CHAPTER THREE:

Hipsterism

Hipsters and the practice of irony[i]

One more characteristic of the lifestyle of emerging adults is the ironic nature of their speech and behaviour.  Irony has been defined as the incongruity between appearance and reality, or between intention and achievement.   One will not often find emerging adults speak unambiguously or behave in a manner that clearly reveals their intention.  They cannot afford to.  We live in a culture that is saturated by advertising.  Wherever we go, someone is trying to sell us a product or a service and the truth or falsehood of what is shown, said or done is incidental to its purpose of trying to sell us something.  In such a climate one can no longer say heartfelt, sincere things outright because all genuine utterance will inevitably be stolen and repeated as sound bites in advertising.  For this reason I have added a separate section on the life style of hipsters because they best illustrate an ironic way of living.[ii]

Hipsters form a relatively small sub-group of emerging young adults in North America. They are worthy of note because they both resemble and deviate from mainstream emerging young adult culture. They may also serve as a comparison group and as another illustration of life as a remix process.  Hipsters tend to congregate in major North American cosmopolitan centers that formerly were ethnic neighbourhoods but which, because of gentrification have by and large lost their ethnic character. They can be distinguished from other twenty-something young people by their peculiar fashion, behaviour, interests and attitudes.

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[i] See  http://en.wikipedia.org/Postmodern_literature, p. 5 ff. and Prickett S. cited  above.

[ii] The description of hipsterism draws on a wide variety of sources:

Books:

Laham, Robert  2003, The Hipster handbook.  Anchor Books.

Greif, M. Ross, K. & D. Torrorici  2010 What was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation. New York: n+1 Foundation.

Articles/blogs on the net:

Haddow, D.  “Hipsters, the Dead End of Western Civilization”, Adbusters Magazine.

Cracked.com:  Articles on Hipsters

“On Hipsterism”: I was a freight train (author unknown)

Video/film:

Scott  Pilgrim vs. the World

Flight of the Conchords (comedy)

Magazine:

Vice, founder: Gavin McInnis, called “the Godfather of Hipsterdom”