"Hipster" as pejorative.

I think you really need to read Adorno in light of the fact he lived through fascism, Hitler, Stalin, and the major rise of post-war consumer culture.

Those bolded parts are what stop Adorno from being like a lot of similar but lesser people imho – for example, given we're talking about the use of hipster as pejorative, how many people who so use the word are really questioning people's 'ambitions' or think we should fight to maintain a 'non-normalized judgment'?

And also @ Treeship whatever condemnation he's making of his 'intellectuals' he is still viewing them as damaged victims of capitalism - there's a sympathy there, which perhaps isn't clear in his excellently bitchy quotes here

I have tried before to define hipsterism as a kind of process whereby authenticity is ironized (which is to say authenticity is deployed as a signifier). didn't really work though. But it's like this paradox of knowing authenticity perhaps.

the word "pose(u)rs" presupposes a particular authentic identity being mimicked that i don't think Adorno thought existed

ya, unlike the hipster-hater of today Adorno couldn't have felt he was above receiving such a critique, though he's in no position to make it of himself. A position that perhaps isn't always evident from his caustic haughtiness.

I think it's also easy to forget, as he generally reads to us as a very modern thinker, that most of his best known cultural criticism and analysis is distinctly of an era prior to the revolution that field had in the '60s. I think the later pieces like those in Quasi una Fantasia are a bit more measured if not any more positive in spirit. That people can still find those early analyses interesting and useful is remarkable in itself.

Theres a collection of adorno essays titled "the culture industry". Is that a good place to start with him? I don't want to dive into negative dialectics or dialectic of enlightenment right now, but adorno keeps coming up more and more in conversation and i feel i should know a bit more about him. I am sympathetic, btw, to his left wing antipopulism from what i know about him; i was just put off by the dismissiveness in those quotes and wondered where it might be coming from.

even though I semi-defended them there I think it's a bit unfortunate that the culture industry stuff is so predominant in a lot of people's image of Adorno, no doubt there's a lot of brilliant thought in those essays but it's shrouded in a very singular and what now seems myopic worldview. I don't know him especially well but I'd recommend Aesthetic Theory, though if anything it's even tougher and more uncompromising than the two you mention.

I recently read a good secondary source on Adorno called "Art and Enlightenment" by David Roberts. Was actually kind of blown away by it. A bit older. 1991 or so.

aesthetic theory is not what anyone would call a readable book.

the essays in critical models, on the other hand, are fairly approachable (some were even written for radio presentation).

reading minima moralia would not be the best way to get a clear picture of adorno's 'doctrines', but its intermittent, quiet personal elements might surprise you.

Yeah, Minima Moralia is the thing of his I've found most readable – short (couple of paragraphs) thoughts about things. Every one of them made me think about stuff. Best place to begin, I'd say.

He's got a good essay called 'Commitment' too.

I'll pick up minimamoralia tonight. I am intrigued by the quiet, personal elements. Those are my favorite parts of books.

Thx

Philosophy of Modern Music is also a good one, especially if you are a fan of Stravinsky/Schoenberg

http://www.realtytrac.com/Content/news-and-opinion/top-20-zip-codes-for-flipping-to-hipsters-7980

saw this sweatshirt for sale in target the other day. can i just...

http://img2.targetimg2.com/wcsstore/TargetSAS//img/p/14/98/14983960_201311112003.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Not-Cool-Hipster-Elite-Their/dp/0804138532

Inevitable product of Fox News commentators having to live in NYC

There are four states of being in the cannabis society: cool, groovy, hip, and square, in that descending order.

http://nypost.com/2014/03/22/the-hipster-war-on-you-how-liberals-use-cool-as-a-weapon/

"Icons of cool like Robert Redford, Mark Zuckerberg, Jesse James and Yoko Ono get shredded in the book" - Mark Zuckerberg AND Yoko? What an iconoclast!!!

jesse james the kinda nazi-ish biker?

"Cool kids party it up at the Coachella Music Festival."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pca8wpUIzSg

^^^ predictably, use of the word "hipsters" marks the nadir of this terrible song. (don't worry, it happens in the first verse)

okay lmfao at this appalling cynicism:

How do the cool enslave you? By convincing you that:
- If you don't agree with them no one will like you.
- If you don't follow them you will miss out on life.
- If you don't listen to them you will die a lonely loser

How do you vanquish the cool and discover your own true self? Read this book.

it's like, yes, okay, when I was middle school I used to worry that I was literally retarded, and "a great conspiracy / Of books and people" had been constructed with the aim of making me *think* I was normal while everybody secretly laughed at the ape parading around in human clothing using the telepathic that I was also worried everyone but me possessed--fortunately I aged out of these fears before anybody gave me a book deal

Three cheers for hipsters, hip hip hooray!

Fast-forward to today, when, writes Gutfeld, "the Labor Department reports that only 47% of Americans have a full-time job. That’s because it’s hard to get full-time work as a maker of artisanal tricycles."

... and you wanna call *me* the hipster!

Now a few groovy artisanal types are sounding the alarm about vaccines

yes, it is the """"cool"""" hipster people doing this, they are doing it to be cool, like noted hipster jenny mccarthy

it's all the same though. anyone who objects to anything about the status quo is the same, no matter the content of their objections. they need to take a chill pill and get with the program. a chill vaccine even.

shoot me up

does obamacare cover the chill vaccine?

haha i was coming here to post about this book. looks like a scream!
http://brokelyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/greg-gutfeld-not-cool.jpg?width=156

i really love how the american right wing describes every cultural rift as a "war". so fun.

They like war

still #1

https://sites.google.com/a/beardleague.org/rva/home/CR%206342281613_91f1f1ae12_b-cropped.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/c0zahZt.png

http://i.imgur.com/iAJGOge.png http://i.imgur.com/KngLmWR.png

Probably fake but lmao

Someone riding a unicycle was run over by a bus in my neighbourhood yesterday. Feel slightly guilty that my first thought was "fucking hipster twat".

xp: that's real as fuck.

Is it real or fake? It sounds like it was written by someone who never actually interacted with "hipsters" but merely read about them online via a collection of image macros.

xxp most people i've seen riding unicycles are legitimate quirky weirdos who were in like circus club in high school and shit, not ncessarily hipsters?

does that make them more or less deserving of our scorn? tough call there...

tbqf i support folks riding unicycles

& I looked & frowned & lo, the hipster was me

Found out that Seattle has a bar called The Walrus and The Carpenter, which makes me wonder if the radio just plays the Decemberists over and over.

I was there last summer and have a distinct memory that they were playing Thin Lizzy iirc.

At least they said 'fortunately'

i find this p awful. and the lol thumbs up reactions to it on twitter. i mean the stuff you see attributed to "hipsters" these days. i guess a pop-up streetfood market is in the core of the stereotype (despite the fact that these events are just full of every type of young person from all over london) but i've seen people on that "we want plates" twitter bemoaning "hipsters" when actually all the wooden boards etc are more typical of a provincial pub. a few months back there was a photo going around twitter entitled "a hipster, on his own in a pub, knitting. new trend?" and it was just some bearded nordic-looking man in his 40s. like just a person doing something vaguely unusual. if this is who people who aren't hipsters are then they deserve their perpetual disgruntlement.