7.     Hipsters, emerging adults and mainstream North America

When asking how hipsters view themselves what strikes me is how similar they are to emerging young adults in general.  In the main, they just want to be themselves, live their own life and at their own pace.  As we saw also, like so many other young people they are deeply invested in a remix culture in response to a digital world.  But there is one characteristic about their lifestyle that is not found as much among emerging young adults and this factor, I think, explains much of their quirky, ironic, esoteric behaviour. 

The distinctiveness of the hipster lifestyle may be found in the answer to the question why they live the way they live.  What seems to motivate them, more than anything else I can think of, is their fear of being co-opted by mainstream North American culture.  All of the efforts of hipsters appear to be governed by a deeply rooted desire to exclude themselves from that mainstream culture.

What is ironic is that in all their efforts to opt out, they actually resemble mainstream North American culture more than any other contemporary youth group.[i] For, a case can be made that the strength of this culture does not lie in the originality of its ideas nor in its capacity to innovate.  Rather, its power derives from its unique ability to forage, digest and package big ideas and novel inventions originating in cultures other than their own.  So, like the lifestyle of the hipsters, North American culture does not ever produce anything new but merely remixes elements found elsewhere?   If so, then hipster culture is to be located at the centre of Mainstream America rather than at its margins.

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[i] Heath J. & A. Potter 2004 The Rebel Sell. Toronto: Harper Perennial.

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[i] Heath J. & A. Potter 2004 The Rebel Sell. Toronto: Harper Perennial.