HIPSTERIOCISM

THE BLIGHT OF HUMANITY

BY: CHRISTOPHER SIY

Analysis A hipster is a creature that on account of its so-called ironic lifestyle is distinct from everyone else even though it is in actuality to some extent a human being. A hipster will always keep a faade that it does not care about appearances however; the faade is merely its means of shielding itself from the harsh reality provided that it is only what the hipster constantly thinks about. Hipsterdom is a type of lifestyle for people who have no sense of identity. The hipster will always have the idea that its kind is better than everyone else. A hipster will frequently criticize on what it believes are inferior to its level of standards such as the mainstream audience. A critic, be it a movie critic, food critic, or a fashion critic does the same thing but only on one subject. A hipster on the other hand would criticize everything around him even though unconsciously it is already criticizing itself. INTRODUCTION Several people believe that hipsters are comparatively contemporary blights upon humanity. The skinny jeans and large frame glasses, bicycle riding, and the indie music that no one really listens to for a number of reasons. Hipsters, as a abstraction, have been around as long as conscious thought. Believe me, I know more than you think. I hangout with one every night for the past couple of weeks and trust me when I say how many time I have wanted to stab myself every chance Ive got if I dont value my life too much. I often ask myself why I despise the hipster culture or why I find these people intolerable thus I began to conduct an investigation on the contemporary hipster. We frequently have a myriad of questions when it comes to the hipster culture and I bet that even the hipsters themselves are quite baffled by their own cluster in society. The hipster culture is simply just a paradox. Not a single person, look as though, thought of himself as a hipster, and when other people began to call you a hipster we usually take it as an insult. Society generally associates hipsters as individuals who wear the skinny jeans and big eyeglasses typically with black frames, congregated in small enclaves in big cities, and looked down on mainstream trends. I am often curious if I could figure out the source of their pain. Its considerably a frivolous topic, yet it seemed that so much was at stake. Why? Since conflicts over taste (and taste is the hipsters primary currency) are never just only about taste. Taste is not stable and peaceful; nevertheless it is a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to fantasize that they are superior in spirit. Factions that are slightly closer in social class who yet draw their status from various sources use taste and its procurements to hauteur on another and get a sense of fulfilment. These squabbles for social dominance through cultures are exactly what urge the dynamics within the communities whose members are viewed as hipsters.

The hipster neighbourhoods are crossroads where young immature people from various origins, all wedged together eager for social gain. One Hipster subclasss approach is to belittle others as liberal arts college grads with too much time in their hands; the strike is intended for the children of the upper middle class who move to cities after college with goals aimed towards working in the creative professions. These Hipsters are immediately demoted from their social status, trapped in woeful internships and brushed-off in the urban hierarchy but able to apply college-taught skills of collection, classification, and gratitude to prompt a loftier body of cultural cool. Moreover, they, in turn, may traduce the trust fund hipsters. This disputes the philistine wealthy who, endowed with wealth but not the nose for culture, turns real capital into cultural capital (Bourdieus most famous coinage), obtaining subculture as if it were ready-to-wear. Both groups, however, look down on the couch-surfing, old-clothes-wearing hipsters who seem most bona fide but are usually the most socially insecure the lower-middle-class young (basically hippys), moving up through style, but with no background of parental culture or family money. These people can easily be identified as the bartenders and coffee shop baristas who feed off on their well-to-do peers and wealthy tourists. Only on the fashion of their hip clothes can they be a grander: hipster knowledge makes up for economic immobility. Every Hipster portrays themselves as being the inventors or first adopters of novelties: self-adulation comes from perceiving and determining, what is hip before the rest of the world. However, the idiosyncrasy of loathing and assertions are prevalent on hipsters owing to the fact that they sense the frailty of everyones opinion including their own. Demonstrating that someone is indeed attempting desperately to promote himself instantaneously negates him as an opponent. Hes a charlatan, whilst you are a natural patrician of taste. Thus, Hes not for real, hes just a hipster is a formidable insult towards all hipsters. HIPSTERIOLOGY: The Science Witness the hipster, the snazzy disgruntled strain of twenty-something. Nearly all who come across the hipster on its natural habitat reacts in one or two ways: disparagement or mockery. However, science does not radiate judgement. The objective of science is to examine and explicate impassively, whether the focus of the study be the noble steed or the lowly wretch. Thus what does science have to unfold to us about this captivatingly misunderstood creature, the indigenous hipster? In general, psychologists who study consumers understand that individuals are primarily prompted to spend money not just on things that they physically need, but that reinforce their sense of identity. They tend to acquire not just goods and services, but fantasies. Visualizing themselves as jagged, insurgent chauvinists, they buy a Ducati. Visualizing themselves as highly regarded and wealthy, they buy Bentley or a Ferrari. However, hipsters adhere to a contrasting paradigm. Their main concern is that their acquisitions have a tendency to place them

within a category whose lore they abhor. Fact: Nobody likes hipsters, not even hipsters. According to Arsel and Thompson, the profound irony is that those who try to defend their self-reliance from the commodification of identity end up tapping into another marketplace myth, what the authors call the myth of consumer sovereignty. This is the notion that by carefully selecting from all the personality markers available for procurement, an individual can gather one that genuinely depicts their true self-independent marketplace. The enigma of skinny jeans and thick-rimmed glasses may never be unravelled, in spite of that at least it has become apparent that researchers have solve one piece of the hipster puzzle. In a new study courtesy of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Harvard University argues that there is a scientific explanation for why particular individuals mesh well with one another and others dont. The argument somewhat proceeded as follows: You are more likely to identify with one another if you happen to share the same tastes in music as opposed to if those tastes are labelled or hurled at you. Thus, two skinny individuals with ironic mullet haircuts are more likely to be drawn towards one another should they by chance stumble across each other in an ironic coffee shop as opposed to having to actually having to adopt each others taste. Therefore this gives rise to the question How is it that countless hipsters adopt similar sensibilities as other hipsters? Basically, the reason behind it is due to the fact that individuals are swooning to similar aesthetics in the dungeon of their bedroom only to be satisfied when they stumble over into similar affected morsels in the street. Thats the part when you put your skateboards and no brake bicycles away and start paying attention to each other. Fundamentally, its about characterizing yourself and associating with other individuals who have also characterized themselves, until a number of you who have all characterized themselves with the same propensities all gathered yourself into one specific environment and begin living your ironic existences mutually, until even new members swarm to the group and you once again pull away to something else that rocks your boat thus ensuring a never ending cycle of being cool and ironic. HIPSTER: A Closer Look If I talk of the deterioration of our most discernible contemporary subculture, the hipster, its an inconvenient case. Someone will specify that hipsters still exist, they still walk around with us, and they live on my neighbourhood. However, it is apparent that we have reached the end of an era in the life of the type. Its evolution lasted from 2000 to 2012, though it has modified occurrence substantially over the decade. It has survived year after year; it may continue to

survive. Evidences are in every nook and cranny, nevertheless, that we have come to a moment of stocktaking. Everyone knows the term hipster or at least everyone should. The term has always had sufficiently comprehensible definitions; they just happen to be multifarious. If we rebuff to articulate them, it may be due to the fact that everyone associated with the term has a stake in keeping it dubious. Hipster accusation has been, for a decade, the act of outplaying competitors within the same cluster of cool. The longer we go without seeking any explanation, the longer we are at the leniency of its latent enchantment. In the interest of disappointment, let us Uncover the history and provide some definitions. If we find out where the hipster is vulnerable, we might find its weakness. When we speak about the contemporary hipster, we are talking about a subcultural representation who emerged by 1999, relished a slender but resilient first phase up until 2003, and then appeared about to vanish into the prehistoric subcultural soup, only to undertake a reorganization and creeping spread from 2004 to the present. The contemporary Hipster has no set definition, consistent with its validity as an active cultural trend. The closest universal manifestation of Hipsterdom is the scorn with which it is viewed by those greatly equated with it be they the coffee shop baristas of New York, bloggers, journalists, writers, or even the Russian son living in China for the sake of just living off his trust-fund. The dissent to self-identity is nearly as critical a feature as this: The unparalleled societal life form that by some means does not detest the hipster as a reflection of narcissistic pretention is the multinational corporation. An excellent way to demonstrate a working definition of the contemporary Hipster is by virtue of comparison to pas social movements that we at present distinguish as counter-cultural, provided that it is how Hipsterdom fathoms itself and how it is marketed. The genealogical foundation of the modern day hipster is in the Beat Generation. The Beat-Hipsters condoning counter-cultural features were the abnormality of their semi-nomadic lifestyle, the sexual openness, and dedication to expression emancipated from traditional method. The contemporary hipster has an explicit three-dimensional entitlement involving reliable access to amenities essential for a secure, relevant existence. The outplay of this has been a recently developed wave of gentrification in American and European cities. There is gender and sexual flexibility in the metropolitan hipster scene, even so this comes with the fair considerable safety of increased mainstream and corporate acceptance of homosexual identities, which the Beats did not have. The hipster is a result of post-modernity disentangling in general culture to the point of relentless self-awareness. The Beat-Hipsters were unquestionably self-obsessed, yet they exhibit an earnestness and candidness that is unobtainable if ones mental energy is unduly dedicated to fretting over pre-empted acceptance of an ironic conviction.

The popular treatment of hipsters includes derision and abusive overtones that distort any honest examination. According to Hughes, Haddow wrote what is the finest representation of the hipster for an AdBusters article in 2008, but the title alone, Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization, leaves no uncertainties about the unwavering stance of the examiner. AUTHENTIC HIPSTER Why do we always give rise to the word authenticity when we talk about hipsters? The reason behind this is on account of that authenticity is the trademark of the hipster. The whole hipster identity revolves around the questions of authenticity and disparity. Disparity from their parents generation, disparity from the mainstream, disparity from the labels of prevailing culture. These disparities provide the hipster with a source of distinction (Bourdieu 1984), characterizing themselves from the submissive masses of mainstream culture and bestowing them a sense of superiority. Hence, this is also why hipsters are very eager on avoiding the label of hipster completely. To acknowledge being a hipster is to embrace the label, nullifying the free-spirited principles of the hipster code. Hipsters are at the vanguard of movements of wistful rejuvenation. Through wistful rejuvenation, I mean the revival of anachronistic technologies, fashion trends, and art, a type of artificial vernacular that lures on various myths of the past, becoming a white-washed image of the past reinterpreted to serve the present. The hipster market has led to the successful growth of American Apparels and Urban Outfitters all over America, stimulating fashion and music trends that now pervade into even the most corporate of Americas pedigree of consumption. Conceivably the hipster market has led to the re-propagation of various analogue technologies of yore. Nevertheless, the unkempt free-spirited look exhibited by the contemporary hipster neo-tribe is nothing but an imitation of the past, revamped in the present (Baudrillard 1994). It draws on worn-out semiotic images of the past in order to establish an artificial present. For the hipster, the past becomes a source of authenticity as a result of the overwhelming wistfulness hipsters feel for days before the mainstreamers take their subcultural forms. The wistfulness is primarily established, and born out of a idealization of the days of their parents (thus hipsters heartfelt love of popular fashions from the 60s, 70s. and 80s). And since authenticity is closely connected with the minutia of subcultural knowledge, a great awareness of ones first encounter with a specific brand, fashion, or brand becomes a strong founding narrative for the hipster identity. It is somehow a way of asserting allegiance to a certain lifestyle or taste culture (Gans 1974), a way of putting oneself at the vanguard of cutting edge fashions and trends. The frequently mentioned clich, I liked them before they were cool becomes a maxim of identity, proclaiming ones status at the pith of the subculture and discarding all others as mere followers.

Due to the overwhelming desire for authenticity, the hipsters of today continue to rejuvenate the technologies of the past. To the hipster, these technologies present a physicality that is absent from many digital technologies. This physicality bestows an aura of materiality, which supplies a source of authenticity to those of who grew up in the digital age. HIPSTERDOM: A Much More Vivid Picture For the most part, it is very crucial for hipsters to act like they dont care about their appearance, the songs that they listen to, or where they hang out. As a matter of fact, it is a prime concern for their kind to care about all of these things; they just want it to appear that they dont. You can frequently come across hipsters at an unusual caf (Not Starbucks), reading a book from a classical author while listening to their Ipods or ironically writing on their Macbook laptops. Contrary to popular beliefs, brand awareness is of significant value for these people and it is even more preferable if the brand has something to do with some hippie crap just to prove to the world that they are mindful of what is going around in the environment. Hipsters frequently talk about things that relate to the global effects that people have on the earth and try to persuade normal human beings of their alleged integrity towards putting an end to it. This is generally an overstatement provided that hipsters are consumer-driven and dont genuinely care about the environment at all unlike their hippie ancestors, however their hidden motive is to make other people think that they do. Hipsters had a substantial influence on the younger (hippie + metrosexual) demographic of the world by means of social media in which they display their presumed singularity by fabricating statements relating to how much they know, the concerts they have been to recently, and putting up instagram pictures of themselves or unknown bands that no normal human being has ever heard or seen. Studies have shown that hipsters consider mainstream audiences as their biggest enemy given that they just appreciate what is good music and listen to what every other normal human being is listening to, unlike them who only listen to music for the sake that no other human being except their kind has ever heard of it. Popular music genres such as techno, house, grunge rock, alternative rock, or any other requested music you hear on the radio is regarded as lame by any type of hipster. Actually, if the hipster music becomes popular towards the normal human being, the hipster will stop listening to that music, asserting that they sold out and that they are no longer cool. Normally, hipsters are white upper middle-class people with good financial background and a little bit of above average intelligence. Hipsters are in many cases enrolled in a liberal arts program at a university were they hop from one program to another within the scope of the liberal arts program provided that their parents are able to back them up with their expenses. On account of them graduating from college or staying in college for (X) number of years, hipsters would immediately declare

themselves as more intelligent than the average individual. Thus, they are more incline to pursue fields such as philosophy, poetry (Gay!), and photography (Instagram). Basically, the key principle about hipsters is that the only thing they care about is to showboat their literary and historic adeptness. Every single thing that a hipster does has to be different from any other normal human being, be it the music that they listen to, the way they interact, the way they dress, or the places they go to they will always find a way to be different from everyone else. Although hipsters are part of a social group that acts and dresses indistinguishably, they have no clue of their identity that is why no hipster will ever call himself a hipster. CONCLUSION Hipsters are considerably the absolute manifestation of irony in society nowadays. In spite of the fact of their profound effort to be unique, in actuality they just conform to the vogue of other hipsters, which make them just as bad as the people they seem to despise greatly, the mainstream audience. Although some of us might have listened to underground bands, dress unconventionally, or our parents might have the financial means to support us we never think that we are superior to everyone else. We just do it for the fun of doing it and not because of the irony instilled upon it. I detest these hipsters not because they are different, I detest them because they think they are just above everyone else and that everyone who does not live their lifestyle is considered weird and uncool but the fact of the matter is that in everyones mind they are the ones who are weird and just simply a blight to the human race.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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