
Hipster whines at tech mag, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster - prawn
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/06/hipsters_all_look_the_same_fact/
======
QuantumYeti
The word "hipster" has always rubbed me the wrong way, mainly because people
have very strong opinions about hipsters, and I'm still not entirely sure that
word means anything.

Google's definition is "a person who follows the latest trends and fashions,
especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream." We used
to call people who followed the latest trends and fashions "trendy". The only
difference between "trendy" and "hipster" seems to be the qualifier at the end
of the hipster definition: "...especially those regarded as being outside the
cultural mainstream." But that feels weasle-wordy to me. It's like saying, "a
hipster is someone who follows the latest trends and fashions, except when
they don't".

People have been wearing flannel and hats for a long time (check your parents'
photo albums). Whether or not the person wearing those clothes considers
themselves to be making a new fashion statement seems to be an assumption made
on behalf of the person calling the other a hipster. Because of that, hearing
someone call another person a hipster has always come across as that person
projecting their emotions onto another person, not as a description of
anything that's actually real.

~~~
chrisseaton
Wikipedia has what I think is an extremely accurate and non-judgemental
indicative definition of a hipster

> The hipster subculture is stereotypically composed of young adults who
> reside primarily in gentrified neighborhoods. It is broadly associated with
> indie and alternative music and genres such as chill-out, folk, modern rock,
> pop rock, and post-Britpop. Hipsters also frequently flaunt a varied non-
> mainstream fashion sensibility, vintage and thrift store-bought clothing,
> pacifist and green views, generally vegan, consume organic and artisanal
> foods, craft alcoholic beverages, and alternative lifestyles. The subculture
> typically consists of mostly white young adults living in urban areas. It
> has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles,
> tastes and behavior"

To me eyes there is definitely a large and distinct subculture with these
characteristics.

To be a bit more judgemental, another good definition of hipster is "what
happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics" (Rob
Horning, also in that article.)

~~~
QuantumYeti
There are so many different characteristics listed under that definition that
virtually all young white people could be called a hipster to some degree.

I still disagree with the judgemental definition of hipster. You could call
anyone wearing clothes that aren't totally unique "pastiche". Assuming they're
wearing the clothes out of a sense of "irony" is projecting.

~~~
chrisseaton
> There are so many different characteristics listed under that definition
> that virtually all young white people could be called a hipster to some
> degree.

I think that's pretty common in social subcultures though isn't it? It's an
indicative description of something that's emerged naturally. It's not a
mathematical formula.

If you want perfect that you'll need to give up trying to define cultures
entirely.

~~~
QuantumYeti
That's a good point, most subcultures aren't going to perfectly describe
everyone in them. I think my problem with the Wikipedia definition is that
it's so overly broad that it's virtually unfalsifiable if you're young and
white. That wouldn't be bad by itself (it would just be a large category of
people). I guess the reason it bugs me is because it is so broad and so
commonly -- exclusively, in my personal experience -- used as a pejorative.

~~~
existencebox
"I think my problem with the Wikipedia definition is that it's so overly broad
that it's virtually unfalsifiable if you're young and white"

Not my experience whatsoever. Philadelphia public school growing up, we had
young white kids who would have unambiguously fallen into categories of "Punk"
"metalhead" "goth" "hood" to just name a few of the most cliched highschool-
sitcom-but-actually groups. (there was even regular assertions that "hipster"
and "scene" were different but that one never really grokked for me)

Especially having lived east vs. west coast over the last decade, the
assertion that there isn't a distinct subculture in a non-derogatory way that
can be defined usefully as "hipster" doesn't ring true for me.

And for the most part, even growing up, I never got the sense the grouping was
malicious except in rare cases. Most kids would own their tastes (usually
associated with music and dress) and would probably take insult if you
confused their clique :P (And less in the "you just shit on me" way, but that
could happen, more in the "how the hell could you confuse that" fashion, which
implies to me that others saw the same clean voluntary-group-agglomeration
that I saw.)

~~~
QuantumYeti
Why would they have "unambiguously" fallen into those categories? There's just
this assumption that people who "look like that" don't listen to punk or
metal, and it's just not true. People who listen to punk or metal can be
young, white (I hate to harp on the white thing, it's just the way Wikipedia
describes it), live in gentrified urban areas, buy clothes from the thrift
store, buy vintage jackets. Lots of punks are vegan and live alternative
lifestyles. All of those things are characteristics that supposedly identify
someone as a hipster. If it seems like I'm cherry-picking, I'd ask how many of
the characteristics need to be met for the categorization to be true. So I
don't agree that they unambiguously fall into their own "punk" or "metalhead"
categories. Maybe they self-identify as punk or metalhead, but that doesn't
change the fact that the definition of hipster is so broad that their
subcultures are a subset of it.

~~~
existencebox
"Why would they have "unambiguously" fallen into those categories? "

Pragmatically, because they often _wanted_ to and designed their personas
intentionally.

You seem to be arguing that visible signifiers of subcultures don't provide
meaningful signal. I would disagree broadly, and specifically in that the I
don't even consider "hipster" the "generic white dude." Beanies? plaid? At
least where I grew up those were _very conscious statements_ and not just the
median type of dress.

As you say there are people who present as one thing who have tastes
otherwise. I present nowadays as a metalhead but spend far more of my time
listening to hip hop. But if someone called me a metalhead I'd probably go
"there's some truth in that" and understand the connotations even if it's not
100%, and I see hipster similarly, whereas you seem to find it to have no
signal whatsoever.

The core of our difference seems to be whether "generic white dude" falls into
hipster. I simply can't find that to be true. The aspects the wikipedia
article call out, I've only found to be "norm" in places that would, again
without malice, probably self-identify as "hipster", although there's a
definite "grunge" overlap. (Seattle, Portland, Vermont, in my personal
experience) My main point being, that does not even come close to describing
the vast bulk of jeans wearing boring-tshirt-or-button down blue/white-collar
loafer/sneaker wearing white dude that I've met over the course of my life.
(And sanity checking myself with a glance down my 55 person teamroom :P)

This may well end up being a "you live in a different bubble than I do" which
I'm not about to argue or criticize. I just wanted to chime in from a music-
nerd-often-accused-of-being-hipster's perspective; if only to speak for my
friend group and myself, we find these terms to have inoffensive utility.

------
mc32
This is a total puff piece but this quote stood out:

>”...For groovy models of how random acts by [group] "undergo a phase
transition into a synchronized state"”

So groups of people who start out from different groups or no groups after
they enter a dominant group can coalesce around looks.

~~~
johnnycab
>This is a total puff piece

This article is written in their inimitable light-hearted/self-deprecating
style by injecting some dry humour into a story. It is not meant to be taken
seriously, as evidenced in the comment section.

------
whisps
The most surprising thing I learned from reading this is that people still
call other people hipsters in 2019.

~~~
unmole
What else would you call a hipster?

~~~
cafard
There was a stretch of about 10 years either side of 1960 in which the term,
and perhaps even the hipster, flourished. Having at least heard the term the
first time around, and having encountered it in such writings as Mailer's
_Advertisements for Myself_ and one of Styron's novels, I was surprised to see
it reappear.

Perhaps in your 50s you will be surprised to find some term from your younger
days reappear after long disuse--yuppie? slacker? brogrammer?

------
Digit-Al
I wonder if he can find a trendy pop-up street-food restaurant that sells
humble pie.

~~~
linkmotif
Wash that down with some Hobo Lager

