TIME Mag's History of Hipsterdom

Hey hipsters, you're too disaffected to probably care, but: you've finally made it into the pages of TIME magazine! Or at least onto their internet home. They begin their brief history of the hipster by narrowing the group down to people who hate Coldplay, love silk-screened tees, and drink PBR. We cross-referenced this in our Urban Outfitters Hipster's Guide to the Galaxy handbook that doesn't exist because hipsters would never buy it, and it all seemed to check out.

They move on with history lessons and the genus and blah blah yawn when are they going to talk about you and your awesome PBR-drinking lifestyle? Here we go; the scene is present day Williamsburg:

The hip have been hit with a double whammy of economic reality (more are struggling to pay rent as parental support dries up) and population changes (the carefully gentrified neighborhood is gradually being infiltrated by squatters inhabiting Williamsburg's stalled building projects). Hipsterdom's largest natural habitat, it seems, is under threat.

The hipsters who will be the dead end of Western Civilization are the ones who add nothing new or original and simply recycle and reduce old trends into a meaningless meme. It's for that reason that when Williamsburg's hipster playland is in crisis, there aren't many who are concerned.

Mad Libs time! Give a hipster a ______ and he'll ______ for a day, teach a hipster to ______ and he'll ______ for a lifetime.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Carlson in Arts & Entertainment on July 30, 2009 5:48 PM

Comments [rss]

tolu1973

It all comes down to white people loving to hate other white people. Seriously, who has mastered the art of hate more? White people.

No one calls themselves hipsters.. ever. It used as a derogatory term towards young white people by other white people who see their flashy, fashion-rich, partying lifestyle as something beneath them, even though they are just being young people.

Hippies to hipsters.. it's just young people acting young. And old people don't like it and so they act old.

yytttt

the person who wrote the last comment is a hipster. the girl in the american apparel ad is a hipster. the author (jen carlson) is a hipster. the guy who writes the next comment is a hipster. williamsburg is full of hipsters. les is full of hipsters. austin is full of hipsters. bangladesh is full of hipsters. you're all a bunch of useless hipsters. everyone is a hipster except for me.

Guest

this article is dumb but the girl in the American Apparel ad is cute.

neckbeard

I'll say this one more time. I've lived in Williamsburg for 4 years and have only met one person who's parents pay their rent, and she happens to have grown up on the Upper East Side.

I still don't get where this generalization comes from.

Lacy

I like how the article reads as a condensed version of the wikipedia entries on hipsters. The reporting is as tried as the subject.

mattbrogan

"more are struggling to pay rent as parental support dries up"

can someone please qualify this statement, you know, with... like... journalism? does williamsburg really have a higher percentage of parents paying rents? i call shenanigans! this is just some made up cultural narrative that's taken hold and continues to be peddled by lazy writers and shameless editors. orin their own words, "the ones who add nothing new or original and simply recycle and reduce old trends into a meaningless meme."

dirty hipster

I know more people that live in Manhattan that have their parents subsidize their rent.

Yeah - the 21 year old ad-assistant making 25k a year can afford to pay the 2,500 bucks a month her doorman 1 bedroom in Murray Hill runs. And then has enough money leftover to buy Louis Vuitton bags and overpriced crap from Topshop, and go to brunch at Pastis and drink 18 dollar cosmos at the Gansevoort - bitch please.