But the dance party-seeking hipster has no intention of actually dancing. This is primarily because this activity is mutually exclusive from getting laid for hipsters and so must be avoided at all costs. In anomalous instances hipsters will attempt to dance, imagining that they look like this to onlookers:

But the most they ever achieve is dressing like this (poorly). These delusions of grandeur are merely side effects of the narcissistic state they exist in. In reality, they likely look like this:

In fact, this is the primary reason why most hipsters seek dance parties: to watch hipsters with alcohol-induced confidence flail like a whirling dervish throughout an empty dance floor. This serves both to momentarily relieve the hipster observer's state of unbearable boredom and to provide a false sense of confidence regarding his or her own dancing skills as he thinks, "Wow. I mean, nobody could be as awkward as that guy."

In the cover story of the most recent issue of Adbusters (Hipsters: The Dead End of Western Civilization), author Douglas Haddow described the hipster dance scene as follows:

The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion. –AdBusters Issue 79

But like most self-righteous anarchist outsiders, Haddow misses the mark with his analysis of hipster dancing more than the people who thought that New Yorker cover with Obama in a turban cover was racist! (Note: The chick who wrote that post called The New Yorker's satirical tactics "hipster racism!!!" Hilarious! And so misguided.)

Though the behavior of the lone flailer may seem to be a symptom of excessive confidence, it is actually the result of traumatizing middle school dances where the fledgling hipster, in his attempt to dance to The Backstreet Boys and Aqua, faced ego-crushing giggles from girls in matching Limited Too dresses and possibly abandonment from his posse. To overcome this dancing insecurity, the hipster, in adulthood, has learned to wile out while rationalizing the behavior with mental one-liners such as "whatever, I don't care what other people think," and "at least I'm secure enough with myself to dance, unlike all those losers," which he practices delivering nightly infront of his bathroom mirror.

Hipster dancers alleviate both the mental states of insecurity that the dancer himself has been imprisoned motionlessly by for his pre-Williamsburg existence (although the trauma was such that he does not really enjoy the act of dancing itself), and the state of boredom that the dance party-seeking observer attempts to counter with her nightly binge drinking ventures.

So you see, Adbusters is not qualified to comment on hipster culture and the editors should probably just consult me next time they want to attempt it.

]]> http://idealistnyc.wordpress.com/?p=945 Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:10:42 +0000 Hannah http://idealistnyc.wordpress.com/?p=945 "We're a nation of consumers. And there's nothing wrong with that." Those are the first lines of a new Discover card commercial called "Brighter." When I first heard those words, I choked on my lemonade. It seemed like a joke for a second or two, but it quickly became clear that the the commercial was completely serious and not at all ironic. I think it's meant to be like a soothing pat on the back - it's okay, America, there's no need to stop shopping. Your friendly credit card company is here to help you maintain your lifestyle during expensive and deadly wars, a national energy addiction, and a housing crisis.

This was definitely a "where's the outrage?" moment for me. How is this an acceptable message for primetime television? There IS something wrong with being a nation of consumers. There's a lot wrong with it. Especially when the credit card market shows signs of unravelling just like the home mortgage crisis.

I should probably just avoid watching TV. It's definitely not good for my blood pressure.

If you're as offended as I am by the idea of a credit card company telling us to buy more of what we don't need, I'd recommend checking out the Adbusters magazine and website, or joining Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.

I also just did a search on Idealist for volunteer opportunities related to debt counseling and found a couple.

rembembertibet.org dient der Erinnerung an etwas, dass uns einst, sagen wir, vor Olympia 2008, bewegte. Und wenn nicht bewegte oder wen es nicht bewegte, den erreichte es, dank den Medien am Ende doch noch. Tibet, dank des Dalai Lamas, der zumindest in der westlichen Kultur zur Friedenstaube in Menschenfleisch ikonisiert wurde (zunächst ohne dessen eigene Geschichte zu studieren ...), eine der populärsten Regionen Chinas, hat zuletzt durch "einfache Menschen", nämlich aufständischen Landsleuten oder religiösen Mönchen, von sich reden gemacht. Bis die Chinesische Zentralregierung in Peking das Blickfeld auf das demonstrierende Geschwür mit Soldaten verstellte, so dass nicht kein Reporter einer ausländischen Tageszeitung mehr Bericht erstatten sollte. Dann kamen die Olympischen Spiele. Ereignis genug um zu vergessen und Zeit genug, für Jonathan Barnbrook und Pedro Inoue ihre Designkompetenzen für einen guten Zweck, nämlich den der Erinnerung, multimedial anzuwenden, getrieben von dem Glauben und einem offensichtlichen Selbstverständnis, als Designer Verantwortung zu übernehmen um den Fokus des öffentlichen Bewusstseins, durch, sagen wir mal, gutes Design, politisch nachhaltig auf die eher unendlichen Geschichten zu lenken. Wenn sicher auch ohne besondere Wirkung. Mehr Informationen hier ...

Mehr Informationen zum Thema China & Tibet:
Olympische Völkerverständigung (068)
Die Olympischen Milliarden (70)
China erzieht die Welt (039)
Rohstofflager Tibet (040)
Tibet in China (036)

Ouch:

Here we are, in full planetary emergency, a time when we need new young graduates with a realistic understanding of what is wrong with the world, with skills that will help humanity chart a new course. And what do economics departments aspire to churn out? Individuals trained to not recognize symptoms of impending collapse, trained to ignore appalling inequality, trained to celebrate profligate waste, trained to be closed-minded and unwilling to engage with different disciplines.

I'm not sure how those in academe view this assertion, but it does seem to me that there is a paucity of research about new organizational forms in particular (there are exceptions, though).  I would add that in my experience, much of the theory fails to translate to practice as organizations evolve faster than research can track them.

(ht: Polymeme, the best new site on the Interwebs)

Recently I've noticed a trend of hipster bashing. Not just of the 'hipsters are hypocrites' kind that people whisper to each other about other people that they don't like. No, this new hipster bashing is of the 'hipsters are the largest problem facing society at the moment, and will lead to our downfall' kind. Hmm. Though it has popped up other places (such as the Art of Manliness), I think this trend started with the AdBusters article, which basically predicts the coming of the hip-pocalypse:

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

The writer continues on to scorn hipster music, clothing, feigned apathy, and sheep-like following of trends:

This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof...The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.

So it's true that the hipster lifestyle is often contradictory. Why spend money to look grungy? Why look grungy when you (and your parents) have money? Why behave like a hipster but vehemently deny being one? But hipster hating has gone too far.

For example, I don't understand what this writer finds so spiteful about fixed-gear bikes. While it's true that they are less efficient than their 21-speed counter-parts, perhaps hipsters are simply trying to reduce their carbon footprints, showing exactly the kind of interest and initiative the writer criticizes them for not having. And what about recycling previous fashions? That's nothing new. It's been going on for generations, and hardly signals the demise of civilization. And reading the same magazines? No problem there. Imagine, for a second, what would happen if "Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper" (apparently hipster magazines) published articles encouraging hipsters to vote, or raising awareness about the genocide in Sudan, or coverage of the Iraq war. What we need now is creativity, not criticism. Sheep-like following is not always bad.

But the biggest mistake here is assuming that hipsterdom is a counter-culture. With hipsters everywhere and national chains that cater to hipsterdom, hipsters have become as mainstream as Britney Spears. And there ARE very legitimate non-mainstream cultures, especially (some) hip-hop cultures and geek/tech culture, that are doing some very cool things. No, hipsters will stick around for a while, until something else becomes popular. Then, hipster culture will float up to pop culture Heaven, right next to boy bands and ex-Survivor contestants. We're all going to be okay.

K-Punk attacks Adbusters and Momus in the manner of Brundlefly here, vomiting on the offending arm and seeing what can be eaten out of the process.

Hipster culture doesn't bear any of the assertions by Douglas Haddow in Adbusters, simply because none of it is true. What hipster culture lacks, precisely, is the apocalyptic. K-Punk identifies a skein of this lack but I think with much respect mistakes it for a true 'lack' or a type of theoretically readable 'absence'. The absence of absence itself, that surfaces in comfortable bright clothes and shitty music is not wholly hipster, nor is anything else. Hipster culture, since its inception, has acted to always skim across ephemera and the liminal and quickly move on - which makes it a far more stable subculture than those of goth, punk, metal or emo and their local/temporal byproducts.

So it is that this...

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new. - Haddow in Adbusters

..doesn't bear comment. This is just an indication that Adbusters has declined as a magazine. It does not mean that whatever Adbusters was is dead, or some tendency towards another delayed cultural apocalypse. It means what it seems it means - a bad article was published. That Adbusters is a type of Vice magazine is obvious, but it doesn't bear much grilling of meat. Was this ever not the case? This puerile quest for the multiple orgasm Armageddon speak more to the position of the cultural critic than it does hipsterdom.

Since we are here, though, fuck Momus and his friends.

Nathan Barley is not a difficult show to decode; it is not a swirling vortex of referentiality. Momus asserts that "[the] series ended up appealing only to the people who recognised themselves in its satirical targets", but the opposite is more true. The show codified the ephemeral and gave people a new reference point to whip out and flop onto the table; it produced the targets of its satire. As satire always does, and always will. There's no cause for alarm.

When I did my time writing for hipster websites and magazines (as a critical chubby blogger does, apparently), Nathan Barley posters were put up on walls everywhere. It was a badge of pride, I thought. Either this was because hipsterdom has no exterior principle, or its becuase - and follow me carefully here - the show was actually funny. Both can be true; it is possible that the people who write for Vice and Adbusters and the millions of websites and magazines like them just have trouble negotiating the same spirals of satire we all do.

I am always reminded of Aleister Crowley's choronzon principle when talk of a cultural apocalypse rears up:

The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is Choronzon, but he is not really an individual. The Abyss is empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in the only true sense of the word—that is, meaningless but malignant, in so far as it craves to become real. These forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps like dust devils, and each such chance aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks, "I am I!" though aware all the time that its elements have no true bond; so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion just as a horseman, meeting a dust devil, brings it in showers of sand to the earth. - Crowley, Confessions

The anti-choronzon is the realisation that the sweet kiss of the Abyss is never coming, the absence of absence. Nothing important is ever happening, even unimportance. A generational panic over hipsterdom is a cloudy paranoia that something somewhere is happening and the critic is not part of it. Equally as silly is the defence of it as anything to do with 'sex and art' as Momus suggests. They don't 'become artists, visionaries', and we know this because hipsterdom has been around for a long time. Its institutional vanity, and its class-based, and let's not pretend for a moment it isn't. The 'artists' they become design their cutting edge visual art on a 24-inch iMac and their 'vision' is closely guarded by RSS feeds of MP3 blogs. Damn anybody who fits Momus' description, and may their bodies be devoured by vermin... right?

K-Punk:

We're not dealing with grand displays of dandyism but an all-too tasteful micro-manipulation of codes, a narcissism too laconically balanced to ever trip over into anything so fascinating as obsession, too inhibited to ever register with the gaze of the "general population", except as a vague irritation at the periphery of awareness.

Well, I would agree to a point that codes break up like that, but keeping in mind that dandyism was hardly ever grand in the first place, that it was largely a fantasy of a rich few supported by the skulking hordes of wannabe dandies of the upper-middle classes. Someone was buying Max Nordau's Degeneration. Someone was buying the poetry. If the dandies sold themselves, there must have been a market. The patronage system doesn't quite gel into history, because many of the true degenerates were making their own coin, in their lifetimes. The swine. This is Degeneration, in 1892:

The men complete the picture. They are preserved from excessive oddity from fear of the Philistine's laugh, or through some remains of sanity in taste, and, with the exception of the red dress-coat with metal buttons, and knee-breeches with silk stockings, with which some idiots in eye-glass and gardenia try to rival burlesque actors, present little deviation from the ruling canon of the masculine attire of the day.

Sound familiar yet?

The common feature in all these male specimens is that they do not express their real idiosyncrasies, but try to present something that they are not. They are not content to show their natural figure, nor even to supplement it by legitimate accessories, in harmony with the type that they approximate, but they seek to model themselves after some artistic pattern which has no affinity with their own nature, or is even antithetical to it.

Nordau goes on to bemoan the randomness of the dandy's clothing, the randomness of their taste, and demands of them a return to a functional appreciation of niche.

"The speed of culture" is a product, sold to both hipster and hipster-critic, and the relationship is as binding as any marriage. Both make their cache through its continuance; as Nordau sold his book to dandies and the outraged classes alike. Adbusters and Momus are printed from the same press, a dusty narrative of impending degeneracy and apocalypse, a history that doesn't know its history, a absence of absence.

...and some of it may be painfully true, but I still love 'em.

Update: This is interesting: Apple Corporate Gifting and Rewards.

That's almost true. Yes, hipsterdom does not offer much in the way of subversion, but neither did beats, hippies, or punks, etc. Is hipsterdom unoriginal? I dunno. A lot of it is pretty dumb, but I actually think mumblecore (bands like Bishop Allen, films like Mutual Apprecation) is sweet.

Anyway, Sarah Barmak has a piece in the Star hitting the obvious replies, and there's a good blog post about it here.

RELATED: Joe and I heard today that HarperCollins has sold the rights to the Rebel Sell to MUZA, a publishing house in Poland.

Przeraźliw!

It's an interesting and keenly observant article. However, the conclusion alluded to in the title is misguided. The writer portrays the Hipster movement as if it is the most recent heir in a rich tradition of countercultures which ends the line of succession by absorbing the mainstream, rather than rejecting it, and eventually exploding... or maybe imploding. I'm not sure. The "exploding/imploding" metaphor is mine, not his. Regardless, he says the movement ends, taking Western civilization with it.

This is where he goes wrong. Not by failing to use my metaphor or suggesting an abrupt end to Western civilization, but by suggesting that the movements of the past were right and this new one is wrong because it's become too trendy.

In modern American history we truly have had a string of counter-cultural movements in the post-WWII era. There were the beats, the hippies, punk, hip-hop, grunge... and all of the variations and offshoots in-between. And all of them became commercialized and mainstream in some capacity. It is the end result of every compelling modern movement.

But this article forgot to mention the true countercultural movement of today. The social justice movement. It's movement of young people all over America, and the rest of the developed world, informing themselves of the global plight of humanity.

Those of us born after 1980 are the first generation that has grown up with the internet, allowing us to not only learn about remote regions of the world, but to communicate with those regions in real-time. And then, in a matter of seconds, we can just as easily purchase a plane ticket for a visit .

The movements of the 1960s did great things, but the majority of the changes produced affected primarily Americans, rather than the rest of the world. I'm aware that Kennedy started the Peace Corps in the 1960s and that many of the revolutionary events involved the Vietnam war in some way, but there can be no comparing the global understanding of that age and ours.

Unfortunately the marketing world has become too observant to let this movement develop untainted. GAP has its Red campaign selling clothes that benefit HIV/AIDS relief in Africa. And we also have Tom's shoes. Toms is the company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair you buy. They now sell $120 boots that look like an Ace bandage wrapped around your calf. It's a good idea for a socially conscious company. It's just funny to see a pair of Toms as an accessory to an outfit that includes a pair of $300 sunglasses. [full disclosure: I'm wearing Tom's as I write this. And tight-fitting jeans. Yes, apparently I'm a hipster too, damnit.]

However, even with this mainstream aspect, the social justice movement is still counter-cultural. What's more counter to American culture than a movement rejecting political boundaries, and striving for just treatment for everyone, regardless of which side of an arbitrary line a human was born? Obviously we can be sedated by the ads into thinking this is just a fad.

But I believe there's too much information being communicated out there for this to be the case for everyone. And we as a generation have experienced too much of this first-hand. If I had enough fingers and toes, I could count for days the number of people I know who've been to or even lived in a third-world country.

This is why the isolationist approach of the past does not take hold on our generation. This is why we don't give in to blind patriotism. This is why we don't want to just bomb the hell out of our "enemies". We've looked into their eyes, and can see from their perspective. We want reconciliation. We want to talk.

No, the aimless, self-involved hipsters are not the counterculture of our generation. It's the global revolutionaries.

The Calico Rebellion

I'm pretty late off the blocks with this one, but there's been a fair bit of attention recently to 'hipsters', or at least a couple of articles trying to construe the hipster identity as some sort of cultural dead stop. A bit like that Simpsons episode where Homer and Marge try to ascertain from Lisa and Bart exactly what makes someone cool - 'Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to be told you're cool' 'Well sure you do, how else would you know?' - I suspect that how people react to the hipster label depends on how distanced they consider themselves to be from that imagined (non-)community of people. For example, although I could tick a number of the boxes of the Scenester Bingo, I would be insulted if I was called a hipster.

Hipsters, of course, are nothing new, and neither - it would seem - is the way they are reported. Compare Douglas Haddow's Adbuster article with Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy from 1957:

...the milk bars indicate at once, in the nastiness of their modernistic knick-knacks, their glaring showiness, an aesthetic breakdown so complete that, in comparison with them, the layout of the living rooms in some of the poor homes from which the customers come seems to speak of a tradition as balanced and civilised as an eighteenth-century townhouse... Compared even with the pub around the corner, this is all a peculiarly thin and pallid form of dissipation, a sort of spiritual dry-rot amid the odour of boiled milk. Many of the customers - their clothes, their hair-styles, their facial expressions all indicate - are living to a large extent in a myth-world compounded of a few simple elements which they take to be those of American life ('The Juke-Box Boys', pp.203-204).

The revelation that young people dress similarly and seem apathetic and politically or morally vacuous is both outmoded and bogus. I don't mean to defend hipsters (if they even exist), but rather attack this essentially conservative style of journalism. The type of cultural investigation as propagated by Hoggart and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and replicated by Haddow - this amongst-us ethnography much better suited to 1957 than 2008 - is too eager to construct taxonomies rather than acknowledge difference. The Haddow article is a cultural ethnography in reverse: working from the label ‘hipster' backwards to push young fashion-conscious people under that umbrella. That mainstream fashion seems to be adopting an indie aesthetic may also be what is throwing people off the scent here; and despite the supposed political apathy of the hipster, neither article investigates American Apparel's seemingly successful project of combining ethical manufacturing and mass production, or how far the popularity of cycling may relate to considerations beyond fashion.

Ultimately, though, the hipster identity eludes these articles' authors because they are confusing a well-disguised culture industry for an oppositional youth movement. Haddow, if you want to find today's incarnation of your nostalgic image of a rock-wielding angry youth, you are looking in the wrong place. ‘Are you a hipster?' ‘Fuck no'. Hipster is not a unified identity comparable to punks, skinheads, mods or similar, at best it is a marketing demographic composed of young, predominantly middle class urbanites at leisure with a relatively easily-attainable fashion sense. K-Punk suggests that, ‘the problem with "hipsters" is precisely that they are pathologically well-adjusted, untroubled by sexual anxieties or financial worries': but this takes the self-propaganda of Myspace, Flickr and all those much-touted magazines too honestly. These channels - the only place the hipster truly exists - are devoted to hedonistic and indulgent displays of Self. Don't lay the blame for a perceived apathy at the feet of young people. Blame marketing, in all its forms.

Yes, we are seeing a globalisation of taste (‘global cooling', very well done Independent) and the dissemination of a specific, American Apparel and Vice approved aesthetic at a rate more rapid and widespread than previously, but this is all to be expected. Identities have been formed through consumption for a long time now, and the promise of choice offered by capitalism was long ago undermined by homogeneity and false individualism. The real novelty of the hipster identity is self-referentiality and irony. Where today's trends are picked indiscriminately from yesterday's fashions - clothes, language, music, all recycled - we are also aware of the discrepancies and contradictions of claiming a recognisable identity like punk, hippy or beatnik. The hipster is, and always has been, a demographic for consumption and symptomatic of modern capitalism: we must not get confused between the images we are sold, and real, active sites of cultural resistance.

Website #1 - Ted Tap's Blog

"a celebration of brain gushings and nonsense" this is the one i used in class, i said it was pretty conventional in its set up, service and functionality.   it is a fictional blog written by a friend of mine who attends UTS. as far as i understand it is a similar assignment as ours, a weekly blog, however his has to be fictional. it is web2.0 with user generated content, part of an online community etc. i like reading it because his imagination is insane and i love the idea of a guy who lives on top of a mountain by himself keeping a blog. it makes a nice change to reading another communications traditions lecture.

Website #2 - Adbusters

A culture jamming network site. this is the web version of the 'real world' magazine. it features articles, ABTV and counter hegemonic thought on popular culture. i subscribe to the rss for this site. the articles are informative and sometimes funny. it is not user generated, it is pretty much a visit and read site. i think it is very easy to use, clear to understand and the language is conducive to someone who likes to read anti-pop-culture stuff every now and then.

Website #3 - jess_with_spaghetti

this is my flickr site. I LOVE FLICKR. i am not a great photographer, but i do take a TONNE of photos, and i find flickr is a brilliant way to get my better stuff out there. for someone intent on selling their work i could see how flickr could be a big help, but as an amatuer, its great to be part of a network of photographers and have others leave me critiques on my stuff.

anyway, stay tuned for this weeks music video

peace love and juiceboxes

xx

Where Lander says "white", others prefer to say "hipster". As has been made clear by the ridiculous debate surrounding Doug Haddow's recent attempt to paint "hipsters" as the "dead end of western civilization" in issue #79 of Adbusters, there are no longer (were there ever?) any doors for us to open and find authenticity. If we get careers and families and buy into the whole economic megamachine, we're suckers, deluded and spiritually degraded by the predatory forces of advertising. If we instead read Marx and Zizek, shun the pursuit of wealth and attempt to defy normative definitions of success, we join a parodic culture of hipsters, a conglomerate of selfish hedonists convinced they will be famous.

Either way, we sacrifice our individuality at the altar of some collective identity-granting agency, whether it be men in suits or men in thick-framed glasses. To deride hipsters, or "sell-outs" for that matter, is to miss the point. No matter which group we choose, we all inevitably ally with something larger than ourselves, a something which can be identified as a target market and advertised to.

There is no purity out there for us, folks. The market taints us all.

As we appear to be hovering on the brink of a sizeable downturn in the global forces of voodoo known as the economy, I thought it might be appropriate to share a passage from Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. Set during the Great Depression, the story follows its eponymous hero on a picaresque quest, dodging those who would have him begin a career and striving to coin his own meaning in life. What follows is Augie's bitter realization that nothing is as pure in motive or execution as he wants to believe. We are hipsters or vagabonds all, and the world goes on with or without our consent.

***

Now I had started, and this terrible investigation had to go on. If this was how I was, it was certainly not how I appeared but must be my secret. So if I wanted to please, it was in order to mislead or show everyone, wasn't it, now? And this must be because I had an idea everyone was my better and had something I didn't have. But what did people seem to me anyhow, something fantastic? I didn't want to be what they made of me but wanted to please them. Kindly explain! An independent fate, and love too—what confusion!

I certainly looked like an ideal recruit. But the invented things never became real for me no matter how I urged myself to think they were.

...

Everyone got bitterness in his chosen thing. It might be in the end that the chosen thing in itself is bitterness, because to arrive at the chosen thing needs courage, because it's intense, and intensity is what the feeble humanity of us can't take for long. And also the chosen thing can't be one that we already have, since what we already have there isn't much use or respect for. Oh, this made me feel terrible contempt, the way I felt, riled and savage. The fucking slaves! I thought. The lousy cowards!

While as for me, whoever would give me cover from this mighty free-running terror and wild cold chaos I went to, and therefore to temporary embraces. It wasn't very courageous. That I was like many others in this was no consolation. If there were so many they must all suffer the same way I did.

Hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as the end of civilization

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall Francis Fukuyama opined that the end of the Cold War also represented The End of History as liberal democracy was the only game left in town. Fukuyama later claimed that his thesis was incomplete. So if we're not at the end of history, where are we?

The fine people at Adbusters are telling us hipsterism represents the end of Western Civilization. Doug Haddow explains:

Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.

But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

Read the rest of the article

Explanations for this behavior are heavily debated. One possibility is that hipsters, having had all of their needs consistently met and exceeded by indulgent suburban parents, have nothing with which to contrast happiness. Therefore, the hipster's baseline level of contentment is much higher than that of the average human being.

Hipsters do occasionally smile, but the act is almost always coupled with the act of swiping a major credit card through a reader when making a purchase, especially at faux-vintage clothing stores located in Brooklyn.

To some, especially self-righteous Canadian anarchists, this behavior is looked upon with extreme disdain. In the most recent issue of Adbusters magazine, Douglass Haddow cited this hipster phenomenon as evidence that hipsters are solely responsible for the decline of America Civilization (See article here).

"Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion," Haddow writes.

But I don't think the blame should fall completely on the hipster. Being part of the first generation to face the onslaught of advertisements through technologically advanced mediums, hipsters have simply done what has been asked of them by the capitalist machines past generations have failed to prevent and thus, have effectively created. The fleeting smile in response to capitalistic exchanges - and little else - is something to be expected. Moreover, the modern hipster has come to expect enjoyment from buying things like the people who typically criticize them expect fulfillment from sexual intercourse. (note: while the expectations built around sexual intercourse often exceed the actual pleasure received, the pleasure a hipster experiences from buying random crap is real and can consistently produce a euphoria that lasts hours. This act also requires smoking a cigarette immediately after exiting a location where a purchase was made.)

Additionally, researchers have concluded that the loss of facial motor function and inappropriate emotional response is merely the hipster's way of adapting to a world in which real anguish is not commonly experienced. This is also why, the worst possible thing for a hipster to encounter is to find out that access to her constant stream of monetary parental support has been cut off until she gets a "real" job to actually earn money to feed her compulsions. This imposition, however, is too ironic for hipsters to handle for the following reason: The only way for hipsters to break out of the patterns that characterize them as such, is to join the very organizations that contributed to their awkward state in the first place: the advertising industries, the corporations, Hollywood - which are the only industries that are still functioning despite the decrepit state of the economy (besides the war profiteering industry).

Perhaps, the satisfaction a hipster gets from shopping at second-hand stores comes from the subconscious knowledge that in buying these products, they are failing to contribute to sweatshop labor and global warming, thereby chipping a minute amount of income away from Corporate America, the Dr. Frankenstein of the hipster cohort. (Note: sadly, these effects are canceled out when anyone shops at Urban Outfitters and American Apparel - 50 items must be purchased at the Salvation Army in order to karmically redeem one item purchased at Urban Outfitters.)

_______________________________________________________________________

Photo by Christophe Legris for Stuff Hipsters Don't Like ©2008.

When I saw the cover of the current issue of Adbusters on Saturday, "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization", I quickly flipped through the pages to find the article.  I read the first few paragraphs, which included descriptions of the quasi-unique fashion and habits of this demographic, and I momentarily lamented the fact that someone had stolen my brainchild article before bringing myself back to reality and picking up the issue.  (Then I saw the price, and promptly put it back on the shelf, making a mental note to find the article online.)  

Ultimately, I ended up feeling disappointed.  Author Douglas Haddow didn't go much deeper than evaluating the alleged hipsters' clothing and party choices, and only breezed over the most interesting idea, the question obliged by the title: How will hipsters be the end of Western civilization?  

I'm not sure I see the point of asking people if they are hipsters.  I fit into the age group in question and frankly I don't think the word "hipster" is something that most people my age could define.  I also didn't think it was a word used much, aside from people over the age of forty-five talking about the day's youth, but maybe I'm alone there.  

It's just that, as one anonymous reader commented on the online version of the article, Haddow is a little late.  A lot of the things he describes–the Mac revolution and iPods, the ironic t-shirts, free-trade coffee–were novel several years ago.  With respect to the fashion, these things all put together were cool at one time and have indeed become trendy and lifeless, but many of us had already noticed that.  Four or five years ago I would see the kinds of guys described in the article and was intrigued, envisioning them as my subversive, creative, alternative dream guy.  Likewise, and until more recently, I would see these girls and want to emulate their style.  But I don't anymore, as with any other fashion trend that gets old.  And I don't see how that's an indicator of the end of civilization, because isn't that how it always goes?  Something new and perhaps rebellious gets adopted by the masses, loses its coolness, and continues to morph into a generic trend for the next few years until it fizzles out, meanwhile those who started it have moved on entirely or would no longer be associated with the streamlined version.  Haddow argues:

The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.

Rich kids trying to distance themselves from their background for the aesthetic and even lifestyle of the working or lower class is nothing new, nor is there anything inherently wrong with it.  You also aren't required to have a revolutionary agenda to dress or act a certain way.  Haddow rightly points out the hypocrisy evident in the selective adoption of the lifestyle (these kids can look like starving artists but won't give up their techie toys and their material necessities), but that hypocrisy is simply a symptom of a diluted trend that was once a substantive movement.  It seems as though Haddow views these people as the end of Western civilization because they are counterculture icons and our youth's idols, but I don't think they are.  I think the subculture aspect of this trend is on its way out, and the way in for the next actual movement is opening.  The current followers of this fashion and attitude trend don't seem any different to me than followers of any other worn-out trend.  By now it's an accepted style, free to seduce the most superficial follower, no different than the preppy trends, the goth trends (not as accepted but just as trite), the hippie trends, or the hip-hop trends.  I wish I could comment more on Haddow's findings on beliefs, views and aspirations of his subjects, but he didn't cover those things.

For all its faults, the article did touch on some valid issues, two in particular that I wish he'd developed more: a culture too "detached and disconnected", and a culture too vapid and superficial for its own well-being.  Remember, I was really excited to read the article, because I thought I'd found someone who could better put into words what I think about all the time and what I've tried to tackle in previous posts.  I don't think hipsterdom can be blamed by itself–I think our problem with disconnectedness and superficiality spans over multiple generations, but I do believe our culture is in peril and I do feel like we're being sucked into a black hole of shallowness and mediocrity.  

But I'll have to expand on that later in Part II.  Meanwhile, send me your thoughts!

Hey Adbusters, why don't you crawl back into your own asshole and go fuck yourself.

Sorry, I just had to get that off of my chest. But really, I'm just goddamned sick of that crap-ass magazine printing articles like this. For those not in the know, Adbusters is the magazine of "Culturejammers" and anti-capitalist branding rebellion rebels etc, etc.  Oddly enough they've also built themselves into a neat little brand of their own, indoctrinating their readers with their particular world view the same way the companies they purport to disdain do with their own products. Now I'm not saying one is right and the other is wrong (nor am I thinking I'm the first to realize this) but I just think it's an important similarity to note.

What's really got my blood boiling at the moment is their latest "all encompassing, last word on the subject" story entitled "Hipster: The Dead End of Civilization." Like their "The Death of Canadian Journalism," story from last year, Adbuster's is once again throwing lightning bolt accusations down from the top of Mount Morally Superior. Now I'll be the first to admit that these stories have irked me quite a bit due to the fact that I have more than a passing interest in their subject matters. But what I find more bothersome is their writer's absolute lack of credible research. The recent hipster story in particular is devoid of anything beyond cursory observations. Hipster's may well be the downfall of Western civilization, and Canadian journalism as an industry is in the shitter, but these stories offer little evidence to convince the haters. The currently in question, Douglas Haddow, spoke to some girls at a party and seemed genuinely surprised they didn't consider themselves hipsters. Well of course they don't. Like every counter-culture, the only people that actually categorize themselves are the ones who don't really get it. Unfortunately, Haddow chalked the girls indifference to the plight of the oppressed as a harbinger to the fall of Rome. Fine. Whatever.

Now I have no special love for hipsters. I could even be accused of being one, due to my interest in the music they listen to, and, because of that, the fact that I like getting drunk and dancing up a storm at so-called hipster clubs. I think a lot of people fall in this category. There are a lot of hipsters who are assholes, just like there are a lot of punks who were assholes and just like there are a lot of anti-capitalist "culturejammers" who are assholes. There's also a lot of cool people that give a shit in each of those subcultures (or whatever you want to call them).

Haddow asserts through out the story that hipster culture is vapid and devoid of a sense of rebellion, that it has no interest in casting off of the values of the generation before it (challenging "the dysfunction and decadence of their elders"). This might be true on the surface; there is a hipster uniform and a strong sense of detachment from the art, music and media the "movement" has attached itself to. But I believe that the "apathy and irony" Haddow insists hipsters thrive on is a defense mechanism. Hipsters are rebelling against quite a lot. This generation learned from the lessons of Generation X - no matter what you do, companies and corporations are going to co-opt "The Cool," manipulate it and spit it back out as something the people that originally embraced it can no longer recognize or identify with. By distancing themselves from this cycle (and it is the same cycle that EVERY generation and counter-culture movement has experienced), and constantly shifting their tastes, hipsters are trying to stay one step ahead.

Haddow describes the confluence of "the formerly dominant streams of 'counter-culture'" as "one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior" and that this cultural manifestation is a negative force. But again, I see this as a positive form of rebellion. 10 years ago the lines between music genres (and social-cultures) were becoming increasingly stringent: punks went to Warped Tour, metal-heads went to Ozzfest, rockers hit up Lollapalooza and the b-boys and girls did whatever it was they did (this is how out of it every sub-genre was. We didn't know what was going on in other circles) and nobody who gave a shit about music listened to pop. These lines were reinforced by radio stations that made no attempt to breakout of their little niches. This was convenient for record companies because it let them easily categorize their target audience. The internet, Napster and iPods helped the current generation of musicians AND listeners to break these chains and just enjoy the music. That's why songs like Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" and Rihanna's "Umbrella" have enjoyed success both in the mainstream and with "more serious" music fans.

It's also insinuated that hipsters alone are so obsessively narcissistic that they feel the need to have their every move photographed and posted on the internet for the world to see. Apparently Haddow doesn't have a facebook account. And while we're talking about the world wide web let us not forget that the hipster generation is the cohort that led the digital music revolution, stripping away the power of behemoth music conglomerates and putting it back into the hands of the consumer. This is something that Adbusters, more than any other publication, should appreciate.

As for the "mix that sounds like [the dj] took a hatchet to a collection of yesteryear billboard hits...but mashed up with a jittery techno backbeat" that Haddow once again uses as more inconclusive "proof" of our impending doom, I strongly believe the mashup,when done well is perhaps this generation's greatest artistic achievement (at least in music). Musicians like Girl Talk who shamelessly sample from both the mainstream and the underground are perhaps the most prominent "culturejammers" working today. These DJs take songs that have resigned to the realm of background  music  and used in ads in the hope that previous generations' nostalgia will somehow transfer onto their product, and re-contextualize them. In essence, they're taking the songs back from "the man" and reminding us that yes, "These Eyes" is actually one emotional rollercoaster of a song and Metallica did at one time write some of the most brutal guitar riffs going.

So in not so terribly constructive conclusion, fuck you Adbusters. I'm going to go buy an iPhone.

I can accept rants from magazines like Adbusters. They are about instigating cultural change. Paradigm shifts come from ranters. But this article sounds like an insecure hipster having an identity crisis. Author Douglas Haddow skillfully brand name-drops and dissects all that is hipster and decries it in the broadest most generalizing way possible. Somehow he seems to have missed the effects of post-structuralism (i.e. the re-contextualization of signs and symbols) and blames the current youth culture for the ills of western capitalism.

For a solid response to the article, read broken-hearted Literary Addicts' post.

Found through Design Notes

Douglas Haddow wrote a piece for Adbusters called Hipster: The Dead End Of Civilization, which criticises the youth of today for being shallow and vain and not caring as much as the youth of yesterday. Needless to say his rage comes accross as totally impotentent and he just sounds bitter and undersexed. I can't say anything better than what’s been said in these two responses, one by Gavin McInnes on Streetcarnage and this one by Momus. The most important point about youth culture is in the name itself: YOUTH. It’s for the young. If you’re not young and you want to contribute to youth culture, go and do something that young people will appreciate and be inspired by instead of being the same blind consumer of the culture that you accuse them of being.

Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization

I found myself rolling my eyes and laughing a long with many of his criticisms because they were so dead on, it was scary. He had to have been to at least one buddytown party. And then I started reading "Stuff White People Like" by Christian Lander. 

He also has a blog, if you prefer to read your words online. 

I'm sure both of these things have received their due share of flak for their honesty. Yet, they are just a few among many who like to rail on today's culture. For some reason though, when people talk about 'hipsters/scenesters' they talk as though they were a new breed who emerged from Generation X, on their way to self-destructing into a pit of nothingness if they keep up with their ways.

But I have to say, aren't all these things just another way of defining the trends of the "00's"? We have themed parties ranging from the 50's to the 90's.  Each of which include a certain style of dress, music, and eccentricities. Wasn't the disco era startling similar?

All generations go through trends and then grow up and switch trends until they either (a) can no longer dress themselves or (b) forget to care. It's a cycle that has been around since Biblical times. Even Jesus addressed it, telling his disciples, "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these." -Matthew 6:28-29

I think the only thing we need to be concerned with is allowing our culture to define us. Let the person who doesn't own anything from American Apparel throw the first stone...

Source: Adbusters

i have a couple relatively shallow reasons for my disdain. first, i tend to believe that you're probably scared to face some reality in your life if you live every moment in a perpetual state of irony and sarcasm and exclusivity, as most hipsters at least pretend to do, at least in public. second, i just don't have the rocks or the fashion sense to pull the whole look off, even though i'd secretly like to; yes, this definitely makes me a hater.

anyhow, i came across Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization, an Adbusters article which says:

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.

i suppose that's what bothers me about hipsters (besides the fact that i can't be one): it seems as though their "movement" is based purely on a look (cultivated by capitalist sources hipsters themselves disdain) rather than on ideas. it's vapid and scared of actually proclaiming anything other than, "i'm cool"--which, of course, is never proclaimed out loud.

well, actually hipsters do stand together on one thing: they don't like being called hipsters.

Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.

“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.

Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”

“Offensive?”

“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”

but i suppose i need to look inward. is my disdain spawned purely from jealousy and my inability to walk confidently in nonchalance and skinny jeans? or is it because i'd like to pull off the look without the attitude? can a hipster wear 80s neon sunglasses and a wool jacket in august while maintaining an optimistic, open-minded and kind attitude toward other people, even those who aren't "cool"?

i suppose that's possible. i suppose i've even met a couple kind-hearted, non-judgmental hipsters. and they probably wouldn't even care if i called them hipsters to their faces.

so i suppose i just have to come to terms with the fact that, to my core, i'm just not cool. and i shouldn't begrudge others who are of their movement, whatever it is.

2 Comments

Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization

"You're not some club kid in New York in the nineties. This shit is so hipster!" - which sparks a bit of a catfight, causing me to beat a hasty retreat.

It's the cover story of Adbusters this month, and it's not just another article making fun of hipsters. Def worth a read, especially if you work in marketing.

"Take a stroll down the street in any major North American or European city and you'll be sure to see a speckle of fashion-conscious twentysomethings hanging about and sporting a number of predictable stylistic trademarks: skinny jeans, cotton spandex leggings, fixed-gear bikes, vintage flannel, fake eyeglasses and a keffiyeh - initially sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory."

Def add Australia to this list!

It used to be that one had to seek out what was cool..sure there were always sources to turn to for guidance, but are the days of pouring through a Vouge, running to the store and showing up to school the next day with that, "I love this dress sooo much, but is anyone/everyone else going to think so" gone by? Does anyone not have a clue what's cool or what's not when you can browse millions of websites telling you so? Or even better, no real need for browsing when you can have your RSS/subscription email/facebook app/friend feed do it for you!

"The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.

Is self-awareness a trait that will be more and more ingrained in us and generations to come? Has the internet and our ‘virtual persona' (how we represent ourselves online) made us more aware of how we present ourselves in real life? Since it could easily come back to haunt us via google cache/facebook photos, are we slowly self-regulating?

Skater, hiphop, indie, they are all wearing the same graphic hoodies, listening to Daft Punk and amalgamating into one giant, watered-down hipster. What happens when the counterculture becomes the mainstream and does this global homogenization mean the end of counterculture? Is this a reflection of a new ‘we are all connected' generation?

"Hipsterdom is the first "counterculture" to be born under the advertising industry's microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group - using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance."

no comment ☺