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.

6.  Hipster view of hipsters

These are some of the issues that arise when one consults the outsider’s view of the hipster lifestyle.  But how do hipsters view themselves?  On that score I have very little data.  What little I have comes from a series of interviews I did recently with members of the hipster colony in the Mission District of San Francisco.  These interview data represent their response to the questions I put to them.

When I asked the question: “Who or what is a hipster?”  they gave the following answers:

“Hipster” is a general term for many different kinds of young people.  It is a term that “the outside” puts on us young people.  We don’t call ourselves hipsters, but if asked point blank whether we are, we don’t mind being called that.  “Hipster” is mainly a fashion style statement, (e.g. retro clothes from thrift stores), that depicts a life style marked by irony.  Hipsterism is a deeply personal life style, i.e. each of us hipsters follows his/her own individual approach to life, a style of living that cannot be characterized as group behaviour.  We do not join groups for social action of any kind.  We tend to congregate together with other like-minded young people in groups for support, as here in the Delores Park in Mission.  But each of us just wants to be him or herself.

When asked what motivates them to live this hipster life style they did not want to disclose what is inside of them.  That belongs to each of us alone, they said.  On the other hand, they were willing to state that hipsters are mostly young people who are socially progressive and anti-mainline culture.  Furthermore, they stressed that they are serious about becoming adults, but they insist on taking time to sort things out before they settle down.  They also wanted to lay to rest the myth as if hipster young people are just a bunch of dummies.  All young people in the park here, they said, are highly educated, even over educated for the work they are doing.  Finally, they think that the reason why older people cannot understand younger people is because of a communication problem that exists between the generations due to age differences.  So, they appreciate it very much when an older person takes the time to try to understand them.

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.

4.  Hipsters as seen by outsiders

In fact, much of what is written about this way of living describes hipsters in pejorative terms.  The reaction of commentators on the hipster lifestyle is overwhelmingly critical even to the point of loathing.  What evokes such strong negative emotions on the part of these commentators is that, in their judgment, hipsters contribute nothing new or praise worthy to contemporary culture. 

Hipsters are said to have produced nothing original.  Their style is entirely made up of elements foraged from other cultural groups, with whom they do not identify in solidarity but from whom they appropriate/cannibalize only bits and pieces indiscriminately.  They then combine these elements/symbols/icons of qualitatively different/distinct/disparate styles (working class, counterculture/revolutionary, gay, upper class intellectual cultures) and juxtapose them unchanged into a mashup of their own, thereby reducing these cultural elements to kitsch, i.e. render them irrelevant and meaningless for contemporary living.

Furthermore, they are accused of being snobbish and elitist.  They consider their own mashup style of living to be superior to non-hipster mainstream styles.  They sneer at Mainstream styles and poke fun at them. Ironically they even go so far as to deride their own life style and poke fun at their tendency to poke fun at other people.  So, while reducing non-hipster styles to kitsch, they present their own style of living without conviction, as a joke, as a fashion statement only, wearing it as a costume, parading it on stage as if they are just playing a role in a comedy, rather than expressing their personal individuality.  They are in short playing Mr. and Mrs. Dress up to an audience for the effect.  They consider themselves to be beyond taking themselves seriously.  Or so outsiders tell us.  

They pretend that all of this is only a game.  They routinely tend to treat serious subjects in a playful, humorous manner.  They are especially masters at irony.  When asked, they flatly deny that they are hipsters or are living a hipster life style.  You can have two hipsters angrily accusing each other of being a hipster!  They deny that they are making a statement with their fashion style when it is obvious that they are, and they consistently profess not to be committed to anything when it is clear from the outside that they are very much invested in their style of living.  Hipsters pointedly (!) refuse to take a stand on anything or to say anything with a straight face.  They refuse to take responsibility for anything.  Furthermore, they are working too diligently at showing that they do not care to be believed. 

.    Attitudes

It will be clear that hipsters are a remix culture par excellence in the sense that they love to hunt for tidbits of Internet information and to collect them in an ever-changing hybrid aggregate of lifestyles.  Like the behaviour of emerging adults in general hipster culture betrays a Pac-Man mentality.  They do not read or look but skim, scan, scroll, and surf.   They collect, consume and regurgitate experiences.  It will also be clear that the lifestyles they assemble and reassemble are deemed to be esoteric by conventional standards. 

2.     Behaviour and interests

What probably marks them as much as anything as a visibly identifiable group is their preferred simplified mode of transportation and esoteric tastes.  They ride fixed-brake- bikes, (bikes that have no gears or brakes).  They drink cheap beer (Pabs, Blue Ribbon, or occasionally, Budweiser), and smoke cigarettes that no one else smokes anymore (Parliament, Lucky Strike or hard to get foreign cigarettes like Galouises).  They tend to have elitist tastes in film, music and literature.  They enjoy watching indie flicks or foreign films with sub-titles.  They listen to indie rock, especially to unknown local start-up bands and they enjoy reading books that no one else reads.  They spend much of their time googling for information about these topics and like to talk with fellow hipsters about their knowledge at parties.

1.   Fashion

Hipsters can be easily spotted by the way they dress.  A hipster is someone who looks like a hipster.  Their fashion style is a deliberate pastiche, a hodgepodge, jumble, collage, mash up or melting pot of style items borrowed from surrounding ethnic cultures and from fashion styles that were once popular, but now are no longer en vogue.  They reject the, in their eyes culturally ignorant, attitudes of mainstream consumers and are often seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions.  Male hipsters dress in tight fitting “skinny” jeans and t-shirts advertising obscure bands or b-movies, covered by flannel shirts or v-neck sweaters, with accessories of painted old school sneakers, thick non-prescription horn-rimmed glasses, truckers hats and big belt buckles, while sporting a conspicuously prominent mustache.  Female hipsters tend to wear retro-style dresses and racer back tank tops without bras.  In addition, both have a penchant for androgynous hairstyles like messy shag cuts and asymmetric side swiped bangs.  Finally, and in spite of misconceptions based on their aesthetic tastes and looks, hipsters tend to be educated, often have university degrees and not infrequently come from relatively well to do middle class families.