"Hipster" as pejorative.

xp But that type of high-level hipster you describe I don't necessarily see as being geeky about music any more than he is about fashion and drugs and art and "the scene."

Merdeyeux, i think ILX Gucci Mane dork who posts about rap minituae all day and reads pitchfork and knows about the most recent dealings Animal Collective and Fuck Buttons is probably a hipster to someone, but continue to split hairs and play babe-in-the-woods, dogg

also, jaymc, the fashion and scene aspects are what make him more of a hipster, obv.

Gucci Mane hermeneuticist

oh man

My friend's dad is 50 years old and owns Animal Collective and Pantha Du Prince CDs and lives in a village with his kids in the middle of Scotland and has probably never set foot inside a club, what level of hipster does that make him?

The kind with disposable income?

I am all for the democracy of the hipster but I kinda thought it was supposed to mean something, besides just being a word that can be applied to anyone with any engagement with music by someone with either more or less engagement with music than they have.

Please, the term is "hermenaut":

http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/b1ea/books_bookshelf-1423.jpeg

Some fatty who focuses his attention on Gong reissues and colored vinyl and knows who Japanther are is technically more of a "hipster" than a 19-year-old sitting in the parking lot of the gas station sniffing glue and listening to his one Pantera tape.

OK but neither of those strawpeople have anything to do with the term as it is popularly deployed (ie alluding to shallowness or fashion-chasing) so why even try and work out the 'scale' in this way ffs

I dunno what Hermenaut is but that's certainly a diverse list of names.

(Hipster pluralism?)

Mencap, if you don't think record store geeks chase ridiculous trends on the daily, I don't know what magical place you shop for records

...like if you want it to just mean 'person who engages with popular/alternative culture' without being any more specific then best of luck and all but that is not really anyone else's definition as far as I can see

Love your taxonomy of hipsterdom, Whiney. We need a diagram.

I am all for the democracy of the hipster but I kinda thought it was supposed to mean something, besides just being a word that can be applied to anyone with any engagement with music by someone with either more or less engagement with music than they have.

― Merdeyeux, Tuesday, August 3, 2010 10:03 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean also replace music with "fashion" or "nightlife" or "drugs" or "trends" and various combinations thereof and you've pretty much got the essence of what is essentially a useless word that continues to rile people up

Love your taxonomy of hipsterdom, Whiney. We need a diagram.

― Haunted Clocks For Sale (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, August 3, 2010 10:07 AM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I actually was thinking about pitching a Gawker/Awl piece where I break it down. I have a scale I've been trying to implement. I consider myself a "high 3"

I know that there are micro-trends and shifting focuses and what have you within every lil pocket of music nerdery, sure - I'm pretty sure there are with stamp collectors too y'know

"sockless boat shoes" as pejorative.

This taxonomy doesn't really take into account the inherent fascism of hipsterdom, there are way too many fat or ugly people involved.

Mencap if you don't think some dudes playing ookie-cookie with whatever new Sublime Frequencies or Mexican Summer 12" comes into a store makes someone closer to a stamp collector than a "hipster" than wake up and smell the Four Loko

Mencap if you don't think....

Whiney this is yr sermon on the mount man

"no, seriously! posting on ILX isn't some hipster thing!"

MIA

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i love how much this matters to you

well he does have something invested in it! not even a joke anymore

if there were a list of people in the world who are benefiting most from the word 'hipster' existing, whiney would literally be on that list

OK well of ppl who buy and consume that sort of stuff lots of em are probably quite shallow and hipstery about it and lots of em probably aren't - my point is that being blanket dismissive of folks' interests on the basis of the (imagined) first group is baby/bathwater stuff as well as just really boring

anyway we went from Gong reissues to Mexican Summer pretty quick there

Mencap if you don't think some dudes playing ookie-cookie with whatever new Sublime Frequencies or Mexican Summer 12" comes into a store makes someone closer to a stamp collector than a "hipster" than wake up and smell the Four Loko

First bit of the flowchart needs to be 'How many times have you left your bedroom this week?', second bit needs to be 'How many times have you gone to places other than the record store?'. I admire your attempts to be charitable to a load of obsessive techno shut-ins with no friends but this is nonsense.

There has to be a broader cultural dimension (choice of clothes, bars, movies, etc) - if it's just about obsessing over obscure music then I know some profoundly unhip hipsters.

of course

Part and parcel of being a hipster is that other hipsters want to hang out/go drinking/have sex with them from time to time, not just sit on the internet and talk about Panda Bear.

the idea of hipsterdom is essentially chimeric

Now I don't know who I'm meant to be disagreeing with.

I just think of a hipster (pejoratively) as someone who likes a lot of the same things I like, but for the "wrong" reasons, which is a subjective judgement and fundamentally bogus, which is why I try to avoid the word.

xposts

Whiney OTM. It's such a lame, overused term that could mean so much or so little to different people. I've only really heard it used on the internet and it's generally used to describe young white urban people with an interest in music and fashion, which I struggle to understand as a problem. Obviously there are certain levels of hipsterdom, and some young white people with an interest in music and fashion do act like arseholes (Nathan Barley types?), but I'd rather just call them an arsehole than a hipster.

himposter

do hipsters like chillwave?

y i love it

i like that hipsterdom always boils down to music appreciation – like that sad thread where people said their relationships were much more profound when they shared musical tastes with their S.O.

cultural definition by superficial aesthetic preference

remy could u find that thread??

don't remember what it was called, and i might have drunk-posted or image-bombed it. search fails me, but it was something in the neighborhood of 'would you date somebody with opposite music tastes as you?'

Historical note from an old person. In the early to mid 1990s we used the word "hipsters" or "scenesters" in something close to its current use (people who went to indie rock shows a lot and wore vintage clothes or gas station uniforms with someone else's name stitched on.) The word "hipster" was definitely meant to sound a bit jokey and '50s antique (it went with the clothes, if you like.) I don't recall it having a pejorative sense unless you were accusing someone of overdoing it.

i've discussed the hipster scale with quite a few IRL friends. i'm thinking it would be fun to do a book/web project about it structured like Paul Fussell's book on Class, and like that book it would have a quiz that would perform the all important function of telling the reader where he/she falls on the scale.

eephus OTM this term dates back to the early 90s

I don't give a shit if anyone calls me a hipster. to some people I am, to others maybe I'm not - who cares?

well Shakey, obv me & Whiney care!

need to grow some thicker skins then, kids

caring does not necessarily equal emotionally affected. i just think it's interesting from a cultural/sociological standpoint.

I don't like repeating myself but can I just say again:

the only really good use I've found for "hipster" is as a lighthearted inoffensive substitute for the n-word when rapping along with music

― LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures (bernard snowy), Monday, February 1, 2010 2:39 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's good cuz it doesn't mess up rhyme or meter, plus what kind of grinch wouldn't crack a smile at a line like "phony hipsters are outlined in chalk"???

― LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures (bernard snowy), Monday, February 1, 2010 2:41 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark

whiney is saying ilxors are basically hipsters -- take the compliment imo.