Hipsters Do Not Exist

 Is that a check shirt I see? Hipster. Thick rimmed glasses? Hipster. Fixed gear bicycle? Hipster. Ushanka? Doc Martens? Keffiyeh? Dirty, filthy, alternative, post rock, omg-so-nerdy microbrew-swilling hipsters, the whole lot of you.

I'm trying to make a point here, honest. Hipsters are people who generally tend to avoid stereotypes, labelling, and anything mainstream. As far as I can tell, they're also generally people who take an active interest in indie films, 'alternative' music, all that jazz. Rarely jazz actually. Anyway, so by definition, we're talking about a group of people who actively avoid being grouped, even if its being done ironically. Why then, is hipsterism an accepted current fad-trend-subculture thing?


Emos were pretty obvious; you weren't an emo if you didn't wear eye liner and straighten your hair, you weren't an emo unless you hung around outside local gigs talking about Hawthorne Heights. Scene kids too, you just needed the hair to defy gravity at the back and an interest in some weird kind of screamo-electro crossover. Going back before emo kids, moshers also appeared to be fairly easy to spot. Baggy jeans, black hoody, chain, desire to mosh. Easy.

I'm sure you've spotted the obvious dichotomy by now; you can't really define stereotypes for a group that defines itself by actively avoiding stereotypes. I'm 99% sure that this point has been made a million times over, but sorry, I don't read your blog, so what would I know?

All this said... read, hipsters definitely exist. They're even a little more easily spotted than some previous fad-cultures, I reckon, because they're the ones out there with their DSLR cameras taking pictures of CCTV cameras. (Ironically, I've done this. It was a first year uni assignment, I therefore feel justified in being predictable.) But if hipsters exist as a mockable entity, then surely their mass culture actions are nothing other than self defeating?

Perhaps we could all mentally split hipsterism into two cults; tru-hipsters and psuedo-hipsters. Tru-hipsters would be the ones that started playing the accordian because they liked the sound, the ones that shut themselves in their room researching 90's indie because they got bored of Slint, and the infinite other potential possibilities of culture based oddity. The other would have to be the shunned group of plebian norms, who are self proclaimed nerds solely because they played pokémon. The immediate problem with such an attitude is that noone would want to be the aforementioned shunned plebian norms, and would thus define themselves as tru-hipster, probably going to insane lengths to do so.

This reminds me, I forgot another rather important part (I think) of hipsterism: the carefully cultivated attitude of Not Giving A Flying Fuck What You Think. The hypothetical course of events presented two sentences ago would obviously turn that one on its head as well.

My personal feeling (and I'm told this is the purpose of a blog) is that soon enough, popular-ish culture will find a new and exciting outlet for Urban Outfitters to capitalise on, and the majority of hipsters will move on. The relative few that remain will, I imagine, be secretly rather happy, just as goths and emos* did, and dubstep fans one day will.

Such is popular culture, and I'm honestly cool with that. Though when flares come back in and we can't buy straight cut jeans, I'll be first out there with the molotovs.


* I'm talking Snowing & The Saddest Landscape here. No BFMV.

* I don't have many images of hipsters on my computer, and am too hungover to search out good ones. The above will have to do for now.