When you mention the word hipster to your friends what kind of reactions do you get? Reading articles online I’ve found two opinions. The first opinion presents itself as interested in what hipsters represent. “The Hipster movement is an interesting look into phenomonon in society. While it’s here lets analyze it and find out why it exists” The second opinion is filled with irritation at the fact that Hipsters still exist. You’ll hear them say “Fucking Hipsters. Always taking all the seats at the cafe.” Many people do not approve of this ‘Hipster movement’ in cities like Portland, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Seattle and so on. But there is a third unvoiced opinion that voluntarily stays silent. Getting an actual hipster to comment and talk about hipsterism is harder than finding a needle in a hay stack.
Looking online, I found that Rob Horning, a writer at Popmatters, has a few interesting opinions on the Hipster Movement. He mentions the fact that Hipsters don’t actually seem to want to define themselves. Hipsters don’t actually like to conform to societal ideas or images, so it would make sense that they don’t meet up to talk about what a hipster is. They don’t like to define themselves, so we have an almost silent third opinion on hipsters. Rob Horning however took it upon himself to give us the prevailing attitudes about Hipsters. One of the stances taken by the people of the second opinion is that they are “a kind of permanent cultural middleman in hypermediated late capitalism, selling out alternative sources of social power developed by outsider groups…[Hipsters are an] embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics.”(Horning). Another interesting point that he brought up is that hipsters sometimes see themselves as “the coolhunting collaborators and spies.” (Horning) The last opinion we see of the hipster culture is the opinion taken by those interested in what this movement represents. “Is it that outsider groups are the only ones that make possible new forms of cultural capital?” (Horning) The author brings to light a different kind of approach to the hipster discussion and begs the question, are they necessary? Hipsters seem to be invested in the cultural happenings of our society and they take a personal interests in finding the things that we deem ‘old or ordinary’ and they essentially make them popular again. This event puts a capital on cultural trends and thrusts them to the lime light, basically changing up the economic market and knocking down brands and trends we have put on a pedestal.
The author of this article as brought to view an interesting realization. Many people, in trying to define hipsters, always exclude themselves from hipsters. They say, “A hipster is this and that, but that isn’t me.” Society will see someone as a hipster, but hipsters don’t like saying that are hipsters. You yourself could be a hipster, but you will deny it till the day you die. Its almost as if the term is derogatory and insulting, maybe because hipsters are known for hating labels.
Pop Matters Article by Rob Horning
http://www.popmatters.com/post/the-death-of-the-hipster-panel/