"Hipster" as pejorative.

an alternative to materialism?

yeah but most hipsters like thrift stores and flea markets AND fancy bicycles/food/beer/etc. best of both hip worlds.

afaics, hipster irony is only used to imply their own godlike superiority to the object being ironically praised. I say godlike, in that they seek to confer worth upon the worthless through the innate power of their affectionate gaze, implying nothing is truly worthy of the honor so bestowed, but it must be bestowed somewhere, and this dreck is as good as any other.

also do u think there is/was any crossover between popism and hipsters wearing justin bieber shirts?

i don't buy that hipsters ironically wearing shirts w/ corny pop stars on them is a thing because i don't recall ever having personally seen a living example of it, but that could maybe explain at least some cases

see ya i would imagine that what the wampoles of the world see as hipster irony (as described by aimless) is maybe more of a postmodernish blurring of the boundary bw high/low culture, something that, for example, pitchfork openly embraced early in the decade

the wampoles of the world are covered in rain

I think her essay's problem is that she is assuming no intelligent, self-conscious people in the group she's calling hipsters and assumes they exist in every other group

Is flopson a hipster? Yea, but does he still bleed? Yes, he does. Shall it not be a hipster if it bleeds?!?

there seems to be this assumption that oh, they couldn't possibly like that unironically therefore they are ironic, but have we ever really tested that assumption? does any evidence exist to back it up?

sounds like there needs to be another... HIPSTER STUDY

associate prof, dept of hipster studies

the real problem comes w/ the assumption that somewhere out there perfect hipsters exist as objects that you can perform scientific tests on, really hipster is not a noun anymore just an adjective

don't anybody tell iatee of the hipster islands located in puget sound

http://i.imgur.com/laCcr.jpg

if you have heard of it it must not be that cool

what if there's a mix of irony from genuine dickheads, unironic interest from genuine enthusiasts, and commercial interest from people too dumb to know the difference who just ride trends?

kind of feel like the "hipster" she knows of or is criticizing is the mainstreamed #3 who really is too dumb or ignorant (read: young) to do differently. maybe she's overrating people by thinking they understand irony

wish my friend still didn't have the cutesy n + 1 "what was the hipster" pamphlet borrowed from me so I had a reference guide here

or she's writing articles based on other articles she has read instead of people she has actually interacted with

^^ truly the mark of an academic

oh I think we're cutting too close now

xxp but... do people actually even do this? feel like this has not really ever been addressed. i suspect it was maybe an early 00's phenomenon that ended years ago? trucker hats in the cartoons support this hypothesis

also: even if it were ironic--which, granted, a lot of it probably was--who's to say that an ironic disposition isn't an appropriate response to 21st century cultural malaise? seems it would be more effective to suggest something to be enthusiastic about rather than trying to guilt people out of their preferred method of coping with something they might find very depressing

is gawker ironic?

no

i feel bad for the "gag gift". i bought maria a shiny taylor swift shirt at the dollar store across the street for her birthday. it was meant to be kinda funny. but i was not sneering at taylor in any way. taylor has even been a recent visitor to our town cuzza her dating a kennedy. she ate at taylor's tavern! that was kind of ironic of her.

if anyone can kill irony once and for all it's taylor swift

no

― iatee, Sunday, November 25, 2012 4:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/182cgfe0mche7gif/cmt-medium.gif (?)

seems like it operates w/ a similar type of irony as being described here, basically a self-aware gossip site

gawker is more moralistic and earnest than most of 'the internet'

gossip is ok. self-awareness is ok. any pretense that gossip is so much more than gossip can only rest on semitransparent rationalizations. the inability to see through one's own rationalizations kind of tarnishes one's reputation for self-awareness.

i'm wearing smith & wesson boots right now that i bought at the ocean state job lot for 20 bucks. but nobody knows i'm being slightly ironic except me. they're kind if a cross between boots and high tops actually. waterproof too. i definitely like functional + funny. i had to have them. or the 20 year old inside me who used to buy uzi baseball caps at flea markets in the 80's needed them. i'm no saint!

xp iatee

i agree, but i don't think the rest of 'the internet' is really ironic or non-moralistic (see: image macros), more like dumb and/or crudely cynical

i think the tone of a lot of gawker pop culture stuff is def ironic. not necessarily a bad thing, but there's obviously some ironic distance implicitly understood by the reader between the writer & subject. often being, like, faux-shocked by some banal celebrity gossip; it's understood that you and the writer are both mocking the topic for a reason not earnestly spelled out

you can get almost as much pleasure out of those boots if you switch the mood they induce to one of childish fun. this avoids the need to pretend all your impulses are adult.

i don't think most people in the real world are anything like they are on the internet so its hard to know what people are like or what they actually believe. if you are looking at the internet. the internet seems like fantasyworld to me. the real world is different. kinda. all the mock/ironic/outraged/dumb stances online kinda go away when you just talk to people. in realworld.

word

people who do gawker probably don't care about most of that stuff in their lives. is what i'm trying to say.

its all just a job. even for the fantasy messageboard dudes. well, time to get on the computer and be that guy again. whoever you are. whatever your persona is. its VR, man.

it's true, for all we know those photos you post might not even be of your children

you may not even own a turntable

i work for amway. in iowa.

scott seward, korean hipster grifter

I think writers for gawker can be ironic but gawker: the project just seems like general news aggregation w/ a certain tone. and is clearly run as a business w/ one pretty clear cut goal - the same one as any other media business. like you can sneer at the idea of celebrity gossip even while you're writing/reading it, but ultimately gawker is embracing and reporting on pop culture/media as much as anyone else. jay leno attempts to get lols at paris hilton gossip too.

xps

i just think exxxtreme self-awareness/self-consciousness is how people are now! or at least people who work in media or artists and writers. that's what people are like now. its not like a fad. been a thing since the birth of mad magazine anyway. and just got more intense with every passing year. i blame marshall mcluhan and alfred e. newman and andy warhol. the constant meta looking at each other by looking at ourselves by judging our reactions by other people's reactions is just normal. and "fitting in" is so static and people move so much and info overload and it can drive you crazy. OR you can buy a bieber t-shirt. and everything makes a little more sense. wow, that thai food i had was dynamite.

yup people really overrate the 'hipster' side to this. when your mom is sharing meta gifs on fb it really has not a lot to do w/ what's happening w/ cool 23 y/os in williamsburg.

i'll be honest i like hip people now more than hip people of the past. they're wary - like any good hepcat - but they can be more open. hip people of the past were more stubborn about things and would write a lot of stuff off. i ONLY watch french movies and i'm a communist and that's it. now people flit from one thing to another but they have more info about cool stuff than anyone has ever had and they get exposed to more. they may look ridiculous at times but i think they're smart not to commit to one doctrine.

OTM. Most people are way too quick to assume that their fashion, perspectives, modes of engaging etc are less socially mediated than (insert x subgroup). Probably the thing with 'hipsters' is geographic density and specificity: in Melbourne say it's associated with about four conjacent suburbs. This makes the (mise en) scene appear more concrete and more conformist than the trends followed by others.

I was otming iatee but Scott's post is good too.

Scott was on my doorstep trying to sell me the ability to sell products last week

i just think exxxtreme self-awareness/self-consciousness is how people are now!

The more self aware you are the easier it is to analyze trends and avoid them to preserve your uniqueness! I agree this is what people do today. That's why books like Stuff White People Like are so popular.

Latent sociologist in me somehow wants to see if the graphs of "social awareness" and "social media" align. Mainly just want to know if Instagram is a cause or an effect.