The Demythologizing of the Hipster

Hipsters like to shroud themselves in myth. They want to be an enigma. But they aren't enigmatic. We've talked a lot about hipsters on this blog so I thought it high time to demythologize the hipster.

Hipster began where most countercultural revolutions begin, in affluent suburbs. It also was started by people who often start subversive cultural rifting, teenagers of well-to-do parents that have nothing to really rebel against. Thus, you have incredibly plastic origins of the hipster. To be fair though, the hipster movement is not the only counterculture movement to spring from affluence.

1) The Beat Generation: William S. Burroughs came from money and went to Harvard. Jack Kerouac got a scholarship to Columbia to play football. Ginsberg also went to Columbia. Ivy League rebellion.

2) The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer was born to a wealthy Jewish family and went on to discuss suffering in great detail. Theodor W. Adorno was born to a successful wine-export entrepreneur and railed against the system that nobody can escape. What are you running from???

3) The Apple Macintosh Revival: Steve Jobs was adopted by parents with early jobs in the Silicon valley. Why are you so anti-IBM?

So the Hipster movement is not alone in being rebellious for no apparent reason. But the hipsters love anything that they deem as authentic. They have a sick obsession with it. Not with the authentic itself, but with what they deem is the real deal. So where does originality come from in the 1990's or the 2000's? From past decades of course. The hipsters have appropriated a number of influences and blended them together. They like ethnic things like African patterns made in London. They like the beatniks if they're read over digital media out of context. They like metrosexuality as long as its ironic in their eyes. Take all of this mash it together with sorrowful, whiny music and you have the birth of hipsterdom.

But with this striving for originality comes a cynicism known as the snark. Basically anything that anyone deems cool must be mercilessly ridiculed with snide comments by hipster. This is why hipsters can never get along with anyone, especially one another. A hipster must mock the cool kid or the nerd equally to qualify for metacoolness. But, even if a hipster were to think that some other hipster's appropriated styling was worthy of praise he must snark it out of principle, or out of envy of not discovering the current milieu of what the other hipster is doing.

So the hipster is a cynical vomitorium of style. But, one thing that hipster does well is to be informed. In order to have the thin veneer of originality the hipster must know a little bit about a lot of things. How can hipster deem something ironic if hipster does not know the meaning of ironic? How can hipster seek out emergent music if hipster does not know what music would never be considered original or authentic? How can hipster snark non-hipster with literary quips if hipster is not well read? Hipster cannot. Therefore, hipster reads Vice magazine religiously and memorizes obscure artists and authors wikipedia articles.