Hipsters...Dirty Hipsters...

Until recently, a good majority of people I hung out with would be classified as 'hipsters' in the modern usage of the word. Compared to most people in Salt Lake, they seemed well read and fairly intelligent on a variety of subjects, and were a welcome distraction with free Pabst Blue Ribbon. For a period of time I even dated a hipster and bought some deep v neck shirts (which are still super comfy and cool in the summer.) However, something always bothered me about the whole hipster scene/lifestyle/aesthetic. I felt dirty walking into Urban Outfitters, listening to electro-hiphop nonsense, and drinking cheap beer. It dawned on me that whole culture revolves around the sense of irony - hipsterism's refuge from society and detachment from art and culture.

Now irony and kitsch are two very different things. As Clement Greenberg points out in The Avante Garde and Kitsch, kitsch is the appreciation of the sublimely bad in art, transcending its place as a cultural artifact and by virtue of it's lack of taste, becomes a sort of high art. However, hipsters are unable to even appreciate the beauty in the tastelessness. Rather, they abstain from deep emotional and intellectual connections and have built a subculture specifically revolving around not the rejection of decadent art and culture, as many counter cultures have, but a celebration of it in its worst forms.

Perhaps the thing that bothers me the most is that rather than creating something innovative and new, making a culture of their own, hipsterism shamelessly revels in stealing from the past. The music and culture which hipsters 'take seriously' - assuming that they are even capable of such aesthetic connection and analysis - comes from their parents or older generations. Musical genres like garage punk, indie rock, electro-pop, or hip-hop - 80's clothing, tight and flared pants, old cameras, vinyl - most if not all of hipster cultural consumption is from a bygone age. Ironically enjoying these things as if they were a lampoon of culture, the oft given explanation for the love of anti-culture seems to be, "OMIGAWD it’s so awful!" followed by a loud "I LOVE it!" This attitude perpetuates the banal and ridiculous cultural institutions that so desperately need to go the way of jelly sandals and Beanie Babies. Instead of finding or creating an alternative, hipsters instead opt for ironic detachment.

Another thing that bothered me was their appropriation of working class and blue collar culture like trucker hats, western shirts, and Charles Bukowski. In trendy SLC coffee shops hipsters sling Marxist slogans*, misunderstood Chomsky and Foucault snippits, and how they know 'the plight of the working class' on their 7.50/hour barrista jobs that make them choose between buying cocaine or a fixed gear bike (in Salt Lake? Seriously?) The truth is that most hipsters couldn't make themselves a cup of coffee (which is why they go to coffee shops.) The divorce of their labour seems to leave them with that empty feeling characteristic of the post-industrial existential crisis. Rather than confronting that void and re-asserting their labour power, hipsters turn the culture of legitimately hard working people into a joke, an ironic statement meaning absolutely nothing.

What it all boils down to is that hipsters lack meaningful connection to culture and society, and what they are left with is absurdity. By mislabeling this absurdity as 'hip' and creating a gradient for immediate downwards social comparison to anyone who doesn't buy into this bullshit, they forge an identity, culture, and society of their own. But the very ideas of 'culture' and 'society' mean nothing to them - and they try to apply a simplistic misunderstanding of critical theory, postmodernism and deconstructionism. My summation on hipsters therefore is that they exist in a world without value and meaning. They lack soul, authenticity, and purpose. Fuck the hipsters.




*I will be the first to admit that I have thrown around Marxist rhetoric and French names to sound smart and important - in my defense, I do know what I am talking about when it comes to Marx. I spent most of high school devouring Marx's collected works, including doing a comparison study of Marx's most well known works (Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital Vol 1-3) in German and English as my IB Extended Essay.