5.  Clowns or court jesters?

The whole of this deliberately creates an appearance of inauthenticity, as if nothing matters.  All of this raises the suspicion that hipsters actually “protest too much,” and I am left with a number of questions.

a)      By not even taking themselves serious are they essentially playing the class clown?  Clowns of any kind, we all know, are essentially sad individuals who wish to be accepted and respected.  But, instead of being taken seriously, judging by what is written about them, the behaviour of these hipster clowns only seems to evoke laughter and derision.

b)     Or, have they adopted the role of Court Jester to 21^St. Century North American culture?  In league with Wikileak, are they aiming to show up the hidden agenda of mainstream America?  Are they reminding us of the joke that this culture has become?  Contemporary North America has by and large become a mall-centered culture governed by the modern marketing forces of late-capitalism in which the value of everything is reduced to its price and people are treated primarily as consumers.  Is the behaviour of hipsters an artfully constructed caricature of this culture to show up this situation?

The chief aim of the hipster lifestyle appears to be to reduce to kitsch anything that is dear to mainstream culture.  That culture has by and large become governed by advertising.  The nature of advertising is essentially that it lies, or more to the point, the truth or falsehood of its statements is incidental to its purpose of selling us something.  Moreover, in mainstream North American (and also European) culture one can no longer say heartfelt, sincere things outright publicly because all genuine utterances inevitably will be stolen and repeated as sound bites or slogans in advertising and in politics.

By way of defense hipsters have taken refuge in irony.  Everything about them, the way they act, the way they look and what they say is characterized by double-speak, as if they deliberately aim to outdo advertising.  If so, by doing this and more than any other emerging adult age group, they have become poster boys and girls for Post-modernism.