off since 2009 huh

feel like theres a really good n+1 related joke to be made here btw but i cant find it amidst all the hipsters &c &c

In 2001, in Atlanta when i first started hanging out, and there were these kids living in shitty houses, wearing lots of thrift store clothes, just drinking and listening to all the cool records all the time. Sure enough many of them ended up writing for Vice magazine lol!

At the time I was aware of two other types that i would have labelled hipster at the time. The Athens crowd was more or less like the Atlanta crowd (or visa versa) but back then it was the late heyday of E6 and all those guys were doing the post-Pavement or the Mr Rodgers thing fashion-wise. Like a holdout from the grunge days, with a heavier emphasis on the 60s. Stuff that showed up a few years later in Royal Tanenbaums and things. Of course it always amazes me that girls can basically wear cute vintage 60s clothes and fit in to any hipster fashion ideal over the next ten years. No matter what the trends are, a cure 60s polka dot dress or something fits in with the cool kids.

Before I came to Atlanta in 2001 the only other youth trend I was aware of was hardcore/punks/straightedge, who all seemed to gravitate towards the tight-fitting black clothes, white belts, etc. Some of the more advanced kids were doing mod or ironic punk stuff in the same scene, but most seemed to stick to the formula. Feels like many of these people still dress the same way today, only they just go to the punk clubs and aren't straightedge but now are alcoholics and/or coke heads. Or they are older and married and have a vintage car and look all rockabilly.

I do remember one time going to MJQ (the premiere hipster club) and seeing some kids in the audience with day-glow bandanas and ironic glasses and the whole 80s electro warrior thing like headband, wristbands, some kind of post-Korine aerobics costume on, etc. That's the only time I ever saw anybody and instantly thought "That is a hipsterrunoff style hipster".

the punk > rockabilly continuum is one of the saddest progressions

otm

I do remember one time going to MJQ (the premiere hipster club) and seeing some kids in the audience with day-glow bandanas and ironic glasses and the whole 80s electro warrior thing like headband, wristbands, some kind of post-Korine aerobics costume on, etc. That's the only time I ever saw anybody and instantly thought "That is a hipsterrunoff style hipster".

i hope that electroclash fashion comes back in a huge way in a few months

but also i am confused-- i think hro only began a couple of years ago, and i don't think anyone was still dressing like that circa 2008/2009. did you mean to say "vicemagazine"?

Yeah i think it was around then. Just using HRO as a reference. It was probably at a Girl Talk show. It was the first summer headbands were all over the place. I mean, you can point at someone wearing their everyday clothes and call them a hipster, but it definitely has a different meaning to it when someone is wearing 50% trendy accessories.

And I forgot, the skinny jeans-and-fitting flannel-and-converse was definitely a hardcore shows look while i was going to them in early 00s. At the time i thought it was partially a form of infantilism; dressing like you're younger than you are to rebel. Luke Skywalker haircuts to remind you of being a kid.

when i was in college there were these guys who worked at the sub shop and sold drugs and had gone from skinheads > hare krishnas > deadheads over the years. i wonder if they are still going to rainbow gatherings or if they have moved on to something else

I think we even called each other "kids". We were, what 18 or 19 or something.

Yeah i think it was around then. Just using HRO as a reference. It was probably at a Girl Talk show. It was the first summer headbands were all over the place.

ok 'cause now that i'm thinking about it i do remember seeing like some girl last year or so wearing that level of intense eighties fashion that you are describing. i guess it really has endured longer than i was thinking. that look was present as early as '99 or so in some circles, though

when i was in college there were these guys who worked at the sub shop and sold drugs and had gone from skinheads > hare krishnas > deadheads over the years. i wonder if they are still going to rainbow gatherings or if they have moved on to something else

― loose jorts (del), Wednesday, November 17, 2010 10:41 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

these dudes sound amazing

my friend dated one of them and when she broke up with him he went off to some parkland to trip for a day by himself in order to process it.

they were all pretty screevy though, in a kind of especially unglamorous side of psychedelia rainbow gathering sub shop drippings way

they're probably part of the nitrous tank mafia these days at string cheese incident shows or something

ok i take it back these dudes sound depressing

its rare to have the necessary out-of-body ambivalence necessary for extended lyfestile sampling

were truer words ever spoken?

its otm for sure, i must agree

fearing these chillwaver than thou attitudes have an expiration date, though.

i mean my mother in-law called me last night and harangued me about how i was "washed out". what is the world coming to?

Woah, Adam Bruneau, I've seen you post on a bunch of threads but I don't know that I ever realized you were a 2000s Athens/Atlanta dude. We probably know a lot of the same people, I moved to ATH from ATL for college in 2000, stayed till 06. And it was, yeah, polka-dot dresses through that entire period, with accessories getting louder, bigger, and more magnificently gauche throughout. I don't know if hardly any of it was ever worn ironically. The Elephant Six types just let their muttonchops develop but otherwise kept a vague 70s thing going. And then the straight up indie rock types, which I remember sort of drying up by mid-decade, but your, yknow, Pavement dudes, with or without Rivers Cuomo glasses. Those were the days.

just used Shazam to identify 'The Song Abt Thongs' by Sisqo 3 minutes ago via TweetDeck Retweeted by 5 people

hipsterrunoff
HIPSTER RUNOFF

kinda feel deeply annoyed that those hyundai ppl are so blithely getting tagged as 'hipsters' [via wearing clothes] when they p clearly arent

current studies lack any real rigour imo discipline is dead scene

Reminds me a lot of the way "alternative" briefly described a sort of college rock/original lollapalooza vibe and then wound up meaning "rock", and how people continued to complain loudly about how alternative didn't mean anything anymore even though the term continued to wander around for years like a zombie.

kinda reminds me how language/ideas are constantly shifting and recontextualizing throughout history

Or, you know, "folk" came to mean light music with acoustic guitars, "psychedelic" came to mean anything with a fuzz pedal, etc.

To be frank about it, calling them hipsters is not totally inaccurate, but certainly they are involved in a far, far, far lower-level of hipster than someone drooling coke-bubbles in the bathroom at Whartscape

― darwin deej (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, January 4, 2011 11:27 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they may not technically be 'hipsters' but they could definitely pass. i wouldn't kick 'em out of a basement show for droppin crumbs, is what im sayin.
(well, maybe the dude if he started in with that silly bullshit)

i mean, kids at the mall in Blink 182 t-shirts are still techically "punks" even if they're not wearing a 15-year-old Crass T-shirt next to a dog with one eye

really? i mean n/a is right in that words shift meaning over time & often these descriptors get more catholic as they become more widespread but u of all ppl shld want to retain some nuance or value in the term????

anyway 'yuppie' is a perfectly good word imo, ppl shld just use it instead

help, i've realized i'm a Yindie (or am i a yupster?)

yuppie is also a word that lost a coherent meaning a long time ago, especially since you're using it to describe suburban people

well yeah obv. lamp, they're not "hipsters" in the 2004 sense of the word, but they are certaionly hipsters in the 2010 sense. Get with the times, bro

http://i51.tinypic.com/2edxt80.jpg

When I started law school in 2008 I noticed I was one of only a handful of remotely hipsterish looking people, and by most standards I'm not very hipsterish looking. By Fall 2010 a huge portion of the incoming class looked like hipsters to me. The age of the hipster lawyer is upon us.

lol markers is was half-thinking of that in my pointless defense of 2nd generation hipster:

All descriptions of hipsters are doomed to disappoint, because they will not be the hipsters you know. But to those of you who are reading this in 2050, I can only say: Everything in this book is true, and its impressions are perfect

xpost u should sleep with them

I would have sex with all this hipster law students

https://s.yimg.com/cv/ae/us/audience/101118/1500x1500w0lsntoxu.jpg

this pic seems relevant somehow

IF IT FLOATES, WE KNOAWE IT'S A HIPSTERE

Ehhh, the Cat-Power/Bang-Power looks is kinda going mainstream now. Chix on my campus whom shop at GAP or wherever chicks show seem to b sporting the look wholesale. The dude just has a fruity shirt.

*shop. chicks shop. where chicks shop. chick shop. dick flop.

They have matching bangs.

GIRLS OF YAHOO

IF IT FLOATES, WE KNOAWE IT'S A HIPSTERE

― buzza, Tuesday, January 4, 2011 6:56 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

Has this been referenced yet? : http://makeoutclub.com/

Wow, that is still around. That is like paleo-hipster studies.

hipster studies got cancelled

epic tl;dr rant by ayesha siddiqi is vintage hipster studies

https://ayeshaasiddiqi.substack.com/p/memento-millenial?s=r

i don't agree with everything (probably most?) of what she says (at time she succumbs to what i feel are tired cliches about millenials and also blurring the boundaries between bush, obama era, and post-obama era. i'm also less sanguine about gen z) but she's so great at this type of stuff and it's a pleasure to skim through a master going off at length

first third is Sally Rooney discourse which is very skippable

quoting two long chunks i found provocative

When Millennials complain about Gen Z not being as pop culturally literate, I feel we can’t really blame them. They don’t have TV the way we did.There’s so much I learned, even as an immigrant, through like, The Simpsons, because that’s what was on air after school. It forced us to become fluent in the perspectives and references of the generations preceding us––albeit the very narrow perspectives and references of upper middle class white men. And this is not a defense of that era, any movement diffusing its influence is an improvement. But there was some linearity to inheriting knowledge. It’s not like those same people aren’t still the ones writing the majority of TV. Only they’re now showrunners telling their token staff writers of color to write dialogue in the style of Twitter threads. Which isn’t to discount all the real talent that managed to still break through from the internet, like Issa Rae, Quinta Brunson, Zack Fox, so many other creatives; it’s to recognize that things didn’t magically get as easy for them as it may appear. Every person who originally found an audience online had to be more than original: they had to be talented in multiple creative fields simultaneously, and still only just made it by being at the right place at the right time.

Gen Z has a completely different relationship to popular and digital culture. Those blonde TikTokers whose names are always some combination of two first names don’t represent Gen Z the way we were told Mischa Barton and Adam Brody “represented” us. There are social media celebrities with millions of followers whose names no one reading this would recognize. What we’ve finally reached now is the end of any possibility of monoculture.

The atomization of the cultural experience over the last two decades has significant consequences good and bad; it’s the subject of my book. But what we’ve gained is a generation relieved of a lot of bullshit and preciousness about aesthetics, with a greater awareness of how the digital can be just as fake if not faker than the mainstream. It started with the post hipster embrace of Lana Del Rey; it’s ending with ambivalence over Sally Rooney. It’s the same authenticity test our generation applied to “indie musicians” when the tide first started turning. With conversation around whether Rooney’s books are diverse enough, leftist enough, sincere enough.

Gen Z is better able to treat culture as a playground with less self-conscious dissonance because it’s not as central to their identity formation as it was for us. For them, the digital is the mainstream. And it’s disposable. Being “alternative” doesn’t have the same currency since it’s an identity accessible to anyone.

We only achieved these pyrrhic victories over “representation” politics once they were more thoroughly divorced from actual political victories. And that scales across the culture industries. Hollywood productions are finally hiring fresh talent scouted online, but only once the streaming wars were already eroding union power. Media companies are hiring more writers of color, but once it was no longer a financially viable career. It’s visible across Instagram influencers desperately mining themselves for content, completely beholden to a platform they don’t own and an attention stream they can’t control. A few years after trans women began appearing in fashion magazines, the legislated violence against them has gained more ground. Isn’t it such a scam, replacing material assets with opportunities for clout for all different body types?

A few years ago, being someone who creates social media for a living was being hailed as the new normal. But the full time influencer/content creator was just a trend that benefitted a handful, not a sea change. It didn’t represent the emergence of a new economy; it was the death throes of an old one. The actual legacy of the “content creator” boom is the rise of individual traders on apps like Robin Hood, it’s crypto culture and NFTs. It’s asset production in the age of hyper devaluation of labor. In short, it’s the affirmation of the ability to “make it big.”

People are chasing what they mistake to be paradigm shifts in a more democratic direction, when they’re just attempts to escape the strain of living as neoliberal subjects in failing states spiraling towards reactionary fascism. It was obvious back then too. The platformization of everything, the emergence of the “gig” economy, did not challenge old models of employment. It accelerated and entrenched wealth gaps by pretending there was an escape valve. And there was, for a few. Less than half of one percent of Youtubers make money. Even fewer make enough money to quit whatever else they may be doing or have to. Of all the top earning podcasts with big audiences, not a single one is new. It’s been the same top earning productions for a decade now. They were the exception not the rule. As a friend recently said to me, all pyramid schemes need to pay a few people tons of money to get free labor from everyone else. And thats what social media users do, they create value for free. I’m not saying social media is a pyramid scheme, I’m saying the same capitalism that exists off of it has been more effectively reproduced on it. Eventually, people will catch on to the fact that “decentralization” doesn’t solve the problems of centralization. It just spreads them across a more atomized landscape with less regulatory power. If it matches the timeline of when the pundits catch on to things I post they’ll write their op eds on the subject about five years from me saying this.

But if you ask me if I think we live in a worse world, I wouldn’t hesitate to say no. We live in a better one. The effect of the internet on the world doesn’t uniquely harm the world as much as it exposes and amplifies what was already wrong with it. Racism, sexism, misinformation. Sure, there is a misinformation crisis, but that’s exactly what Fox, CNN, and NYT produced in the lead up to the War on Terror too; they continue to produce that world. The internet accelerates and it fills in the gaps. Nothing that’s gotten worse in recent years was something new or unprecedented––it all had historical points of origin. Meanwhile, a lot of what is better about the world now is new. It is unprecedented. We’ve made so many gains.

And every genuine gain facilitated by social media I credit to people, not platforms. I credit it to people building digital alternatives to what was missing in the physical world; spheres of influence, access, connection, empowerment. I think of people who made it possible for sexual violence to have social consequence. I think of the students using Discord to organize school walkouts. I think of all the people getting help through therapists posting on Instagram and life coaches on Tiktok. Sure, the quality varies, but that’s true of the healthcare system too. ADHD and autism is under-diagnosed in girls and people of color. These individuals have been better able to access life improving guidance online. Some of the best culture writers today came up on tumblr and Twitter; we would’ve missed out on so many valuable perspectives without them. I’m sure the people reading this can think of many more examples. The work I do now is with people who are trying to build better digital tools. They’re asking what furthers the public interest and how to meet needs of expression, connection, knowledge production and entertainment.

And to think amidst all this people want to talk about “indie sleaze” as an aspiration towards 2004 decadence rather than away from 2014 neuroticism. It’s so pathetic. It’s people wanting to discover the next “normcore” ahead of time. The “phenomenon” of indie sleaze is connected to us only in that its a reaction to the neuroses of painstainkingly tidy “millenial” aesthetics. Pastels and mostera plants. Immaculate bathroom tiles with pristine “top shelfs” of prestige beauty brands. “Clean” lines and “minimalism”. Ultra white Stan Smiths and Common Projects.

Amongst all else Gen Z is dealing with I’m so thrilled they’re not also pressed about getting their white shoes (Air Force 1s) dirty. “Geriatric” millennials misidentifying any of this as something that has to do with them are so desperate and arrogant. It’s like…millennials, , stop flattering yourselves. No one wants to recreate your college era looks. You looked bad. We don’t need to look to Gen Z to represent nostalgia for our youth; we already embody it. I’m happy for us to retire with our romantic little novels and leave pop cultural relevance to those the coming era belongs to.

The people that can’t handle not being the most interesting people at a party are always the least interesting anyway. And the people most defensive of their views usually don’t have a very strong case for them. Whether it’s about a particular cultural object being popular or not, or what that might mean.

Aesthetic analysis is about nothing deeper than consumption habits; but consumer habits reveal public appetites and the interests of capital and the state and that..can run deep.

It’s like…millennials, , stop flattering yourselves. No one wants to recreate your college era looks. You looked bad. We don’t need to look to Gen Z to represent nostalgia for our youth; we already embody it. I’m happy for us to retire with our romantic little novels and leave pop cultural relevance to those the coming era belongs to.

it's like ... millennials, look at history and reflect on how cringe it was when the baby boomers were doing this (and probably still are tbh)

Aesthetic analysis is about nothing deeper than consumption habits; but consumer habits reveal public appetites and the interests of capital and the state and that..can run deep.

i still think it's cool that a lot of this "discourse" has entered the mainstream, as opposed to being cloistered in academia as it was when I was a teenager and reading Bourdieu et al in college. it's like being able to buy a new fleece sweatshirt with the image from Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures on it ... in that, while it's cool that it is readily accessible at discount prices in a size that fits my middle-aged body, it also is awkward in that what it represents has shifted a bit (you can get one in white ... also tie-dyed) and the "rigor" has lessened. There is way more writing (and other media) that talks about these issues that does so in a lazy way, or a non-intellectual/theory way. But that raises the question -- does it have to be rigorous? Does the Unknown Pleasures shirt have to be a black t-shirt, and can only be a black t-shirt, or maybe, a long-sleeved t-shirt, but not fleece, not in colors other than black, and not on clothing made for plus-sized women?