Deconstructing Hipsters

Like Christian Lorentzen before him, Douglas Haddow deconstructs the hipster in the latest Adbusters cover story. Just as in Lorentzen's Time Out NY piece, "Why the Hipster Must Die," Haddow doesn't really have a solution to the hipster problem, except to allude to the fact that ultimately, one day, their blood will be on their own hands. Until then, they are today's main suspect in the murder of Western Civilization...something that Haddow makes sound so damn poetic.

The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyah [sic] and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending demise.

We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

Whereas Lorentzen's article asks when the hipster's death gurgle was loudest (Bright Eyes signing a lease on the LES, Wes Anderson becoming too precious, etc), it's more likely that the hipster didn't even exist until the idea was marketable--and Haddow now questions how long until the skinny jean set implodes, and when "the idols of the style pages" will realize they've hit their own wall. But after Generation Disaffected dies out, who will take over, and will anyone actually care?

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By Jen Carlson in Arts & Entertainment on August 3, 2008 4:48 PM

Comments [rss]

joebrilliant

Wow it only took 2 comments to get to unprompted SF hating. Impressive.

spiritross

Flappers

Greasers

Beats

Hippies

Slackers

and now

Hipsters

They are all the same

they arent "the end of civilization!"

they are just the counter culture that ends up becoming mainstream

this guy needs a reality check

everything is the same over time

just the details are different

Deconstructionism is the philosophy for the scared and confused

It serves no purpose and makes people miss the big picture of the human narrative

salad

i want to step on that guys face.

plk779

must... label... self!!

rdsizzle

Wow – what a bunch of losers on this board dissecting the characteristics of a hipster…The beauty of a metropolitan/cosmopolitan areas is that you have a mélange of many cultures, styles and financial status…Yes many of the wannabes and “hipsters” end up in large cities but ultimately contributes in part, to what the city is…If all of you haters don’t like it then you should move to Boise, Idahoe; where I’m pretty sure that there is no “hipsters” there.

Live and let live…

BTW – I don’t consider myself a “hipster”, whatever the fuck that is…

cncrocket

theres no such thing as a hipster.

BrooklynBredTom

Hipsters, to me, are a failed hippies. Hippies were failed Beats. Beats were failed Bohemians. Bohemians were the only revolution, but the Beats did a good job themselves. The Hippies still had an ounce of genuine thought. But hipsters are the result of a consumer culture exploiting the previous efforts (Bohemians, Beats, Hippies), they're just oblivious to this.

NannyState

#23, you get a pass, but here's hoping you score that luxe condo anyway.

bornbrednewyorker

Hipsters are just nerds playing dress up.

Amanda Harletsch

"They are listening to fall out boy and miley cyrus" Those are the hicks! not the hipsters...get your hipster parameters right!

Amanda Harletsch

really? Like totally self absorved individualism based on anything that might seem cool has not been the staple of consumerism?

Don't blame hipsters,look at the system first, man!

tsol

Wiggers are the real sign of the decline of Western Civ.

hungryghoast

i think i got a bit dizzy reading all these comments....

my guess: things will continue to be ridiculous and we will continue to have these frivolous debates about hipsters and yuppies until things are so bad that they have to change drastically and these distinctions of cool and uncool and hip and blah blah blah don't really matter anymore. Until then, we'll all keep blathering on... (i don't exclude myself, don't worry).

LetsGetUgly

But is it the "hipsters" (such an overused word that it really doesn't even mean anything anymore) who have Disneyfied the whole city? Have they put Will Smith in all their films? Made us listen to American Idol singers on our radio? Hell, have they ruined radio for that matter? Have they given us the Jonas Brothers, and Miley Cirus?

I didn't think so.

Say what you will about the skinny jean set, but they are not the ones destroying our culture... and certainly not Western Civilization.

Superficial articles like this are certainly not helping the cause.

WorksInDUMBO

Here's the confounding thing about hipsters: No one will EVER admit to being one, and every one you ask will claim to hate them. Ever met anyone who LIKES hipsters? Ever met anyone who would proudly say, "Yes! I am a hipster"?

Even the hippies would say they were hippies and be proud of it.

So maybe you are a hipster and you don't even know it. Maybe I'm a hipster, and blissfully unaware! Maybe we are ALL HIPSTERS and it's true, it's the END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!

chris

I still can't believe someone wrote rise of the idiots in earnest.

Doesn't adbusters have better things to do than level accusations at their target market? I seem to recall we're being shafted by large corporations and stuff more than usual... I'm glad pointing fingers to sell issues has taken precedence over a meaningful agenda.

starrygordon

"The ones that do their grocery shopping pulling a Radio Flyer cart"

I did that during one of the gas droughts in the late '70s when I was stuck out in the 'burbs. I had no idea it was hip. There was a gas station between me and the stupidmarket, and drivers gazed astounded at me while they waited on line, their fat, slack jaws hanging open. They're probably still there.

So where's my glitzy condo in Williamsburg?

shamanovsky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTmGMkZ0vbo&fmt=18

here you go :)

NannyState

The ones that do their grocery shopping pulling a Radio Flyer cart; the ones with exaggerated facial coifs that pretend they're in a band; the ones who compare ringtones at parties. Need I go further? They exist in a bubble created by parental wealth and a society that no longer openly challenges these douchebags at every turn. We created these monsters by not testing them to the limit and forcing them to stare long and hard at their own abyss. And with the economy in shreds, they won't all become yuppies, many will be like their counterparts in Italy that live with Mama until they marry at forty.

Shinobi Shaw

But this is not about whether Hipsters are 'good' or 'bad.'

Rather it's about how HIpsters are now the new square/lemming/whatever you want to call it and how they are no longer hip and original.

How can you be hip and original when everybody is a copy of a copy?

I go to some of the 'hippest' neighborhoods in the city and everybody overall seems to have this self-delusional POV (and the irony!!) of SEEMING to be hip when they actually are not (how can you when everybody and their mother is 'hip').

Hipster is mainstream, to be a Hipster is now to be Mainstream.

Even your average little worker bees want to get on the action!

It has now transformed into this plastic and superficial lifestyle.

I know a few groups out there that would be considered 'edgy' and yet they don't consider themselves hip in the slightest (as it's not about that at all).

Rather they probably be called 'crazies' 'anarchists' or 'constitutionalists.'