In Condemnation and Praise of "Hipsters"

It seems to me that the wave of the paradoxical "mainstream hipsters" has largely passed as we all knew it would.  

Unfortunately, the fad of hipster culture will likely be remembered by oddly dressed, snobbish jerks.  I say it is unfortunate because hipsters, in my mind came about in the most wonderfully pure and passionate way possible.  Let me explain.

You remember that kid or kids in high school who genuinely didn't care what anybody thought of them?  I'm not talking about the rebel, or the goth, or the poorly groomed kids.  Lots of kids SAY they don't care, but the kids I'm referring to actually didn't give a crap. they probably weren't popular in a conventional way, but people knew who they were and most probably liked them.  These kids were likely hipsters before being a hipster was a thing.  They were literally hipsters before it was cool.

These original hipsters had no title.  They were un-classifiable.  They were the Originals.*  They marched to the beat of their own drum and pursued their own interests.  They were passionate about lots of things.  They sought after and found music, art, movies, and clothing that spoke to them. Whether something was popular or indie or obscure was irrelevant because they didn't care who else liked it, as long as they did it was good enough for them.  They were not an exclusive bunch of people, but they placed great value on having passion for things.  Self-perceived inadequacy would likely cause a non-Original to excuse himself from their company before being chased away.  If an Original loved something they showed it not by using it as leverage to get noticed, but by delving into the deep tracks of that bands first EP or by finding that director's unreleased student film.  If an Original liked Beyonce (a totally valid choice), they not only liked her most recent chart topping single, but they went all the way back to Destiny Child's 1999 "The Writing's on the Wall" and beyond**.  Their unspoken model was "if you aren't completely in love with your favorite things, they must not be that big of a deal to you."

So how did this hipster wave come about from the Originals?  How did the movement based on not caring what pop culture valued suddenly become valued by pop culture?

The short answer: Posers.

Some chicks and/or dudes saw how cool these independent-thinking, passionate souls were, and they wanted to be cool like them.  Here's the problem: they didn't develop their own interests and delve deep into them.  Instead they just made themselves into a cheap knock-off, an unwitting parody, a living breathing mockery of all that was awesome about the Originals.  Because of the Originals' love of finding forgotten tracks from artists they found, the first hipsters assumed that the one qualification for "cool" music was that "you probably haven't heard of them" and that any displays of enjoyment of well-known artists must be ironic.

This bastardized version of that-awesome-kid-in-high-school caught on and was given the name "hipster" somewhere along the way.  It became so popular that clothes were assumed to have to be weird to be trendy.  Instead of a genuine interest in clothing found in thrift stores, online, or that had been handed down from a great aunt, clothes with wolf heads or hot dog patterns started popping up in shopping malls and department stores.  Heck!  Even the iconic hipster mustache has been slapped on shirts, notebooks, and necklaces!

So now what?  Are we better off or worse off with "I mustache you a question" T-shirts?  On the bright side, a few Indie bands hit it big and cardigans are now easier to find.  The internet and music sharing/streaming sites have made the job of finding deeper tracks way easier.  But I, along with lots of you, get to react with an "oh brother" when I see particularly stereotypical mainstream hipsters who are obviously trying too hard to be trendy instead of being themselves in spite of what the masses would have them do like the Originals did.  But I think there are more consequences than just sore necks from shaking our heads so often.

The biggest impact that the hipster movement had on America --aside from revitalizing thrift shops across the nation -- is that it has directly assaulted people who are sincerely and truly honest-to-goodness individuals in their tastes and preferences.  Our collective knee-jerk reaction is to assume that someone with patches on the sleeves of a cardigan with unique facial hair must be a hipster of the shallow, vapid, obnoxious variety.  The kids who know what they are all about are no longer seen as the genuinely cool kids.  They're now assumed to be failed attempts at trendiness.

To sum up, I hope that the hipster trend as we know it is over and done.  May it die a speedy death and may we all forget it mercifully soon.  Then I hope we can try again.  Let the unique kids be unique.  Let a new generation of Originals be born, and next time we notice how cool they are, I sure hope they inspire us to put some effort into developing our own interests instead of making a farce of theirs.




*My wife warned me about trying to give a name to this unique and very loosely associated groups of kids.  She argued quite persuasively that by giving them a title, I'm robbing them of what they truly were: Unclassified individuals.  However, for the sake of this post, I committed to the word Original to describe them for brevity and clarity of point.  Sorry sweetie.

**I'd like to formally apologize to Beyonce as I mistakenly thought that she was part of TLC before launching her solo career.  I have not yet dived into Beyonce's tracks, but I thought she is a great example and a great artist.