"Unhappy Hipsters" Blog

[LizzieMaine]

I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Nyahh.

Seriously, though, I'm sure there are "hipsteresque" people who want to see the Boys From Marketing exterminated, and I'd be the first to shake their hands and welcome them to the struggle. But all the hipster types I've run into so far have been far more interested in posing and preening and booze and drugs than in anything approaching an actual anticonsumerist revolution. If you know the other kind, send them here.

 

[jlee562]

Which begs the question of whether or not the types you run into are "hipsters" at all to begin with; whether your assumptions of "hipsters" are correct; as well as your other a priori biases.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If it poses like a hipster, and preens like a hipster, leaves its trash on the sidewalk for "other people" to clean up, has no idea how to tell time, thinks you can change the world by wearing a slogan on a t-shirt, and lives off mom and dad's money, it's a hipster. Simple enough definition for me.

 

[jlee562]

If it poses like a hipster, and preens like a hipster, leaves its trash on the sidewalk for "other people" to clean up, has no idea how to tell time, thinks you can change the world by wearing a slogan on a t-shirt, and lives off mom and dad's money, it's a hipster. Simple enough definition for me.

Which describes exactly 0% of anybody in San Francisco that I would call a hipster.

Like I said, begs the question of your assumptions.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Like I've said, I can only go on the people I've seen here, 3000 miles to the east. I had ninety of them in one room a couple weeks ago, which is a reasonable sample size, I think, to draw some general conclusions about how they tend to act, and I've had close business dealings with several of them -- which I've found epically frustrating because of their lackadasical attitude toward time and follow-thru. I submit that my arguments are a posteriori and not a priori, given these experiences.

Unless you're offering up the assumption that San Francisco hipsters are somehow more authentically hipsterish than our New England types. Please elaborate on that.

In any event, if you'd prefer, I'd be happy to not call them "hipsters" anymore. Anything to keep the peace. I'll call them "snotty upper-middle-class white kids overly preoccupied with their own self-cultivated image."

 

[jlee562]

Like I've said, I can only go on the people I've seen here, 3000 miles to the east. I had ninety of them in one room a couple weeks ago, which is a reasonable sample size, I think, to draw some general conclusions about how they tend to act, and I've had close business dealings with several of them -- which I've found epically frustrating because of their lackadasical attitude toward time and follow-thru. I submit that my arguments are a posteriori and not a priori, given these experiences.

From your above list it seems rather like you are ascribing the "hipster" labels to qualities you don't like in the younger generation rather than determining what defines a hipster to begin with.

Unless you're offering up the assumption that San Francisco hipsters are somehow more authentically hipsterish than our New England types. Please elaborate on that.

As I stated in the other thread (or perhaps it was earlier in this thread, y'all do so much whining about hipsters, it's hard to keep up), a San Francisco hipster is different than both Oakland hipsters, and Brooklyn hipsters. I can't claim to have spend a huge amount of time in Brooklyn, but I have stayed with friends in Park Slope, which is generally considered to be ground zero for hipsterdom. More to the point, I live in a city which is known for having hipsters.

So yeah, in as much as I live in a city known for hipsters and not "the second coolest small town in America;" and since what is known as "hipsterism" (if you will) is a product of urban living, if there were such a thing as being more 'authentically' hipster, it would be in San Francisco and Brooklyn and not New England. Just the same as the epicenter for the punk rock movement was London, which spread to L.A. and San Francisco before it got to the rest of the country.

The folks I recognize as hipsters in San Francisco's Mission district ride fixed gear bikes (usually a dead give away); are intensely interested in the locavore movement; generally support independent businesses, which extends to supporting independent musicians; take an interest in urban farming or urban gardening; shop at thrift stores; compost (San Francisco is a zero waste city); and yes, drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and smoke cigarettes.

'Posing and preening like a hipster' is not a cogent argument and in fact, means literally nothing without a definition of what a hipster is, and how one poses and preens (which itself is an unfounded assumption; that there is a specific way hipsters pose).

Leaving trash is likewise not helpful in defining a hipster. Plenty of people leave trash on the sidewalk, not all of them are hipsters.

Not being able to tell time; this can't literally be true.

T-shirt slogans? Again, that could apply to anyone wearing an Obama or Romney shirt.

Lives off mom and dad's money? Again, this is blanket assumption, and one that does not exclusively define hipsters. Moreover, how you know this to be true of your supposed 900 sample size is beyond me. Sounds like another unfounded assumption.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Whatever. But if you were really hip, you'd drink Narragansett.

 

[ButteMT61]

Whatever. But if you were really hip, you'd drink Narragansett.

Meh.

 

[Johnny de-Lux]

hipsters just are..there's no up and down, no left and right, no black and white..remember is the music is loud enough, u won't hear the world falling apart ~

 

[LizzieMaine]

Meh.

Or some other genuine regional blue-collar beer. I think it's absolutely hysterical that PBR has become the defining avatar of these "locavores," being that it's just another pumped-out product of the Miller megacorporate vats. The Boys From Marketing just love these kids.

 

[Patrick Hall]

What we do and how we live proceeds from the inside out. "Hipsterdom," so far as I've been able to figure it, proceeds largely from the outside in.

I think it's a bold thing to claim that hipsterdom, as much as it can be spoken of as a coherent entity, doesn't contain some authentic "inside-out" practitioners. I'm also sure that there are some loungers who are flirting with atavism as part of their youthful process of individuation. I don't think one can differentiate TFL from hipsterdom by claiming, "they are fad-chasing transients, but we REALLY mean it." Some of us are transients, and some of them really mean it!

I think, as ButteMT61 suggests, the difference lies with hipsterdom's preferred language of irony and boredom. Such a posture is largely absent here on the Lounge, where people have an endearingly real evangelical faith in a forgotten kind of life with all its virtues.

 

[jlee562]

Whatever. But if you were really hip, you'd drink Narragansett.

Whatever indeed.

The inability here to actually have a well reasoned argument speaks volumes. You folks just want to hate on hipsters for not being like you. Which is all well and good, humans have an innate sense of tribalism to a certain extent, but just don't pretend like you're any better than a hipster. Because you're not. You just align yourself with a different group.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it's a bold thing to claim that hipsterdom, as much as it can be spoken of as a coherent entity, doesn't contain some authentic "inside-out" practitioners. I'm also sure that there are some loungers who are flirting with atavism as part of their youthful process of individuation.

Perhaps -- but I've yet to meet any of them. The SUMCWKOPWTOSCI's that I've run across have all picked it up in college, and it's a phase they go thru until the next big thing comes along, unless Mom and Dad have unusually deep pockets and are willing to subsidize them indefinitely, or they con their way into some kind of grant.

I don't doubt that there are Loungers for whom the whole "vintage thing" is just another thing to mess around with until they get bored with it -- the number of members who have come and gone over the years is proof of this. Which is why I said "many of us," not "all of us."

I agree with your comments about sincerity, though. Many of us here have had it up to the neck with smirking irony as a worldview, and you shouldn't be surprised to see it being reacted to rather sharply.

 

[jlee562]

Perhaps -- but I've yet to meet any of them.

And your anecdotal experience isn't terribly meaningful given your misconceptions about hipsters.

 

[Patrick Hall]

I agree with your comments about sincerity, though. Many of us here have had it up to the neck with smirking irony as a worldview, and you shouldn't be surprised to see it being reacted to rather sharply.

I will have to bear this in mind going forward - while I wear my vintage in far too traditional a fashion to be a hipster, I am an utter and complete ironist through and through. I'll try to keep that in check around these parts!

-PMH

 

[Touchofevil]

When I was much younger, those (that some might call hipsters) who drank PBR, drank it mostly because it was cheap. Cheap beer was always in fashion; especially if it had some sort of puzzle under the cap.

This thread is getting too hot. I think the problem with this thread is that too many believe that there is a set in stone definition of hipster and only they can be correct in their application of this definition. Definitions change from region to region as well as over time and as a result not one person on here is the expert or authority they might want to be on the subject of hipsters. There is no need to take this thread so seriously that people start making it personal. If you don't agree, you don't agree and that is okay, but there is never a need to attack based primarily on emotion.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'll try to keep that in check around these parts!
-PMH

Do that and you'll get along just fine. The hard-core folk around here are always more than happy to help people who have a sincere interest in the Era.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was much younger, those (that some might call hipsters) who drank PBR, drank it mostly because it was cheap. Cheap beer was always in fashion; especially if it had some sort of puzzle under the cap.

Gansett. Falstaff. Ballantine. And if you really have a death wish, Haffenreffer Private Stock. I was never a drinker myself as a kid, but I often had to clean up after those who were, and I recognized them by their empties.

The PBR thing is interesting, though, because it really points up the whole manufactured image-consciousness of the SUMCWKOPWTOSCI crowd. There were and are dozens of brands of cheap second-rate beer one could guzzle if one is so inclined. You used to be able to get a suitcase of Schaefer for less than five dollars around here. So why are the SUMCWKOPWTOSCI's drinking PBR and not Schaefer? Why did they latch on to PBR?

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.

 

[jlee562]

When I was much younger, those (that some might call hipsters) who drank PBR, drank it mostly because it was cheap. Cheap beer was always in fashion; especially if it had some sort of puzzle under the cap.

This thread is getting too hot. I think the problem with this thread is that too many believe that there is a set in stone definition of hipster and only they can be correct in their application of this definition. Definitions change from region to region as well as over time and as a result not one person on here is the expert or authority they might want to be on the subject of hipsters. There is no need to take this thread so seriously that people start making it personal. If you don't agree, you don't agree and that is okay, but there is never a need to attack based primarily on emotion.

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.

 

[Touchofevil]

Gansett. Falstaff. Ballantine. And if you really have a death wish, Haffenreffer Private Stock. I was never a drinker myself as a kid, but I often had to clean up after those who were, and I recognized them by their empties.

The PBR thing is interesting, though, because it really points up the whole manufactured image-consciousness of the SUMCWKOPWTOSCI crowd. There were and are dozens of brands of cheap second-rate beer one could guzzle if one is so inclined. You used to be able to get a suitcase of Schaefer for less than five dollars around here. So why are the SUMCWKOPWTOSCI's drinking PBR and not Schaefer? Why did they latch on to PBR?

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.

There definitely was a group who thought that drinking PBR made them a little cooler, more authentic, and different than the rest. It is no different than those who think that drinking Jack Daniels makes them cooler or tougher. There will always be a "Look-at-Me" crowd wherever you go trying to somehow make them appear cooler than they are. I am okay with that. I am not a hater or a whiner. People of all types provide (for the most part) some entertainment value.