Ny Times – If irony is the ethos of our age — and it is — then the hipster is our archetype of ironic living. The hipster haunts every city street and university town. Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny. The hipster is a scholar of social forms, a student of cool. He studies relentlessly, foraging for what has yet to be found by the mainstream. He is a walking citation; his clothes refer to much more than themselves. He tries to negotiate the age-old problem of individuality, not with concepts, but with material things.
Here is a start: Look around your living space. Do you surround yourself with things you really like or things you like only because they are absurd? Listen to your own speech. Ask yourself: Do I communicate primarily through inside jokes and pop culture references? What percentage of my speech is meaningful? How much hyperbolic language do I use? Do I feign indifference? Look at your clothes. What parts of your wardrobe could be described as costume-like, derivative or reminiscent of some specific style archetype (the secretary, the hobo, the flapper, yourself as a child)? In other words, do your clothes refer to something else or only to themselves? Do you attempt to look intentionally nerdy, awkward or ugly? In other words, is your style an anti-style? The most important question: How would it feel to change yourself quietly, offline, without public display, from within?
The ironic life is certainly a provisional answer to the problems of too much comfort, too much history and too many choices, but it is my firm conviction that this mode of living is not viable and conceals within it many social and political risks.
Inside jokes, pop culture references, not a lot of meaningful speech, hyperbolic language, and feigning indifference? Umm pretty sure I’m like the prototypical hipster blogger according to this article. Like I should be rolling my skinny cords up to my knees and sitting on a longboard slugging PBRs while I type my morning blogs or something. What the fuck. Looks like it’s time for me to start caring about shit and quitting sarcasm. Can’t be labeled alongside the guy with a mustache wearing a scarf in the summer. Quick somebody explain the Israel/Gaza conflict to me.
Other than that though pretty solid article on the plague of the hipsters. Also outlined exactly what people need to realize. Hipster is a lifestyle. It’s not wearing pants a little tighter than normal and a flannel shirt (looking at you hipster Big Cat). It’s spending every waking hour trying to be ironic and going against the mainstream and making an effort to be a complete douche to separate yourself from those around you. The ones you desperately avoid at a party because all they can talk about it is how they don’t “do” the stuff you do because “it’s not for them.” Na I don’t mix my Jack with Coke, I brew my own organic cola with my SodaStream and carry it in my leather flask. I don’t really eat burgers anymore thanks, they just don’t taste the same to me if they aren’t grass fed local like I had at the Brooklyn farmer’s market. You know those type of dickbags. The hipster hipsters that this Princeton prof says threatens us socially and politically and I couldn’t agree more.
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