"Unhappy Hipsters" Blog

[Patrick Hall]

Because other SUMCWKOPWTOSCIs were doing it, and it became identified as their particular emblem of Ironic Identification With The Authentic Working Class Experience, yeah man. Of course, a more authentic Identification With The Working Class Experience might have had them digging ditches on a road gang or apprenticing out as a pipefitter or working the swing shift down at the shipyard, or even joining the Army -- and that's just a wee bit too authentic for this crowd. Better to pose on Facebook with a PBR can in your hand so all the world knows you're down with the struggle.

Wow. That is biting. These hipster-kids really stick in your craw!

-PMH

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm not quite at a Jamespowers vs. Hippies level, but I'm getting there. I will say for the record though that there's a few of the local "hipster kids" that I think the world of, and I'm confident they'll wise up soon enough. They're too smart to spend their lives sitting on the sidewalk in the rain playing the accordion for nickels.

 

[Touchofevil]

While I don't disagree that the definition of hipster may vary (a point I've gone out of my way to make myself), there is something to be said about one's own qualitative experience. There is little in this thread that I would actually ascribe to hipsters. In fact, the blog link which is ostensibly the topic of this thread, I would say has absolutely nothing to do with hipsters. It rather looks like a collection of stock photography from a design or architectural journal with snarky comments. It has zero relation to anything close resembling hipster life in San Francisco. In as much as it is generally agreed that San Francisco has hipsters, I find this to be a much better starting point for discussion than anecdotal expressions of young people who leave trash on the ground.

YMMV.

There are hipsters everywhere. What city has the most or the most authentic is definitely open to interpretation. Most will argue from their experience, valid, invalid, or somewhere in between. Who is to say which argument is correct? Who gets to play Supreme Court Justice and hand down a verdict? Debating your belief is fine and sometimes entertaining as well as informative. Emotionally based debates wherein anothers beliefs or experiences are emotionally attacked is not good nor does it lead to anything positive.

 

[Touchofevil]

I'm not quite at a Jamespowers vs. Hippies level, but I'm getting there. I will say for the record though that there's a few of the local "hipster kids" that I think the world of, and I'm confident they'll wise up soon enough. They're too smart to spend their lives sitting on the sidewalk in the rain playing the accordion for nickels.

When I was a kid it was dancing for nickels. I would have thought it would be for quarters by now.

 

[jlee562]

Wow. That is biting. These hipster-kids really stick in your craw!

-PMH

But in the end, the argument is a bit flat. It's predicated on the idea that there is only one working class experience, and that experience by in large doesn't exist in this day in age. Road gangs? Well, that's turned over to prison labor or otherwise adjudicated as punishment, not blue collar work. Apprenticing as a pipe fitter? Well, this is the most cogent point - all other things being relative - but apprenticeships by in large don't exist anymore, while for profit trade schools have come in to take that space. Shipyards? Right..ok, moving on.

The working class experience of the 21st century in 2012 is not the same as the 30's and 40's. That doesn't make it inauthentic to those experiencing it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was a kid it was dancing for nickels. I would have thought it would be for quarters by now.

I'm just glad they've moved on to accordions. Last summer it was bagpipes.

 

[Touchofevil]

I'm just glad they've moved on to accordions. Last summer it was bagpipes.

I think that I know where I would shove those nickels!

 

[jlee562]

There are hipsters everywhere. What city has the most or the most authentic is definitely open to interpretation. Most will argue from their experience, valid, invalid, or somewhere in between. Who is to say which argument is correct? Who gets to play Supreme Court Justice and hand down a verdict? Debating your belief is fine and sometimes entertaining as well as informative. Emotionally based debates wherein anothers beliefs or experiences are emotionally attacked is not good nor does it lead to anything positive.

The question was asked of me whether or not I believed that San Francisco offered more "authentic" hipsters. I answered in the affirmative.

I believe that "hipster" is thrown around on this board as a blanket derisive term for members of the younger generation who aren't in favor with members of the older generation here, no more, no less. And I certainly believe that descriptors such as not being able to tell time, and leaving trash around, indicate that this is the case, as opposed to genuinely making an attempt to understand what generalities one may make from hipsters such as they are.

No emotions attached.

 

[LizzieMaine]

But in the end, the argument is a bit flat. It's predicated on the idea that there is only one working class experience, and that experience by in large doesn't exist in this day in age. Road gangs? Well, that's turned over to prison labor or otherwise adjudicated as punishment, not blue collar work. Apprenticing as a pipe fitter? Well, this is the most cogent point - all other things being relative - but apprenticeships by in large don't exist anymore, while for profit trade schools have come in to take that space. Shipyards? Right..ok, moving on.

The working class experience of the 21st century in 2012 is not the same as the 30's and 40's. That doesn't make it inauthentic to those experiencing it.

Um. Road gangs are a city-employee blue-collar thing here. We send convicts out to work on the State Farm.

Apprenticeship is alive and well in the trades here. I know plenty of apprentice plumbers and electricians and such.

Bath Iron Works, one of the biggest shipyards on the East Coast, is our region's largest employer. The industrial docks in my home town are still the biggest deep-water port on the East Coast. And all that work isn't being done by robots.

And the Army is still hiring, last I looked.

San Francisco isn't the world. It just thinks it is.

 

[jlee562]

Um. Road gangs are a city-employee blue-collar thing here. We send convicts out to work on the State Farm.

Apprenticeship is alive and well in the trades here. I know plenty of apprentice plumbers and electricians and such.

Bath Iron Works, one of the biggest shipyards on the East Coast, is our region's largest employer. The industrial docks in my home town are still the biggest deep-water port on the East Coast. And all that work isn't being done by robots.

And the Army is still hiring, last I looked.

San Francisco isn't the world. It just thinks it is.

But see Lizzy, you're doing the EXACT SAME THING you're accusing me of. New England isn't the world either.

You're critiquing folks because they don't live what you judge to be an "authentic" working class life. But your assessment of what is authentic is based largely on your locality. You're judging them to be inauthentic. But their experience is entirely authentic to them and where they grew up. Just because they didn't experience working class life in the same way that youth in your area do, doesn't mean that they're not working class, and doesn't mean that it's not authentic.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If someone can introduce me to a genuine working-class hipster, I'd gladly shake his hand and call him brother. But everything I've ever encountered in observing the local version of SUMCWKOPWTOSCI culture points to an ironic mockery of working-class culture by a privileged class, not a genuine celebration of it or a sincere respect for it. They're no more "authentic" than blackface minstrels.

 

[Touchofevil]

The question was asked of me whether or not I believed that San Francisco offered more "authentic" hipsters. I answered in the affirmative.

I believe that "hipster" is thrown around on this board as a blanket derisive term for members of the younger generation who aren't in favor with members of the older generation here, no more, no less. And I certainly believe that descriptors such as not being able to tell time, and leaving trash around, indicate that this is the case, as opposed to genuinely making an attempt to understand what generalities one may make from hipsters such as they are.

No emotions attached.

You "believe" just like those whose beliefs you disagree with which makes no one here any more right or wrong for the most part.

 

[Touchofevil]

I always thought the hipsters used their clothing in order express their sheer scorn for society especially working class people. Their ethos was they don't wear their clothing because they like it but because they are making a statement. That statement is whatever working class people wear are lame, but when the hipster wears it, it is cool because the hipster is so cool. That rationale applied to working class morals and conduct as well. That just seems openly antagonistic.

Now if someone dresses like a hipster, people will assume that person is indeed a hipster. So all of the tenets of the hipster ethos apply to that person. Its similar to an outside observer assuming that a manwearing a Motorhead t-shirt actually likes Motorhead's music. That's not absolute but its 99% true given the situation. I don't understand why anyone gets upset when people make assumptions about their clothing. This is pretty basic.

Hear, hear!

 

[jlee562]

I always thought the hipsters used their clothing in order express their sheer scorn for society especially working class people. Their ethos was they don't wear their clothing because they like it but because they are making a statement. That statement is whatever working class people wear are lame, but when the hipster wears it, it is cool because the hipster is so cool. That rationale applied to working class morals and conduct as well. That just seems openly antagonistic.

It is a rejection of a certain part of society, but not working class society.

Again from Wiki, which I posted on the first page:

"While mainstream society of the 2000s had been busying itself with reality television, dance music, and locating the whereabouts of Britney Spears’s underpants, an uprising was quietly and conscientiously taking place behind the scenes. Long-forgotten styles of clothing, beer, cigarettes and music were becoming popular again. Retro was cool, the environment was precious and old was the new ‘new’. Kids wanted to wear Sylvia Plath’s cardigans and Buddy Holly’s glasses — they revelled in the irony of making something so nerdy so cool. They wanted to live sustainably and eat organic gluten-free grains. Above all, they wanted to be recognised for being different — to diverge from the mainstream and carve a cultural niche all for themselves. For this new generation, style wasn’t something you could buy in a department store, it became something you found in a thrift shop, or, ideally, made yourself. The way to be cool wasn’t to look like a television star: it was to look like as though you’d never seen television."

I think this is just about as good a generalization as one could get. It is not derision towards the working class which sparked the hipster's ironic interest in the retro look, but rather, a rejection of the consumerist urge to purchase that which is newer and better. It is better considered a reaction to the wider cultural shift away from blue collar work. Let us frame it this way; for the past few decades there has been an increasing push not only for a college education, but for post graduate education. At the same time, popular media is based almost entirely on the middle/upper middle class or the wealthy. Consider sitcoms. Roseanne was really the last TV show which focused on a working class family. What do we see today? The aptly named Modern Family is certainly not working class. White Collar is, as the name implies, certainly not about blue collar workers. Going back a few years to Friends, they were not struggling in NYC (well, Rachel was at the beginning of the show, but she was born into money), same thing with Seinfeld, etc, etc, etc. Point being, the working class hasn't been "cool" for a long time. Hipsters, are playing off this wider cultural rejection of the working class. To an "authentic hipster" (to the extent that such a person might exist), that which they appropriate is a target for "upcycling" precisely because society at large has rejected it, not the individual hipster, or the "hipster community."

 

[LizzieMaine]

To those of us who are genuinely of the working class, cultural appropriation is cultural appropriation, no matter how you rationalize it. Develop your own identity. Don't try to colonize ours and trivialize it in so doing. Contrary to what your media has taught you, we're far from dead, and we're *far* from irrelevant. Some of us are even articulate enough to speak for ourselves -- and we don't like being mocked. And *you* don't get to tell *us* we're "misinterpreting."

 

[DJH]

I really don't understand all the Hipster hating - I've never heard of any Hipster people doing any harm to anyone so what's the big deal?

Come to that, I think New England is pretty much a Hipster free zone anyway so we are not being threatened by them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I really don't understand all the Hipster hating - I've never heard of any Hipster people doing any harm to anyone so what's the big deal?

Come to that, I think New England is pretty much a Hipster free zone anyway so we are not being threatened by them.

Come to Coastal Maine, from Portland to Belfast. You'll be up to your neck in them.

 

[ButteMT61]

There are still lots of working class sitcoms. They're gold. Always have been, always will be. Two Broke Girls. The Middle. Mile & Molly. To name but a few. What do they do for a living (hipsters)? They reject everything, and presumably that includes higher education? All old people (anyone over 25) suck. They don't have room for manners or decorum. So what is it they want? This is for the hipster experts or hipsters posting up...

 

[jlee562]

You "believe" just like those whose beliefs you disagree with which makes no one here any more right or wrong for the most part.

I'm a social scientist by day, and the field which I have studied for my post-graduate work is known as constructivism. To vastly over-simplify for the sake of this discussion, constructivism is predicated on the socially constructed nature of the world we live in. Let me illustrate with a completely unrelated point: the traditional colors for a baby boy are blue, whereas the traditional colors for a baby girl are pink. These are entirely arbitrary choices as neither pink nor blue is inherently a more male or female color. Colors simply exist as a function of the way our eyes process light and have no inherent ties to human gender (which itself is a social construction if you examine third gender practices such as Native American "two spirit" people or the Hijra population in southern Asia). But it is widely accepted as the norm that boys get blue, girls get pink. It might just as well be boys get red while girls get yellow, but for the fact that societal norms have picked blue and pink.

So how does this principle of social construction apply to this discussion? If "hipster" is quantifiable, than the definition must be a product of those who define themselves as hipsters, or conversely must accurately describe a significant portion of those to which the "hipster" label is to be applied.

Simply having a belief does not mean that it is entirely valid. One might believe that the Republican Party is for raising taxes and the Democratic Party is for small government, but those would not be accurate descriptors by any objective evaluation. Likewise, it's one thing to believe that hipsters can't tell time, leave trash around, or live off their parent's money. And that may well be true for a segment of the hipster population. But it has little, if anything, to do with what hipsters are. The hipster ethos, such as it exists, simply doesn't not involve ignorance of the clock, a deliberate sense of littering, or an inherent need of wealthy parents.

And if one believes otherwise, so be it. But provide some better evidence for this than the old Potter Stewart obscenity logic.

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

It is a rejection of a certain part of society, but not working class society.

Again from Wiki, which I posted on the first page:


I think this is just about as good a generalization as one could get. It is not derision towards the working class which sparked the hipster's ironic interest in the retro look, but rather, a rejection of the consumerist urge to purchase that which is newer and better. It is better considered a reaction to the wider cultural shift away from blue collar work. Let us frame it this way; for the past few decades there has been an increasing push not only for a college education, but for post graduate education. At the same time, popular media is based almost entirely on the middle/upper middle class or the wealthy. Consider sitcoms. Roseanne was really the last TV show which focused on a working class family. What do we see today? The aptly named Modern Family is certainly not working class. White Collar is, as the name implies, certainly not about blue collar workers. Going back a few years to Friends, they were not struggling in NYC (well, Rachel was at the beginning of the show, but she was born into money), same thing with Seinfeld, etc, etc, etc. Point being, the working class hasn't been "cool" for a long time. Hipsters, are playing off this wider cultural rejection of the working class. To an "authentic hipster" (to the extent that such a person might exist), that which they appropriate is a target for "upcycling" precisely because society at large has rejected it, not the individual hipster, or the "hipster community."

Thanks, Jlee562. I checked your posts from your user page and didn't see the definition.

I deleted my post because the conversation appeared to becoming trite.

A bit of a tangent, the problem is the "old is new again." "Old is new again" is the greatest marketing idea ever. Pure genius. Sell something say "product A" until it is oversaturated. Once people tire of it, bring on "product B". Oversaturate then after a few years bring back "product A". By then everyone will hopefully forgot or the new young consumers, who never experienced, can purchase it and a higher mark up. "Product A" is new again, eventually so will "product B" and so on and so on. If hipsters are avoiding this by going the thrift store route then that is great. However, I can see younger hipsters fighting over the authentic hipster clothing so that they can be considered the more authentic hipster. That seems like it all the time, no matter if it hipsters, emos, preps, or what have you.