What’s so awful about being a hipster? Noah Brand looks into the issue.
“Yeah, I used to be into that, but now I really like something obscure you probably haven’t heard of.” Insert laughter.
Say hi to the only hipster joke, repeated ad infinitum, with occasional variants involving facial hair and skinny jeans. And it’s such utter bullshit that I just can’t take it any more.
The structure of mass media is this: certain things get really popular, usually because they’re well-marketed and have mass appeal. Even people who are only casually aware of an artform or genre will know about these things, and that’s cool. There will also always be many, many things that never become widely popular, but are truly excellent. Sometimes they’re ill-marketed, sometimes they’re highly specialized, other times they’re just not the sort of work that appeals to a massive audience. You only find out about these things when you care a lot about the subject.
Thus, almost all of us are hipsters. Sports aficionados speak highly of underrated players who don’t get marketed as stars, arguing strenuously for Joel Przybilla or Jemile Weeks. Casual music listeners (like myself) don’t know who Brian Eno is, but musicians tend to adore him. People who aren’t really into comic books have heard of Batman and the Hulk, but are unaware that the Hernandez brothers are gods. Serious book lovers will blow right past authors you’ve heard of and start going off on Georgette Heyer and why Patricia Highsmith’s short fiction is better than her novels. There are even political nerds, cracking Harold Stassen jokes to each other and trying to explain how it’s really all about the House Ways and Means Committee.
Right now, a lot of readers are wondering why I used such obvious references in the previous paragraph, instead of the really interesting stuff that’s off the radar. Congratulations, you’re a hipster.
So if hipsters are just people who care about something enough to dig down below the surface, whence cometh the endless hate and derision for them? Most folks will say it’s about the hipster attitude, the notion that knowing about obscure bands and artists makes them better than you. And that’s a fair criticism. That attitude does exist, and it arises in any fan community, because in fan communities, caring is currency. Caring more about something, as made manifest in knowing more about it, is how fans determine status. And that form of currency is, in itself, a reaction to social forces in an interesting way.
We live in a society that tends to devalue knowing things and caring about stuff. Our perception of “cool”, especially for men, is based on being too aloof and jaded to ever care about anything, and proudly ignorant of any number of important issues. This arises partly from a strain of anti-intellectualism in American society that runs back centuries and periodically produces disasters like George W. Bush, but just as important is the notion of vulnerability. To care about something is to make oneself vulnerable. It’s safer to be sardonically withdrawn from emotional engagement, never showing passion for anything lest it be mocked.
Thus hipsters of all stripes, including you, gentle reader, are engaged in a redefinition of cool. Cool, according to the new definition, is not defined by disengagement or emotional detachment. It is defined by passion, by the willingness to risk looking foolish in pursuit of something you really like. You are cooler than someone else not by caring less, but by caring more, by knowing more, by engaging more. That is, I’m just going to say it, a better definition.
So yes, there is value in being a hipster. There is honor in caring about art and culture, in studying the subject of one’s passion. I’ll wear the label proudly if only because everyone else seeks to dodge it. I am the thing nobody wants to admit to being, the Untrue Scotsman. Because you know what? Claiming not to be a hipster is so mainstream.
Photo— chrishusein/Flickr
About Noah Brand
I thinkthe main source of hipster hate is 1. taking things unreasonably seriously, also source of nerd stigma and 2. that they sometimes seem to care more about things being obscure than what those things actuallly are.
I don’t hate hipsters, some of my best friends are Williamsburg-dwelling, fedora-donning, PBR-drinking, indie-rock listening, American Spirit smoking, fixie-riding hipsters. Who would probably fall for these.
Do you mean Williamsburg, Virginia?
HAHA. An intrinsic part of being a hipster is never EVER asking a question like that. Some things are understood to be A GIVEN… which is one of the things that really annoys me.
PS: Around here, you mean Virginia.
Yeah, hating hipsters is so commercial these days. I hated hipsters like 3 years ago, but now everyone hates them so I’ve changed to be more underground and I like them. I actually stopped hating them a good month or so ago, way before this article was published.
Touche’.
A friend of mine spoke ill of hipsters mainly for their aesthetic. He thought it was overly pretentious, a fashion of looking unique conforming to a certain hipster norm. He didn’t mention his opinion their attitudes in conversation.
Since when do hipsters look below the surface of anything?
I have a co-worker who could probably be called a hipster. He’s a great guy who I Iike a lot, so I’m not trying to be snarky in this anecdote. I think it’s just funny. We are friends but I know he sees me as a terribly conventional, middle class, middle aged suburbanite. We were talking about music once and I mentioned that I enjoy the genre of “alternative country” music. He was shocked that I even knew the term. When I dropped the name of a fairly obscure alt country singer whose music I enjoy, my friend blurted out, “how do YOU know him?!” and he told me HE’D heard the singer perform at a club in Austin (of course, it had to be Austin!) several years ago. When I said I’d discovered him through iTunes Genius, my friend was noticeably relieved, since that is clearly the lamest possible way to find obscure music. Ah well, I guess I’ll never be one of the cool kids. Back to my iPod now….
“……hipsters are just people who care about something enough to dig down below the surface…”
I think you are mistaken there. Only people who care about certain things in certain places are referred to as hipsters. There are some subjects which likely never be regarded as ‘hip’, and there are some people who will never be regarded as hipsters, no matter how obscure their interests, or how sincerely passionate they are about those subjects. Hipster, as commonly used, refers pretty much exclusively to the urban, the artistic/aesthetic, and the non-”mainstream”.
That attitude does exist, and it arises in any fan community, because in fan communities, caring is currency. Caring more about something, as made manifest in knowing more about it, is how fans determine status. And that form of currency is, in itself, a reaction to social forces in an interesting way.
The problem is that while other communities will do this within their own subject hipsters do it with everything.
So if hipsters are just people who care about something enough to dig down below the surface, whence cometh the endless hate and derision for them?
Because they aren’t just people who care about something enough to dig below the surface. They are people that dig below the surface because they want to find something obscure.
The reason a comic nerd knows the birth dates of all the members of the Justice League is because they are a digging below the surface because they are really into comic books. A hipster knows the lyrics to every Decembrists song because they think knowing something obscure makes them better than others.
It is defined by passion, by the willingness to risk looking foolish in pursuit of something you really like.
Even with passion the question is are you risking looking foolish because you don’t care what others think about what you like or are you hoping you will look foolish to others because you aren’t in it for the subject that you “like” but for the looks of foolishness.
You are cooler than someone else not by caring less, but by caring more, by knowing more, by engaging more.
In short why do you care and engage more?
I agree with Danny (who stole my thunder by posting quicker than I could). There aren’t any “sports hipsters” or “math hipsters;” if you want to describe people with niche interests, “nerd” seems to be the agreed-upon term. Hipsters do have specialized, relatively unique interests. However, they do not place value on the thing itself, but on the obscure nature of the thing.
The only part of this piece that Noah identified correctly is the redefinition of cool. Hipsters have developed a new idea of “cool,” and work tireless to conform to that image. An individual who plays World of Warcraft doesn’t do so because it will make her look cool; she does it because she enjoys it. So to with our sports nerd: he can tell you the roster on the 1996 World Series Winning team (go Yankees) not because he thinks that other people will note him as cool, but because he’s a fan who’s interested in the team.
Hipsters aren’t unique in conforming to a standard. I’ve known individuals who only follow sports because they want to fit in (mostly men). And I’m sure everyone knows someone who smokes simply because they like holding that increasingly counter-cultural image. But I have a tough time respecting those people and their “interests.” It’s sad that, even as technology allows people with unusual interests to unite, some people still feel the need to conform to a standard in which they do not truly believe.
There is a great value in challenging the accepted standard (and there was another article on this site today about the shifting/improving standard of morality). But when I have a discussion trying to change someone’s worldview, I’m motivated by my love for my gay friends. I’m not challenging that person just to challenge him, I’m speaking on a topic in which I’m personally invested. My beliefs (sadly) run counter to the current legal standard, but I speak out on that beliefs because I care. I see no value in the obscure or counter-cultural aspect of an interest, and in short, that’s why I’ll continue to find hipster culture silly and pointless.
I’m sorry but you managed to say that much better than I.
To come in and further elaborate on a point in such a brillant way.
THAT is how one’s thunder is stolen. And you have stolen mine.
I am humbled my good sir.
Danny the Thunderless
At least we agree that hipsters are silly people. And sitting in an “obscure” part of the library so that I can finish my finals, I’m at hipster central.
But another thing struck me about this article. Who says people need to be “cool”? Personally, I’d rather be happy, fulfilled, loved. The idea of cool applies a right/wrong distinction, and attaches self-valuation to the opinions of others. I don’t need it.
But another thing struck me about this article. Who says people need to be “cool”? Personally, I’d rather be happy, fulfilled, loved. The idea of cool applies a right/wrong distinction, and attaches self-valuation to the opinions of others. I don’t need it.
True. My younger years would have been so much easier if I had learned this lesson early on.
In that respect, though, cool is more masculinity-affirming than hipsterhood, because it does have to pass muster with others.
One reason hipsterdom comes under so much fire is that it’s moving away from that cherished masculine requirement to bow to the tribe. That causes deep discomfort.
I buy pbr and drink it at home, sometimes alone. It does sometimes feel weird to order it in a bar. A very non-hipsterish friend turned me on to it one summer.
I smoke because I’m an addict.
I’d totally fall into one of those traps someone linked to above. Live and let live, I say. If someone cares a lot, great. If they’re a pretentious prick, so be it.
People are people. It’s easy to generalize and write someone off. But I find if I’m forced to spend time around them, even the ones that really get on my nerves when I first meet them… eventually, there’s something about them I come to like. Sports, math, beer, music, looking cool, or whatever they care about, there are very few people I regret having run into in life.
First, a superiority complex is annoying no matter what, even if they are somehow superior. So a hipster with that attitude is giving hipster’s a bad name. Secondly not everyone cares about the same thing, so is Person A cares deeply about Thing 1 and Person B doesn’t care at all, Person B will likely get annoyed whenever Person A goes on and on about Thing 1, and again if they feel Person A is judging Person B when B thinks Thing 1 doesn’t matter anyway! Person B will get furious at anyone who even looks like Person A. Then person B will make an internet meme or something.
Either way, I completely agree about the “cool = nonchalant” idea. Not a lot of specific examples come to mind, but that does seem to be the core of the ultra-cool-dude concept. Nothing phases him! Something comes up, he doesn’t care. Often it’s because he’s so competent he can deal with it easily, but often it’s like he doesn’t care about other people or anything. Certainly the point about vulnerability applies here. I don’t think that this idea really extends that far back either.
Good points, but I think it’s a stretch to contrast between “hipsters, who care” and “mainstream cool, which is aloof.”
Even within some hipster subcommunities, the “caring” that you do is supposed to be aloof as well. Overt enthusiasm is often very uncool, and as soon as enthusiasm seems to take hold, one must immediately drop it in favor of something else. I am personally familiar with many sub-genres of hipsterity in which two hip fans of a very obscure subject will have a 4-hour conversation in which neither one says anything positive about anything, just different degrees of negative. What they really actually love is something to be inferred, and something you will never quite put your finger on, because they would never admit to such a bourgeois sellout value as loving something.
At the very least I’d say there is such a thing as aloof caring, or aloof enthusiasm.
I look at it as evidence of the democratization of snobbery. Nowadays in a fragmented postmodern culture you can be a snob about virtually anything, and you can invent whole new categories of things to be a snob about and can change the categories week after week. You can even be a snob about things that cost very little money and that anyone could buy if they wanted to. You don’t have to drink wine or drop names of famous people to be a snob anymore. You can be a snob about cheap beer. You can be a snob about things that you take from a dumpster.
Oh, no Noah. No no no no… you must be taunting me, you’ve gotta be kidding, and you’re definitely trying to rile me!
In defense of Hipsters! Really? For real?? For really???
Now I must comment…
Hipsters do not actually care about anything. From bands to books they seek to elevate themselves above everyone with ironic obscure fandom about things they don’t actually like but consume in order to appear “cool”. Hipsters have no loyalty. They’ll drop a band/whatever as soon as they become “too mainstream”, as if a thing’s worth only extends to as far as they can peacock off of it. They’re poseurs in the worst way possible — didn’t care about cycling until it was cool, now they take their fixies everywhere but refuse to follow traffic laws like regular cyclists. Didn’t care about Ayn Rand until it became cool for her to validate their unstroked ego’s need to be special despite being misunderstood (They also don’t care that Ayn Rand is a terrible person and her books spout a bigoted ideology.)
Hipsters subvert authentic cultural mores until they’re not recognizable amidst the commercialized middle-class 20-30s crowd aesthetic that mainly revolves around White kids. Hipsters dress in stereotypical Native-American garb like it’s not completely offensive. Hipsters drink PBR like they know the lives of longshoremen who couldn’t afford better beer. Hipsters go thrifting because the only kind of authentic style they know is the kind originally worn by someone else. Hipsters embrace faux-poverty despite being well-funded by parents and their socio-economic class. Hipsters listen to vinyl because they can afford that expensive hobby even though they can’t tell the difference between it and digital. Hipsters pretend to be photographs with extremely expensive Nikon cameras around their necks that they neither know how to use properly, nor really care to use anyways. Hipsters wear wide-rimmed glasses with fake lenses or no lenses, because… they can’t see without cool stuff on their face? Hipsters wear keffiyeh scarves despite not being Palestinian or knowing their significance. Hipsters pretend racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, nativism, anti-Semitism, and classism are okay if they’re being ironic, because “they’re just making fun of it”… by doing it.
I live in San Francisco / Oakland and every day of my life I interact with at least 1 raging Hipster who really think they’re a humanitarian by wearing Tom’s shoes. (Tom’s shoe company donates a pair for every pair you buy. But obviously it takes more than buying stuff for yourself to be considered a humanitarian.) I’m always in close proximity to some girl who shaved one side of her head, or just one patch on one side of her head, in order to look as “authentic” as possible. And by authentic we mean psycho. There’s always some dude with a railroad robber mustache or Jesus-beard who feels facial hair makes him more masculine, showing off his own insecurity.
Seriously, I don’t hate many things in life… but I actually hate Hipsters. I loathe them. They are why I face-palm for my generation constantly. They are a mutant offspring of every legitimate culture/subculture that should’ve been strangled at birth.
Hipsters need no defense — because they are indefensible.
Well isn’t this just full of generalizations and insults.
Indeed! I can’t think of one nice thing to say about Hipsters, honestly.
Feel free to disagree =)
The only nice thing I can even think of would be the chance that a hipster might introduce something to someone who has a real interest in that something beyond a desire to look cool for knwoing obscure things.
For example let’s take a hipter and a person that collects vintage clothing. The hipster might inform said vintage clothing collector of a store that they previously didn’t know about that sold such things. Difference being the vintage clothing collector is going to shop at that store because they have an active intrest in that stuff while the hipster is only interested as long as not too many people know about that store.
I think that this is a deeper anger issue that’s being offloaded on hipsters.
Curious Eoghan.
And what deeper anger issue are you perceiving based on your limited, cursory knowledge of me? =)
I’m basing it on the passive aggression and going from zero to inappropriately scathing with very little provocation.
Well, since you were calling me a liar and a charlatan in addition to other personal attacks in another thread, I’ll just assume this random psycho-babble regarding my “passive aggression … going from zero to inappropriately scathing with very little provocation” is merely more projection on your part =)
Because I don’t feel passive aggressive OR inappropriately scathing OR that provocation has anything to do with my comment. Especially since it’s hard to be aggressive to an amorphous group of people who aren’t present in the conversation… while online. Or to be inappropriately scathing in light of Hipster hating websites like Hipster Runoff. Or presume little provocation on a website designed to solicit comments to their posts.
I just hate Hipsters — and I enjoy mocking their mostly condescending, generally ignorant, overly ironic, and often offensive attempts at being cool. Sorry? Maybe I’m just another old man in defense of his lawn from those rotten kids? Or maybe I’m just not fooled by cool kids pretending to have always been something they only discovered on the back of an Animal Collective album cover?
Either way, I have a feeling you’ll fail to understand even half of what I just wrote, and will probably come back with another comment that’ll lead to a circular argument, again, that eventually derails the entire conversation.
So instead I’m just going to make little Kirby emoticons!
<(' '<) … … (>’ ‘)> …
P.S. Darn this html tags!
fixed
Or not, stupid comment system. Maybe this will work [/i]
Hahahah I agree with pretty much all of this.
Thanks for mentioning her. I hate biting my tongue whenever anyone brings her up in conversation. (Only avid fans seem to)
How anyone who professes to think thoroughly or care deeply about anything could give two shits about her baffles me.
I always say “the former Alisa Rosenbaum” on my blog, because if you use her name in a critical way, the whole fan-crew will descend on you. (Beware Zek!)
Are they googling her constantly or what? Must be.
Well Said. I believe most of us like the feeling of superiority no matter how trivial it is to the other party. Whether that winning at mario kart or listening to music you have (probably) never heard of.
I have to agree with some aspects of hipsterism– if you’d like. Take Kid Cudi as a wild example; his early work, especially the mixtapes, was phenomenal. His subsequent album after Day N’ Night was utter shit. Maybe it is alright, but it’s incomparable to his previous work in terms of quality. Hipsters might be a bit prejudicial and presumptuous for thinking the band would sink just because ‘it has gone mainstream’. I, however, loathe the contradicting mac-buying, and hobo-shopping.
Cheers
Its being affected that causes the backlash I think. You you can say its digging deeper, but building an identity around superficial things even if they are just beneath the radar, is superficial in itself. I think that everyone that that buys into buying and displaying for cool points, comes to cringe at their younger self later on.
I think something else has been overlooked. I usually discern between someone who is, what I call, “a genuine enthusiast” or “an on-purpose hipster.” And the difference is huge. There’s nothing wrong with people having interests in cultures or art or even if they want to take some superiority attitude because they’re into obscure things, good for them. As long as they are GENUINELY into what they prattle on about. Because in my experience a “hipster” is not someone who gives a shit about arts, culture, or whatever they specialize in dorking out over. A hipster is someone who has no idea what it means to be themselves and jumps on every bandwagon just for the sake of being “cool.” For me that’s where the issue in this “hipster” crap lies. Why can’t people just try to be themselves?
What’s lamest to me is retroactive hipsterism. (Not retro as a style, but retroactive as in changing the past after the fact.) Like, claiming to have liked something before everyone else did, even if the claim is absurd and of course unproveable. I have actually heard someone from the Seattle area say that he knew Nirvana and “liked them when they still sucked.” He liked them even before they were good, that’s how hip he was. Hipsters can quite easily transform into old-schoolers at the blink of an eye. They can become instant conservatives in a way: “back in my day….”
Actually its just called being old. Some people don’t realize things have not always been exactly the way they are now, and sometimes, you just have to tell them that.
Really.
I have an alternative hypothesis on hipsters, and why they’re hipsters: they want to be interesting or have interesting things to say. That’s why they cultivate not just one but many obscure interests, and need to have an opinion on everything. That’s why they’re only interested in “obscure” stuff that’s in areas that come up in conversation (music, books, media, hobbies, etc). All because they’re aware, deep down, just how dull they really are, beneath all the affectations.
There’s few things funnier than watching a hipster desperately try to steer a conversation back towards obscure bands while everyone else wants to hear more from the person there who’s actually genuinely interesting.
As someone in my 50s, I think of hipsters as primarily young people who dress fashionably. I notice you didn’t mention either one of those things.
As lots of nerds can tell you, having all the right interests and knowledge doesn’t help you if you don’t properly look the part and/or comport yourself in the way the other hipsters have decided you should.
This article describes nerds. Not hipsters.
I listen to bands that are obscure and likely to remain so – trance remixes of Gregorian chants are a bit of a niche interest. But if I meet someone who has heard of one of these obscure bands and even likes them, I respond with enthusiasm and happiness. A hipster would respond the way Saraha’s coworker did: with shock, condescension and a struggle to salvage something about the situation to still let them feel superior to the other person.
1) hipsters think they are BETTER/ABOVE others because they care about obscure crap
2) Extreme effort to look like a hipster and pretend they are poor
3) unwarranted self importance
4) wont dance and sing at a music show they go to- seriously??? I went to mumford and sons in hollywood and was having a blast, these fools look like they were too cool to enjoy the music- dooshes.