This article makes me tired. But it’s about us, so… Here ya go:
The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. He studies relentlessly, foraging for what has yet to be found by the mainstream. He is a walking citation; his clothes refer to much more than themselves. He tries to negotiate the age-old problem of individuality, not with concepts, but with material things.
He is an easy target for mockery. However, scoffing at the hipster is only a diluted form of his own affliction. He is merely a symptom and the most extreme manifestation of ironic living. For many Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s — members of Generation Y, or Millennials — particularly middle-class Caucasians, irony is the primary mode with which daily life is dealt. One need only dwell in public space, virtual or concrete, to see how pervasive this phenomenon has become. Advertising, politics, fashion, television: almost every category of contemporary reality exhibits this will to irony.
For tips on how to live without irony—and a quiz, to find out how irony-steeped you are!—read the whole New York Times article.
I don’t disagree that it’s totally bizarre to see 21-year-olds dressed like my mom did in the ’80s—or that there is a ’90s-themed dance club in Portland now—but this does not mean that young people are less authentic than you were when you were a kid. Just that it’s their turn to be young and dumb.
“You kids with your loud music and your Dan Fogelberg, hula hoops and Pac Man video games!”
Absolutely yes to that final sentence, Alison.
PLAYING AN INSTRUMENT! FACIAL HAIR! HOW POSITIVELY OUTMODED!
Is playing the trombone a hipster stereotype now? I had no idea. Hipsters should really consider usurping Tuba Christmas. Sincerity is super ironic, right?
You were not wrong about that article though. I made it about halfway through (right to the part where the writer bemoans her shameful love of buying silly gifts for her friends) before making an involuntary “NUGHHHHHHHH” sound and clicking out.
I only had time to read the first and last paragraphs.
“Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions.”
And: “Wampole is an assistant professor of French at Princeton University. Her research focuses primarily on 20th century French and Italian literature.”
Those NYT bloggers are so ironic.
Newsflash: Old person doesn’t understand young people. Loses serious relevance for not addressing YOLO or SWAG.
speaking of fixed-gear bicycles: man, those things are stupid.
devolution.
why not also take the laces out of your shoes, the ABS out of your car, and the elastic out of your tighty-whities?
Are hipsters the first self-aware trend? I mean, did people in the 60’s/70’s/80’s/90’s really not know they looked like fucking idiots in sequined jackets or zubaz?
But yeah, glad someone could discover hipsters now. Really a subject that needed some light shed on it.
Actually yes it does. We weren’t trying that hard. Actually I was not trying at all. @Aestro…I will pay you many dollars for those pictures :(, please don’t post them on the internetz
I have also stopped caring due to high entirely fucking lame the entire scene is
MY balls spilling out of MY tiny shorts outmoded? Your obsession with hipsterism has officially jumped the shark, NYT.
Hipster irony will be followed by sincerity, characterized by a nuveau grunge/hippie sensibility. Then that will also be commoditized. It is coming soon.
I am impressed with how long mustaches and skinny pants have hung on though. As fads go, they’ve done good.
Yeah, three cheers for women in skinny jeans. Otherwise hipster style can’t disappear too soon.
“Hipster style” will never disappear. It is not a defined style that will be ushered out to make way for something new. Hipsterism is a lazy definition given by those that are willingly or otherwise on the outside of trending pop culture looking in. What you refer to as “hipster style” will morph into something new and likely just as foreign and infuriating to you. Let it go, people. Let the kids be kids.
@Human In Training – Actually, there’s a new trend this year for wearing dress shoes without laces.
Hipsters: The go-to topic for lazy journalists since 2003.
…or 1947.