"Hipster" as pejorative.

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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 (twenty-three years ago)

My total: 17/30 (57%)

(See Nabisco!)

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:30 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

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

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 19:54 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

"awesome" 4ever, dude.

― g.cannon (gcannon), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 14:18 (twenty-three years ago)

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

― SittingPretty (sittingpretty), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 14:59 (twenty-three years ago)

63%, and I am a Washingtonian.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 15:14 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

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

― Amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 16 February 2003 06:23 (twenty-three years ago)

40%, because I love Redbook.

― rosemary (rosemary), Sunday, 16 February 2003 18:48 (twenty-three years ago)

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 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

http://www.hipp-shop.de/hippCYshop/produkte/info/images/9765.jpg

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

one 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 (nineteen years ago)

hipsters = the yuppies of the 00's

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

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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

Williamsburg author seeks hipster intern

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

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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

Who would have been an 80's hipster?

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

http://www.random-squeegee.com/haikupics/balki.jpg

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

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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

Oh yeah, THAT guy sounds like a winner.

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

"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 (nineteen years ago)

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 (nineteen years ago)

i miss the hepcats :(

http://home.macvaerk.dtu.dk/~lilbaek/images/Hanna_wave.jpg

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

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 (nineteen years ago)

NEVER BEEN IN A ZOOT SUIT RIOT!

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

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

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

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 (nineteen years ago)

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

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

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 (nineteen years ago)

All I'm saying is nice panty lines.

― Laurel, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:33 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.miss604.com/blogging.jpg

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:34 (nineteen years ago)

scott that picture just made my morning

― gff, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:35 (nineteen years ago)

peteR

Do you mean the change from 'rebellion' to 'rebellious image'? The change from when people 'walked the walk' (or believed they did. or it was believable they did), to when they 'wore the clothes'? they always wore the clothes of course but, with increased media penetration, 'wearing the clothes' didn't need to stand for anything, other than itself.

Which leads us back to anti-hipsterism as basically being anti-fashion. You might be realer, you might know more, you might be the real deal, but 'that hipster guy' over there looks better, he looks more convincing

― maricopa john, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:36 (nineteen years ago)

James Baldwin had a classic rejoinder to "The White Negro" but I can't find it online anywhere.

― gff, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:36 (nineteen years ago)

It seems like the term had its initiat heyday in the 50's / early 60's, probably well exemplified by Richard Farinas, Ginsberb and such, and then somehow reappeared pejoratively in the 90's to describe Gen Y / Urban outfitters cliques. So, the question is, did the term disappear in the 70's and 80's?

― baaderonixx, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:37 (nineteen years ago)

It went underground. The 70's and 80's were when the word had *real* cred.

― kenan, Friday, 16 March 2007 15:38 (nineteen years ago)

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