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.

Quite possibly my favorite song starring "hipster" hop's favorite son, Lupe Fiasco. I first heard this off the "It Was Written" Mixtape by Mick Boogie. It only featured the first verse and I had not known it was actually a song by UK rapper Sway Dasofo. His flow and lyrics over this beat fit like a glove.....then Sway comes in. I don't know, it's not that he's bad on it. Sway is quite good, but his verse definitely contrasts with Lu's and is gut-wrenchingly apparent. Fantastic sample taken from the one and only Miss...wait, whoa now that I think of it, I haven't done a Sample Clearance post in awhile. I think I'll save that bit of information for a future post.

In the meantime, enjoy.

[audio=http://standing8.wordpress.com/files/2008/08/02-we-love-you-feat-sway.mp3]

The problem is, I read all the time on hipster music blogs that the five-piece is horrible live. That Butler and his people mixed a great album, but the kids lack the chops. I get the chance to find out next month at the Black Cat in Washington DC when I review the the Kids for Venuszine.com. I'll let you know what I learn.

For now, let's enjoy the video for the band's infectious first single, "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You":

Photos, Funny Statements Heard in Public, Comments on Certain Fashion Items, and Trashing on Indie Hipster Culture, Music, Movies, and Hang Outs will be the main focus!

Example #1:

We can trot out cliches about globalisation like "the world is a global village" all day long, but in my opinion this current trend can be described as the "great leveler". Globalisation has seen money move to places where the quickest profits can be made only to see it abandon those places once they found a more profitable location elsewhere. In the meantime, the world is becoming more similar from location to location as people consume the same products, are wearing the same clothes, and are exposed to the same culture.

Globalisation is also affecting Hipster culture as trends now move more quickly and with more force than they once did. Previously what was cool in New York wasn't necessarily cool in Helsinki....but now what's cool in Paris can be what's cool in Buenos Aires in a matter of weeks. Tim Walker explores the globalisation of hip in: Meet the Global Scenster. Here's an excerpt:

"Trends aren't transmitted hierarchically, as they used to be," explains Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory, a trend forecasting company. "They're now transmitted laterally and collaboratively via the internet. You once had a series of gatekeepers in the adoption of a trend: the innovator, the early adopter, the late adopter, the early mainstream, the late mainstream, and finally the conservative. But now it goes straight from the innovator to the mainstream."

The global scenester stays on top of what's cool worldwide by reading such urban culture despatches as The Cool Hunter, a blog begun in Sydney four years ago by Bill Tikos, which reports on the hippest fashion, furniture, and design culture. The Cool Hunter has more than 600,000 unique visitors per month, who pore over the contents of its licensed offshoots in the US, UK, Turkey, Italy, China, and Japan. Its global audience allows Tikos to homogenise cool worldwide.

Like the farmer's market by the playground is complicated.  We should all have access to fresh food, locally grown food, etc.  But like when I told my girlfriend about it, she was like, "Well, you know what that means!" And it's so true. So now all these yuppies walk around with their golden retrievers or boxer dogs and buy organic locally grown produce, what with their Chinese or Korean adopted babies, and yes, even African babies, on their leisurely Sundays.

One of the times that gentrifiers annoy me the most is the mornings.  I say that you can spot the gentrifiers because they're fucking tall as hell.  In a neighborhood like mine, primarily immigrants, Central/South American and Asian, original residents are at a pretty level height.  Then you see these fucking  Nordic gentrifiers walking to the train with their laptop bags and leather mules and linen clothes and thermoses, cutting you off and beating you and all the other POC to the train station entrance (whoever said that we're all on the same playing field was full of shit) because their legs are so fucking long.

THERE! I said it on the world wide web.  That shit really grinds my gears, every morning.

Here, read some!

Pabst's revival as a "retro-chic" beer began in the early 2000s, at Lutz Tavern, in Portland, reports Rob Walker in Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are.  For years, Portland's bike messengers and skaters had slugged down Blitz, a low-cost local brew. After Blitz went out of business, Lutz filled its niche with $1 cans of Pabst. The beer was embraced not only for its cheapness, but also because hipsters could drink it without feeling they'd been coerced by a corporate message.

"Long-neglected PBR had no image," Walker writes. "It was just there. Scarce and cheap, it had few negative connotations beyond that it was a kind of blank canvas, where brand meaning could be filled in by consumers."

Walker portrays the revivalists as trendy urbanites glomming on to blue-collar symbols. And they are, but not quite in the same way as a graphic designer who wears a Carhartt jacket because it's "unpretentious." Hipsters fetishize the lowbrow culture of the '70s and '80s. But hipsters also tend to hold down jobs as bar backs and waiters. Sure, there are trust funders among them, but they're mostly young people with thin wallets. The luckiest ones are still the lumpen of media and information technology. They can affect a trucker cap, but they might not have the cash for a truck. The hipster's beer of choice is always going to be a cheap one.

During his research, Walker met a skate punk who liked Pabst because he'd never seen an ad. "They're not insulting you," the skater said, perhaps unaware that not running ads was part of Pabst's marketing strategy for holding on to its anti-consumerist consumers. Pabst never set out to become a hipster beer -- a ploy like that would have backfired -- but once the company discovered its new audience, it began sponsoring bike polo tournaments, art galleries and indie publishers. The strategy wasn't just economical; it was essential. Pabst reached its niche drinkers without a massive ad campaign that would have caused them to discard it as a sellout. It worked on the skater, who lifted his shirt to show Walker his Pabst back tattoo.

Now go read the rest of the article here!  Forgive me if this is boring, I just like reading about advertising stuff.  As people who know me can attest, I have a ton of cheesy books from the 70s that try to convince you that every picture in every magazine ad has the word fuck or just a straight up penis embedded in it.  I also have a lot of the fun 90s feminist books that try to convince you that every ad just hates the hell out of women and seeks to prove it visually.  Fun stuff!

Chromeo has done it again! Another song that’s on repeat on my itunes and an even better video. Directed and illustrated by acclaimed French artist Stephane Manel, “Momma’s Boy” presents Chromeo’s Oedipal-themed love ballad in sleek and surreal black and white animation. Dave & Pee do their best “Piano Man” references, take their girl to the movies, and finish with a dual psychedelic guitar solo that makes this beautiful video a must-see. Stephane Manel is also known for his design work for Serge Gainsbourg and Sebastien Tellier, among others. And lets not forget to give a special shout out to ZinaStar for getting the role of the girl that Dave takes to the movies.

More recently, they are sometimes even referred to as "the new jocks." This label incenses hipsters for a variety of reasons. For one, it is inaccurate; while jocks have measurable talents, hipsters do not posses talents beyond sleeping until traditional dinner hours, binge drinking and pimping their myspace profiles.

Another reason this title bothers hipsters is because they do not acknowledge themselves as oppressors. In fact, their whole image is based on being oppressed. If they were known as oppressors, they would lose their ability to receive benefits from society like being given "the benefit of doubt" when they don't show up for work and second chances in relationships where the significant other "just doesn't want to hurt" the hipster. This is similar to how blacks are now losing affirmative action privileges since they are viewed as a threat in workplace power hierarchies.

Also, hipsters had to endure socially-acceptable torture from jocks in their fragile years of adolescent development, AKA the "awkward phase." In fact, jock harassment is partially responsible for the birth of the modern hipster (which would cause hipsters to hate jocks even more if they ever acknowledged that). After launching a high school and early-college rebellion (which consisted of not caring what "those assholes" thought, scamming on jocks' girlfriends and blasting punk music in the parking lot), the jock was ousted from his spot at the top of the social ladder. (Note: Some jocks will vehemently deny this claim, using their fraternity status as proof of sustained status, but the fact that they must now spend thousands of dollars to immerse themselves in these realities of alternate cool - which are similar to WoW and Second Life - to feel superior is objective evidence against their case.)

All the while this was happening, however, the hipster went about life unaware that this transition had occurred, as is the case with most other things involving hipsters and their place in the world. That is why, as you can imagine, some hipsters are shocked and appalled to be equated with jocks. I say some because the majority of hipsters, not identifying as such, have jumped on the bandwagon with this train of thought. They can be heard wholeheartedly agreeing that hipsters are just like filthy jocks.

But there is a logical flaw in the comparison of hipsters with jocks that may alarm you because of its counterintuitivity: Hipsters are not actually mean, they are just really awkward. Their outward appearance of angst and annoyance is really just the physical manifestation of the hipster's inner awkwardness.

For example, if a male hipster is considering talking to a female of interest, the female will likely notice the male scowling in her direction. This is because the hipster is weighing the possible outcomes of an interaction. You see, due to the years of jock-bullying during adolescence, hipsters have developed warped negative self-images and anticipate their interactions to end in some form of awkwardness. Evolutionarily, this defense mechanism has developed as an adaptive way for hipsters to save themselves from embarrassment, which would further weaken their self-images. But this plan also works against hipsters, as it thwarts social interactions and decreases their chances of mating.

To understand the hipster's thought process in situations of potential human interaction, watch this video that was recently posted on FREEwilliamsburg.com, the hipster's equivalent of The New York Times or Reuters.

As you can see, pervasive fears of awkwardness in the hipster's psyche account for many additional hipster behaviors that are often misinterpreted as "snubbing" someone. These behaviors manifest in scenarios involving going to restaurants, riding elevators and all social interactions in general.

Let me just say, this video was filmed in Williamsburg for more reasons than one.

Stuff Hipsters Don’t Like

A different perspective with ample hilarity.

Anyway, I thought I would post this to give hipsters hope that, despite their outward standoffishness and unemployability, they too can find romance with the middle-aged banker of their dreams!

Banker looking for hipster

Who knows if it'll work out?

You can't wait to tear off my pinstripe suit. If you rip any buttons I'll totally stretch out that tshirt you bought off etsy and pass off as your own.

On Monday nights you'll try and get me to drink. You'll think I won't because I have an adult job. But I won't because I want to be lucid for this week's episode of The Hills.

The next day you'll tell me that my job is boring and that you hate the Upper West Side. But the truth is that you kinda like making out in central park and enjoy that my bonus can cover all the grilled cheese sandwiches you dig. I'll make fun of whatever dirty street you live on in Brooklyn, but I know it's a lot more fun.

You'll pretend you can cook and make me pancakes. I'll probably distract you while you cook and you'll probably burn them. It's OK; I've got waffles in the freezer.

I don't have to tell you what I do or my background. I'm great on paper (school, work, charities). I'm 6'1''...handsome and jewish/irish. You be cute, wear scarves, make witty/biting remarks, and have an infectious smile/laugh.

After a while I'll probably become a vegetarian because of you and you'll probably start bringing up op-eds from the wall street journal when you're hanging out with your friends. It's cool. Don't fight it. I promise we'll have the sweetest combined movie/CD collection of all the couples you know.

Send a PICTURE, AGE AND LOCATION. thanks. :)

I have a feeling that this scenario, should it be actualized by a lone hipsteress with a yuppie fetish, could lead to the most epic tale of unlikely romance of the century (think Pretty Woman but more high-tech and awkward). As a precaution, I will claim rights to that screenplay right now.

Be warned though: evolutionarily speaking, the human race has never experienced a cross of this kind. If said couple actually achieved a combined movie/CD collection that kept them together long enough to mate, the result would likely be a new species...

According to evolutionary biologists, the yupster offspring would likely experience inclinations to both climb the corporate ladder (which would be met with seemingly unmotivated gifts from his father and poorly-masked glances of disappointment from his mother), and defy corporate dress codes by wearing neon ties and metallic converse high tops (earning grim diatribes from his father and loving gestures of acceptance from his mother). This will result in the need for staff psychologists to develop a whole new scale to measure neuroticism and an entire section in the DSM-IV manual, aka the crazy guide.

The yupster hybrid would go on to create intriguing controversy within the company but would ultimately end up quitting to explore the possibilities of his sub-par punk band (which would of course emply viral marketing schemes to gain followers) or move to Hollywood to direct the movie of the story of his sad existence. Both courses of action would inevitably result in failure (note: the directing plan had promise, but was unfortunately aborted due to an inadvertent copyright breach, followed by a hefty lawsuit).

Mr. Banker, I don't know if your romantic quest will work out either, but I sure hope it doesn't - for the sake of the children.

_________________________________________________________________

Photo of hipstress reading by Christophe Legris for Stuff Hipsters Don't Like ©2008

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

Nuthin' cooler than rock & roll in a church.

This, apparently, is not a new thing for spazzed-out Dan Deacon and his electro-whatevershock companions. Dan Deacon, is hosting both nights of his "Baltimore Round Robin" tour at Epiphany (aka Epiphany Episcopal @ 201 S Ashland, Chicago). This is one of many DD shows that he's done at a chapel. A quick google-y seach churns out:

• A halloween show at Judson Chuch (New York) with Chromeo and Kudu -- (same place Arcade Fire got their neon on).
• A show at St John's Church (Baltimore) and First Unitarian (Philadelphia) with Girl Talk and White Williams
• And also at First Uni with his "Ultimate Reality" video tour.

Check out the KILLER line-up Dan-o's bringing to town -- mmmmm, sacrilidge, tasty:

Night One, "Eyes Night" (10/10): Dan Deacon (duh), Beach House, Jana Hunter, Santa Dads, Lexie Mountain Boys, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, Teeth Mountain, Nautical Almanac, Lizz King, Creepers, WZT Hearts, Ed Schrader, Sandcats.

Night Two, "Feet Night" (10/11): Dan Deacon (doi), The Death Set, Adventure, Videohippos, Future Islands, Nuclear Power Pants, Dj Dog Dick, Blood Baby, Height, Cex, Smartgrowth, Double Dagger.

Church... so hot right now.

In the meantime, check out Dan being Deacon:

...and then Dan Deacon:

Polaroid Film:

This is fairly obvious, check out most any hipster Flickr account, or photo/party blog and you should see a fair spread of poor to extremely poor pictures of friends, celebrities and animals with human clothing. The allure of polaroids is much like the allure of vinyl. Even though there is a much quicker and easier way to take pictures, there is something very cool about a polaroid. Polaroid has recently decided to stop producing the much coveted film stock, making the film much more expensive and elusive. Two things that hipsters seem to adore.

Dance Parties:

Dancing has always had it's ups and downs, from it's controversial beginnings to Rock and Roll, to Rave culture to whatever it is we have now. It's been loved and hated, and probably everything in between. This is why it's hard for hipsters to really get in to dancing. Depending on the venue, the "hipster stance" varies but commonly involves standing at the back of a venue and silently judging the situation with crossed arms. 

Thankfully for those of us with some rhythm and the need to dance, hipster credible band "The Rapture" sung the song "Whoo! Alright-Yeah... Uh Huh". This little tune declared "People don't dance no more, they just stand 'round like this, they cross their arms and stare you down, and drink and moan and diss". The Rapture got it right, even at the most opportune times hipsters and other concert goers alike had a very bad habit of bringing everyone down with their frowning.

The reasons for not dancing are plentiful, the music can be; Too Obvious, Too Ironic, Not Ironic Enough, Not Danceable, Just Plain Terrible. However the reason to dance are fairly limited when you think about the hipster scope. Luckily someone had the genius idea to throw a "Dance" party to let everyone know that simply crossing your arms and taking a mental tally of the DJ's selection simply was not acceptable. 

This also gives hipsters an excuse to listen to music that transcends the normal threshold of ironic listening. Depending on the DJ and his or her sense of humour, the selected tunes may range from the ironic, to the painfully ironic. To end this point, I was once an active thrower of dance parties. They are in my opinion much more fun than the "DRINK/PUKE/FIGHT" parties which can normally be found at Frat houses.

Mash Ups:

One of the hipster's oldest pass times is musical one-up-manship. Activities such as "I saw them first", "I have that obscure release in an obscure format", and the ever popular "Six degrees of indie rock". Now with the invention of such audio processing programs like Ableton Live, Reason, Logic and ProTools, there is now a new outlet for your music knowledge.

For all who don't know, a mashup is usually a song derived solely from the elements of another. The first really famous mashup I can remember is "A Stroke of Genius", which featured the Strokes instrumental from "Hard To Explain" with an A capella from Christina Aguilera's Genie in a Bottle.

There is a real love/hate relationship amongst most music snobs, but that what music snobs do best. Now, at dance parties (see above) can not only dance to ironic music made even more ironic, but they can test their friend's music knowledge. Thinking up songs to mash together isn't the only fun part. You also have the pleasure of thinking of a witty pun or such nonsense for the title of the song.

Just look at them all.... http://hypem.com/search/mashup/1/

I'm sure that's much more than you can handle. Have a nice day.

the dark room, the shrinking veins, the strong rageful pumping at her center

it travels like wind

here and then gone

waking and sleeping on a clock of it's own

become numb to it's blows

draw air in through the nose, keep calm 

it's only nerves

quiet your heart, girl 

don't let people listen

your song is tired now 

lend your voice to pretension

HipsterOverkill.com is proud to present The Fringe!!
This is the third edition of the popular and critically acclaimed DC monthly!! They say "three times is the charm," so that being the case then you know that the third edition of The Fringe is going to be crazier that the first two!! If you haven't been to The Fringe yet here's the lowdown:
Its me, Dimitris George, with DJ Tru mixing electro, retro, house & bmore!! Also in the house will be MC Shawn Lucas hosting the event!!

The Fringe is held at... 
Napoleon 
1847 Columbia Road, NW Washington, DC

Check out HipsterOverkill.com for more info, event pics, news, blogs and mixes!! 

Included in the mixes is HipsterOverkill Volume 1 with me and DJ Tru, listen and

download it at either hipsteroverkill.com or http://www.zshare.net/audio/105606468b408ee2/

While surfing a totally non-hipster blog, I came across a link to this relatively new blog, "Stuff Hipsters Don't Like." It's a take off of the "Stuff White People Like" concept and I think it's great. The author presents a critical view of hipster-ism, the same way HIPSTERRUNOFF and FREEwilliamsburg do, but has a self-awareness about their own hipster existence.

After this seemingly recent influx of critical takes on hipster and youth culture as a whole, we all need to step back for a minute and take a good hard look at ourselves.

Aren't we all a little bit hipster?

The other day I was ranting about hipsters (scenesters, indie, club kids, whatever you want to call them...) with my friend Katie.  As someone who goes to a lot of indie music, art, design-related events, I encounter them on a regular basis.  Don't get me wrong, some of my closest friends could be described as such...hell, I've even seriously dated a few.  I guess what sometimes bothers me about the whole hipster scene is the homogeneity, cutesy irony, self-absorption, and apathy for anything that really matters besides the latest party, band, trend, gallery opening, etc...Unlike previous counterculture scenes, they don't stand for anything.  I'm sure that there were plenty of poseur Hippies, Beats, Punks, etc...but at least they had Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLauren - people who were symbols of the culture and stood for something bigger than themselves.  Can you think of any hipster counterpart?  I can't. Well, as luck would have it, Adbusters' latest cover article is titled "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization".  As you may have guessed from the dramatic title, the author takes himself and the subject pretty freaking seriously.  Nonetheless, it's worth a read.

As someone interested in advertising, I found this statement very interesting and, mostly, truthful: "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."

The conclusion made me laugh out loud, though.

"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. "

Hasn't the same thing been said by pompous, boring pricks during each generation?  "...the last generation...end of Western civilization" REALLY??!  Sheeesh, sounds like someone needs a PBR and an androgynous indie girl to dance with at a "nouveau disco-coke" party.  Sounds like fun.

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!